DJ - R.I.P.

Dennis Johnson, the great NBA guard, passed today.

I've always loved this quote from him, about playing in big games:
“I hate to lose,” he once said. “I accept it when it comes, but I still hate it. That’s the way I am.”

Additionally, this afternoon, I was very surprised to see how the news of his death played out on the Internet. My homepage is msnbc.com, and there was a "Breaking News" headline reporting his death, without any details. I quickly clicked on cnn.com and espn.com, neither of which anything except the headline. While I waited, I wondered how old DJ was, and decided to check Wikipedia. Amazingly, his bio there was already updated, including the date and likely cause of his death, attributed to Danny Ainge.

We are only beginning to understand the implications of this era of user choice and control, when basketball fans don't need to wait for the vertically integrated media conglomerates to report the news, because they can do it themselves. This is a very signifcant time in the development of media and how it is integrated into our lives.