https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1313538127030517761?s=20
The rhetor is Clay Travis, a sportswriter and founder of Outkick the Coverage, a website dedicated to covering sports and sports betting. He is tweeting about the precipitous drop in viewership of the NBA and its finals this year. Mr. Travis has been outspoken about what he views as a serious encroachment of party politics into sports. He believes that this encroachment is detrimental to the realm of sports, which has historically been isolated from party politics. The latest part of this development he takes issue with is the NBA’s embracing social justice during this last basketball season. He has repeatedly complained about what he sees as a hypocritical NBA that releases statements condemning the actions of the American police as a whole but staying silent on the issue of the Chinese government’s crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong or outright silencing members of teams who mention the issue there. He says this silence on Chinese injustice is because of the league’s greed and desire to maintain a market in China. In his tweet, Travis mentions Mark Cuban, the celebrity owner of the Dallas Mavericks who he has gone back-and-forth with about the NBA in the past year. Travis directs his tweet at multiple audiences besides his own. By mentioning Mr. Cuban, Travis hopes to bring more eyes to his argument as well as encourage Cuban, with ten times as many twitter followers, to reply. Travis backs up his argument that party politics has been detrimental through demonstration of logos: he references the cable/satellite viewership of this year’s NBA finals, which are down “an unbelievable 70% from the last time LeBron was in the finals two years ago.” Travis emphasizes this statistic with unbelievable. He also mentions LeBron James, who is arguably the face of the NBA to casual fans who are more likely to watch the finals with him in them. James is also another person Travis has taken issue with for his political views. By mentioning James, he is implying that the finals would have even worse ratings if he was not there. Travis is also demonstrating that LeBron does not have the appeal he did two years ago. With this large drop in ratings, Travis maintains an unassailable position that the NBA is suffering this year. He uses this position to ask Cuban why he has not mentioned the ratings, which he has repeatedly described in favorable terms. His tweet is in confrontational, argumentative language, hence his mention of Mr. Cuban. His tweet lacks pathos and ethos, but his appeals are backed up by data. A fallacy of his argument is that he does not account for viewers who either legally or illegally streamed the games, which is probably a million or more. The initial impact of this tweet is that Mr. Travis demonstrates that the NBA is suffering. The deeper impact of this tweet is that he gains more ammunition for his argument that the NBA is suffering due to its embracing partisan politics.