Get to Know Your Boston Celtics: Let's Meet Their Twitter Accounts!

NBA Players Love Twitter, and Your Boston Celtics Are No Exception to this Trend

Like other professional athletes, NBA players have flocked to Twitter over the past few years. One of the biggest reasons I joined Twitter was simply so I could follow all of the guys on my team, the Boston Celtics.

All told, 10 of the Celtics' 15 players have Twitter accounts. Baseball teams and football teams come nowhere even close to having that kind of ratio of tweeters to non-tweeters, however the number of Celtics with Twitter accounts is pretty average in the NBA. But the Celtic's tweeters run the gamut from quality to quantity. They are not the average tweeters, as you will soon find out.

So without further ado, let's meet your Boston Celtics Twitter accounts! Ranked by number of followers, and featuring pictures from each player's respective account:

1. Shaq

@THE_REAL_SHAQ (3,362,902 followers)

Everybody say 'hi' to Shaqueesta! What a scene that must have been in Boston on Halloween.

There are NBA players on Twitter, and then there's Shaq on Twitter. He's been at it for over two years now. In the realm of pro athletes on Twitter, Shaq is king. The latest Twitaholic rankings have him checking in at 21st, which isn't bad considering the next ranking athlete is Lance Armstrong (31st) with 2.69 million followers.

To put things in perspective, Shaq's closest competition within the NBA is not a player but the league itself with 2.17 million folks following the NBA, which checks in at No. 49 on the Twitaholic list. Dwight Howard is a distant number two in NBA player rankings on Twitter, sitting in the 87th spot with 1.76 million followers. 

A true discussion of Shaq's Twitter page should not be confined to a single slide: this is a guy who describes himself as "VERY QUOTATIOUS, I PERFORM RANDOM ACTS OF SHAQNESS" and lists his location as "BOSTON/EVERYWHERE."

Shaq's Twitter is simply a reflection on the kind of guy he is. Fewer superstars embrace the stage of celebrity as wholeheartedly as Shaq has.

With the help of Twitter, Shaq has milked Boston's monstrous appetite for superstar athletes for all it's worth. In October, Shaq pulled off Twitter-announced "statue routine" in Harvard Square (which his large fingers initially tweeted as "Barbara square"). After grabbing a bite to eat, Shaq simply parked himself, unflinchingly, on a bench for several hours as he let the local crowd mob him for pictures and videos.

A little weird, but, then again, that's Shaq for you.

All in all, it's a probably a good thing Twitter didn't exist during Shaq's salad days in Orlando or his glory days in Los Angeles, or we might not be looking at a Hall of Fame career here.

2. Paul Pierce

@paulpierce34 (1,675,755 followers)

Looks like Shaqueesta wasn't the only member of Team Green who dressed up for Halloween. Instead of hitting up Boston though, the team captain brought his ranine act over to David Ortiz's with several other members of the team. More on this later.

Frog-costume-pictures aside, Paul's tweets are usually pretty tame. He's no Shaq, that's for sure. Paul will typically tweet every other day or so; however, it's not strange for him go through spurts of multiple tweets a day, nor is it strange for him to be quiet for a week or so at a time.

Pierce frequently tweets to promote charity events he's hosting (his organization Truth on Health even has a separate account). Pierce will also tweet a new post going up on his Boston Globe blog or the occasional religious message.

That said, Pierce occasionally lets his competitive, some might say cocky, streak show on Twitter. After the Celtics beat the Heat in Miami last month, Pierce tweeted that it had been "a pleasure to bring my talents to south beach now on to Memphis." As a sports fan, you gotta love when the athletes themselves let their inner fan shine through.

While the South Beach tweet did little more than elicit a few laughs, Pierce ruffled some feathers last spring when a tweet went out on his account of "Anybody got a BROOM?" after the Celtics went up 2-0 on the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals. He later claimed his account had been hacked. Right...

On a more serious note, however, I think it's worth noting how open Paul is on Twitter considering this is the same guy who nearly lost his life after he was stabbed in a Boston nightclub over the summer of 2000. If there was one guy on the team who had a true reason, perhaps a right, to be reclusive and private, it would be Pierce.

3. Nate Robinson

@nate_robinson (203,736 followers)

If you're Nate Robinson and 5'6", that right there is the kind of picture you take when you have two Hall of Fame seven-footers on your team.

Nate's latest idea is to use his Twitter account to try and get himself voted an all-star. As tweeted by Robinson this Thursday: "So if you under 6 ft and wanna see someone rep you in the all-star game make sure you vote for me. We got a short people army lol."

Robinson is an obsessive yet entertaining Twitter user, and, not surprisingly, he attracts a following far disproportionate to his athletic status, not that I'm faulting him for that.

I will fault Robinson, however, for his borderline-compulsive use of the #WordAApp.

Nate's a very social guy, and this quality comes through on his Twitter. Unlike say, Shaq, who is clearly tweeting to a large, overwhelming anonymous following, Robinson has a large number of close friends and acquaintances who he stays connected with on Twitter.

He also loves posting pictures of his shoes and his kids. What more can you ask for out of life, honestly?

4. Rajon Rondo

@RajonRondo (118,791 followers)

I told you that I had more to say about Paul Pierce's Halloween frog photos, and this was what I was talking about. Rajon... wow. Wow. Rondo even has that same kind of stoic poker face as Tiger does.

Rondo was a very infrequent tweeter up until this month, during which both the quantity and the quality of his tweets has soared. Nate Robinson has taken notice, tweeting on Friday: I see my boy @RajonRondo tweet n more, come on y'all follow him and vote."

As you all no doubt noticed, that was also another Robinson tweet that mentions his aforementioned campaign to stuff the ballot box to the benefit of his bad self.

As for Rondo? I'm personally thrilled now to know that Rondo "crushed these crab wontons" for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Charlotte last night. Even better? Rajon let us all know that he baked his mom a cake for her birthday earlier this month.

5. Ray Allen

@greenRAYn20 (71,541 followers)

Even though Ray-Ray hasn't tweeted since May he still checks in as fourth best of the nine tweeting Celtics. Like teammate Nate Robinson, Ray loves posting shoe pics.

Ray's Twitter account might seem boring at first glance, especially since it appears he kicked his tweeting habit for good over the summer. But appearances can be deceiving.

Allen found himself in hot water last December with a very X-rated tweet that he claims was the work of a hack job. He even went so far as to change his handle to his current one from @sugarray20. It's unclear whether Allen was being honest or whether he meant to send a private message to then-Sacramento Monarch Ticha Penicheiro, with whom Allen had been exchanging tweets earlier that evening. The world may never know.

6. Jermaine O`Neal

@jermaineoneal (31,817 followers)

Jermaine O'Neal is next on our list, with a following reflective of when this veteran baller actually had some swagger and skill.

O'Neal, like Nate Robinson, uses his Twitter account primarily to stay in touch with a wide, yet seemingly close circle of friends and acquaintances. He's also a great family man. That picture of him is with his mom and brother.

O'Neal, like pretty much every NBA player, will also use his Twitter account to give away his extra complimentary tickets to lucky followers of his, who are often just ordinary folks with no actual connection to O'Neal beyond Twitter; a very cool, very genuine trend that has developed over the past couple of years across the league.

Jermaine doesn't have the proclivity for tweeting pictures that most of his fellow Celtics do. He only set up his own frog account over Thanksgiving. So far his biggest revelation was discovering a lone deer wandering through his backyard. Fascinating stuff.

7. Glen "Big Baby" Davis

@iambigbaby11 (27,516 followers)

Big Baby is next on the list. Over Thanksgiving, Davis tweeted "Just finish visiting the toilet!!!! Lawd hav mercy! Nobody goes in the bathroom from 30 to 45 mins !! On my mama. Second load comeing soon!"

What more needs to be said! Beautiful. He followed up later that day with "Where's the plumber when you need him!!!" I hope it turned out all right for Glen and the Davis family.

Davis is that guy on Twitter: he tweets everything. He'll tweet about getting food, going to the store, running over to his mom's house, or, as I just shared, taking a huge dump after Thanksgiving dinner.

He'll tweet here and there about basketball. Last month Glen tweeted: "Wow crazy game tonight!!! But a win is a win!! We gotta put teams like That away. Oh yeah Paul hitting the 20000 points. That was awsome."

Some great unintentional comedy from Big Baby's Twitter account are his sporadic motivational tweets. In October, Davis tweeted: "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...its about learning to dance in the rain... Ayo baby.. Have a great day."

Amen, brother, amen.

8. Marquis Daniels

@Marquis_Daniels (16,409 followers)

Another Celtic tweeter, another Halloween costume...

Marquis may not get the lion's share of the minutes off Boston's bench, but he is leading the team with well over 7,000 tweets. Teammate and fellow compulsive tweeters, Shaq and Nate Robinson are thousands beyond the pace set by Marquis.

Daniels loves informing us about seemingly anything and everything in his life, from taking a pic of his favorite snacks to tweeting what song is stuck is in his head, from replying to flirtatious tweets from Boston women to delivering some motherly common sense: "Goodnite everybody if ur out be safe if ur n be safe no matter what ur doing or where ur at always remember safety 1st....#beleedat," as tweeted last Saturday.

Marquis tweets up a storm, but a good chunk of his tweets are replies to individual followers of his, which really means nothing to someone like you or me.

9. Avery Bradley

@Aabradley11 (7,885 followers)

Avery Bradley was a stud at Texas but is still learning the ropes in the NBA. His sizable Twitter following, however, is a reflection the 21-year-old built up as a Longhorn and at Findlay College Prep in Henderson, Nev.

As a good rookie, Bradley pays due diligence to his teammates on Twitter. Like Nate Robinson, Avery got in a good-natured rib yesterday at Rajon Rondo's recent uptick in tweeting: "Finally @RajonRondo tweets something lol." That tweet was preceded by "Everybody vote for @nate_robinson to be in the all-star game."

Bradley's tweets mostly center about movies he's seen, food he's eaten and music he's bought. Pretty tame stuff. Tweets of "Game day" and "Good win" have also been recent staples.

Honestly, Avery Bradley's Twitter account isn't all that different from any other 21 year-old's.

10. Von Wafer

@vonwafer13 (5,428 followers)

The Dutch Cookie rounds out the bunch with the lowest tweets (3,623) to followers (5,428) ratio of any Celtic tweeter.

But that would seemingly be the way it should all add up for this basketball journeyman, who is playing for his sixth NBA squad in as many seasons. Wafer's professional career has also taken him to the D-League's Colorado 14ers and to Greece for a fourth-month stint with Olympiacos.

The biggest splash Wafer has made in Boston was when Delonte West threw a punch at him in the locker room after an October practice. This prompted Wafer to Tweet "Today was a test!...I am a professional and will continue to conduct myself as one...God has a plan for me." He has since deleted that tweet.

Wafer is really the only tweeting Celtic who's career isn't heading in the way he wants, so it's of little surprise he gets his fair share of snarky tweets. Rather than ignore his haters though (or simply change his following settings), Wafer has taken to tweeting back at his critics.

The best entertainment value from Wafer's Twitter, however, comes from his attempts to score dates with tweets that I guess resemble painful stabs at e-flirting. Someone do this guy a favor and get him an eHarmony or OK-Cupid account.

So There You Have It...

Well, that covers it for your tour of the Boston Celtics' Twitter accounts! Thought I'd close out with another of Paul Pierce's pic from David Ortiz's Halloween bash this fall. See how many Celtics you can spot.

The tweeting exploits of Shaq alone are enough for the whole team, but the rest of the bunch are not too bad themselves, especially Nate Robinson and Paul Pierce. Ray Allen may have scared himself away from Twitter for good, but Rajon Rondo is making up for Ray-Ray's recent lack of production.

For good or for ill, big-time athletes are more willing to be themselves on Twitter than, say, on Facebook. As we just saw, the Boston Celtics are no exception to this trend.

Now, if we could just get Kevin Garnett hooked up with a Twitter account...