Zion Williamson's Masterclass in Managing Media Narrative.
It was fascinating to watch the Zion Williamson saga unfold. I paid attention and witnessed how a well oiled PR machine can change narrative.
It all started innocuous enough. Zion’s soon to be baby mama posted a video of the gender reveal party. This set off a shit storm that had to be managed and needed the best at doing that.
As soon as Zion’s side piece Moriah Mills, a former porn star and current OnlyFan’s model, saw the gender reveal video she lost her shit. She started putting him on blast on social media and she had the receipts. She posted video’s, texts, and bank transfers. The evidence she posted proved beyond a doubt that she wasn’t lying about the relationship.
This created a huge problem, not just for the NBA but for many corporations who were attached to Zion. Zion is one of the biggest rising superstars in the NBA and he is as good as advertised. It is a shame he has been injured for the majority of the time he has been a professional. But when he is playing, he is as dominant a player as they come. He is big, strong, incredibly athletic and he is also only 22 years old. So, the NBA and his sponsors have an interest in managing his image. Unlike Ja Morant (who’s immaturity is on another level), Zion wasn’t out and about in the clubs drinking, acting a fool and brandishing guns. The most negative thing to come out about Zion was JJ Reddick calling him an aloof teammate.
Which ever PR team that went in to damage control did it quick. And it was beautiful to observe.
From what I have observed, the initial plan was to just let her blow off steam, deal with it privately and then forget about it. But, Moirah Mills will not let that happen. She continued her attacks on him. To make it worse, she even posted private messages from him asking her to stop and he will take care of her. Once it became clear that she will not stop, the PR team went in to plan B.
The challenge for the team was that they have to overcome the publics thirst for sellacious news, specially of the sexual kind, regarding public figures. So the PR team started leaking news that The New Orleans Pelicans (the basketball team he was playing for) were looking to trade him to another team. They had leaks about his less than stellar relationship with the management, coaching staff, and team mates.
It was also important that the PR team didn’t leak everything all at once. They systematically fed story lines to the media that will keep his personal life drama out of it. I suspect they were expecting Moriah Mills to calm down after a few tweets, the whole thing would blow over, and the public would forget about it. Instead of calming down, it had the opposite effect. Day by day she kept ramping up so the PR team had little choice but to keep it up until she went away.
Many were expecting Zion to involve lawyers and send her a Seize and Desist letter. But he never did. He was trying to deal with her in private.
Her tweets escalated as her fury increased. Day by day she leaked more DM’s, more private affairs, more threats. This was harassment plain and simple yet, hardly a soul mentioned it. The deafening silence of Malika Andrews has to be noted as she had nothing to say about Moriah Mills (31) harassing a much younger man Zion (22). If this was a woman being harassed the way Zion was, regardless of the age, you know Malika Andrews would have a lot of shit to say.
We have to give a lot of credit to Zion being incredibly mature in how he handled the whole situation. Had you not known that Moriah Mills was 9 years his senior, you would have guessed that Zion was the one elder to her. Yet, he kept his cool and let the PR team handle it. But I have no doubt he was the one who approved the strategy (amongst the many that, I am sure, was proposed) that was employed to manage the situation. After all, it is his name that was being dragged through the mud.
The final straw came when Moriah Mills, in her desperate attempts at getting a response after a week of nonstop tweets, tweeted that she has sex tapes of the 2 and that she is going to release it to the public. Not only did she threaten to release the sex tapes, she also demanded that the Pelicans trade Zion out of New Orleans.
Unbeknownst to her, this was a grave mistake because it violated Twitter’s Terms of Service and it led to her account being permanently banned from Twitter with 1.2 million followers. She was shut down and Zion’s and his team didn’t have to do a thing.
The ban from twitter seems to have gotten the message through to her that should she continue harassing Zion, it is likely that she will end up getting banned from other popular platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, TikTok and Facebook as well. For an OnlyFans adult performer, not having access to these platforms will mean that she will lose income through her inability to promote her content.
I also suspect that besides getting banned from Twitter, there must have been a private visit from a lawyer (either representing Zion, The NBA or The Pelicans) to put it in no uncertain terms what she was dealing with. She must have been told of the kind of people that had an interest in Zion’s success, the kind of power and money they have access to, and the legal measures they can take to not only silence her but also ruin her financially.
The message seems to have gotten through as she is very strategic and backhanded in how she has been talking about Zion since then. Almost exclusively posting thirst traps and trying to star relevant.
No sooner the ban went in to effect, the rumours about Zion’s trade out of the Pelicans vanished, his relationship with the organisation seems to have been wiped clean, and his commitment to basketball reinforced and unquestioned.
Now, the talk is all about his basketball career and how he is going to return stronger and hungrier from his injury. There is hardly any mentions of or about his affairs with multiple pornstars.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is a masterclass in how you handle, manage, manipulate, react and pivot a narrative. This was absolutely astonishing to witness.
We need to thank Zion for the way he has handled this situation. Let it be a lesson to all the up and coming superstars of any sport that they need not do the first thing that comes to mind, to not give in to base instincts, and to not lash out when a negative story hits the headlines. It is important for them to calm down, think with a cool head, put the right people in place to handle the situation and keep it professional.
Zion did all of that beautifully. The NBA and other major sports leagues need to understand that these are still very young men in their late teens and early 20's. They are starting a career in the public eye and being paid millions of dollars to do it. Unless they guide these young men in how they manage their health (physical and mental), their lifestyle, and their finances, we are bound to have more stories like this come out.
in the meantime, a huge congratulations to Zion Williamson and his PR team. Y’all handled that beautifully.
