Don’t try adding Jamal Crawford to the group text.
The NBA star and Seattle basketball legend admitted Thursday night that he’s still rocking a Blackberry phone, much to the giggling delight of the crew of TNT’s “Inside the NBA.”
"With my teammates I couldn't be on the group texts." ????
It's 2021 and @JCrossover is still rocking a Blackberry. pic.twitter.com/LFMkmsAJhB
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) March 26, 2021
In an era when new smartphones seem to drop every other month, Crawford got called out and then explained why he’s remained loyal to the seemingly outdated tech.
“It’s the keyboard,” he told TNT’s Candace Parker about the physical distinction, adding that he doesn’t have to spend time “erasing stuff and redoing it.”
The show’s Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith could be heard off camera mocking the admission. “They still got BlackBerry?” Smith said.
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Crawford said that the Android phone doesn’t allow him to be on group texts with his teammates and they have to “send him the stuff on the side. It was coming up green.” When asked if he had it with him, Crawford held up the phone — to moans from the broadcast crew. “It’s connected to my hip,” he said.
The longtime NBA player, who last played for the Brooklyn Nets during the 2019 season, was a standout player at Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School in the late 1990s.
BlackBerry has lasted just as long. You can still get one on Amazon for $350 and the company posted $224 million in revenue during the third quarter.
Executive Chairman and CEO John Chen even touted a multi-year, exclusive partnership with Amazon Web Services to co-develop and co-market BlackBerry IVY. The scalable, cloud-connected software platform “allows automakers to create personalized driver and passenger experiences and improve operations of connected vehicles.”
