Jim made a great point when he said that what works for Shaq may not work for another player. Every pro athlete is not going to have 200k+ followers if they join tomorrow. But even if an athlete just uses Twitter to engage a few existing fans and create some new fans, it will benefit his brand and you can measure this (via buzz/mentions/followers and sentiment). And it doesn’t take an expert publicist or a lot of time to achieve results…though it does help to have someone guide you at first and provide some best practices.