Bacon said he was an avid consumer of other players’ Instagram feeds, especially in the off-season. He rummages for training methods that he can add to his own routine.

“It’s all about getting better in every aspect,” he said.

Basketball, of course, is a competitive business, and these are competitive people. Troy Brown, a first-round draft pick of the Washington Wizards, made that clear on Instagram in June. He shared a film clip that features slow-motion dunks and feathery 3-pointers, staples of the genre, along with a caption that comes off as a sort of challenge to his peers: “I just wanna see if you’ve been working on your game like I’ve been working on mine.” Brown put it online a week before the N.B.A. Draft.

“People want to show how much hard work they’ve put in,” he said. “It’s not a cocky type of thing. It’s more of a, ‘Hey, I’m in the gym and I want you guys to see it’ type of thing.”

There are extreme cases. Joe Young, a point guard who spent the past three seasons with the Indiana Pacers, has nocturnal habits, and he does not like to keep them secret. He has used Instagram to share clips of himself working out with giant digital time stamps — 4:19 a.m., 5:45 a.m. and 4:02 a.m. — taking up half the screen.

“You’re allowed to work out later,” Georges Niang, a former teammate, recalled telling him. “It doesn’t have to be at 4:30 in the morning.”

Niang, a forward who has since joined the Utah Jazz, has adopted a more self-deprecating approach to social media. His Instagram feed includes a photo of himself flexing his arms at the gym — and a request for Photoshop help from his followers. (Niang is not a bodybuilder.) He also has a selfie that he took in the immediate wake of a hot yoga session. (He appears to be in no small amount of pain.) He always makes certain, he said, to give shoutouts to his trainers and fitness instructors.