Those athletes more often than not were propped up by marketing departments for their leagues and teams, promoted in the media as role models, and had their faces splashed everywhere in endorsement deals. So people were defending a figure they may have spent their childhood building their identity around - see Pete Rose stans.
The new part to me is that it’s someone that semi-organically percolated to the top in YouTube in a seemingly crowded field of Minecraft content and inspired that level of dedication without the massive marketing machine.
