What if the NBA Championship wasn’t decided on the court, but rather from social media follower numbers? This infographic done by The Score, takes all on court performance out the window and shows who would win the NBA Championship if it was determined by social media. Here is the breakdown of the winner of the NBA Social Playoffs was decided:
- 1st round: Team will advance by greater number of Facebook Likes
- 2nd round: Team will advance based on greater number of Total Social Following (Facebook, Twitter, Google+)
- Semifinals: Team will advance based on greater number of Twitter interactions
- Final Round: Team will advance based on the greatest sum of player Twitter followers for each team
NBA Social Playoffs Key Statistics
- Most Connected: The team with the most overall connections (Likes, Followers and Google+ Circles) was the Boston Celtics with more than seven million.
- Least Connected in the League: The team with the least overall connections was also the league’s worst performer on the court (and worst winning percentage in NBA history)- the Charlotte Bobcats with just over 166,000 total connections.
- Most Interactions on Twitter: The team with the most interactions (@replys rt’s and tweets) was the Miami Heat (@MiamiHEAT) with over 1 Million during the season.
- Least Interactions on Twitter for a Playoff Team: The team with the least interactions who made the playoffs was the Indiana Pacers with 212,000.
- Total Connections: The total of NBA Team Connections on their official Facebook Fan Pages (Likes), Twitter handles (Follows) and Google+ (Circles) pages compiles to over 55 million.
- Linsanity: There were more than 3.1 million tweets about Linsanity or Jeremy Lin – more than the sum of all tweets to or from the official handles of all Eastern Conference teams (2.8 million)
- NBA Mentions: “NBA” was mentioned more than 18.6 million times on Twitter throughout the season. More than 3x that of the NHL or the MLB
- Kardashian Effect: Lamar Odom who was actually released by the Dallas Mavericks on April 9th due to his poor play and inconsistency, managed to find himself in the power rankings of most followed players in the NBA. This is possibly due to his marriage to reality TV megastar Khloe Kardashian, who has more than 6.7 million followers.
In this simulation Kobe cost the Lakers the championship. If Kobe ever does join Twitter, will he overtake LeBron? And would his following be enough to close the gap to defeat the Heat’s collective following?
*Note all statistics were as of April 26, 2012, the final day of the 2011-2012 NBA Regular Season
*For all twitter data – social media monitoring solution Sysomos was used.
What are your thoughts on the NBA Social Playoffs? What can playoff teams do to advance to the next round? Leave your comments below or tweet us your comments.
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