Social Media and the NBA Playoffs

Social Media and the NBA Playoffs

It’s always a fantastic, entertaining, and dramatic event whenever the NBA playoffs start. Injuries, ejections, heated arguments and fights, controversial calls, game winners at the buzzer, game 7’s, memes for losing and winning teams. It’s close to Spring, the games are on all day, and fans whether they’re teams are in the playoffs or not have a team to support or antagonize. For example, the Cleveland Cavaliers fans on Reddit, are telling Heat fans to “beat the Hawks for them”. On Friday, April 15th, 2022, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the Atlanta Hawks in the Play-In Tournament. That’s an event where NBA Teams from the 7th to 10th seeds from each conference compete for the 8th seed and face off against the 1st seeded team of that conference. Social Media can bring the best and the worst for NBA fans everywhere. Besides memes, there are fans who heckle or harass players. Trash talk is part of the game. However, there have been numerous times fans can take it to an irrational level. One example is during Game 3 of the 2019 NBA Finals. It was the Golden State Warriors facing off against the Toronto Raptors. The Warriors were trying to have a “3-peat” and becoming apart of history of all the NBA Teams who’ve won from over the years. Kevin Durant was injured, and this was during Kawhi Leonard’s only stint in Toronto. During the 4th Quarter, Kyle Lowry quickly ran into the stands going after a loose ball, and a fan shoves him. It was later revealed that the fan was a Warriors investor, Mark Stevens. He was later banned from the arena for 1 year, and fined $500k. Some fans feel entitled to do anything to bother players. At the end of the day, athletes are humans as well. Another example was many fans cheering when Kevin Durant tore his ACL in his first game back from injury in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. They cheered for him after he walked on the court, but it put a bad taste in every other team’s fanbase that was watching. Many fans expressed their concern on social media. A good example that can go well is when fans witness a fantastic play near the end of the game. A good example was today’s game on Sunday, April 17th, 2022. Jayson Tatum from the Boston Celtics made a quick buzzer beating game winner for Boston to be victorious in Game 1 of the first round between the Brooklyn Nets and the Boston Celtics. The fans started showing emojis and overreactions all over on social media on how talented Tatum is. One thing to be grateful for, is always the fact that it’s entertaining with fans of the sport bonding over the playoffs…