2017 NBA Finals As Told By Social Media (Twitter)

As the Golden State Warriors currently lead the 2017 NBA Finals with a 3-1 advantage, the Finals have mainly gone according to expectations. Nevertheless, the notion that a Warriors’ Finals’ victory would be a foregone conclusion has incited a little disdain for sectors of the NBA community. Although as mere spectators we’d love to see every athlete at his top form (and I would argue that we generally have during this year), it seems a little unfulfilling, for some, to see the extent to which one team can commandeer the NBA.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver strove to reassure NBA fans last Wednesday that all was copacetic– that league parity exists.

But what do NBA fans think about the championship series and Finals’ MVP candidates, and how they might describe these topics (in a word or two)? I wanted to take a look at how we might discover this.

If you remember this piece on 2016-17 NBA MVP candidates back in April, you’ll recognize this process & some of the following definitions will be a review. Feel free to proceed to the diagrams.

Twitter provides a way that we can analyze tweets to understand trends about groupthink, as well as smaller communities that might be in the minority.

I used the Twitter API for the authorization, searched through 10000s of tweets with R program to find commonalities, and attempted to ascertain how highly or lowly NBA Twitter thinks of this 2017 NBA Finals experience through some Sentiment analysis.
 

Creative Process

2017 NBA Finals Twitter Word Clouds

After receiving authorization through a few commands, I began some data mining with a “searchTwitter()” tool from the twitteR package in RStudio.

I searched for tweets involving the following parameters:

• NBA Finals experience (“NBA+Finals+have+been” in the command) – this should give a glimpse at common words in tweets concerning fans’ expectations & dispositions about the outcomes
• Kevin Durant Finals MVP sentiment (“Durant+Finals+MVP” in command line) – this is designed to inform us of public sentiment regarding Durant’s merit of a Finals MVP award
• Stephen Curry Finals MVP sentiment (“Curry+Finals+MVP” in command line) – this is designed to inform us of public sentiment regarding Curry’s merit of a Finals MVP award
• LeBron James Finals MVP sentiment (“LeBron+Finals+MVP” in command line) – this is designed to inform us of public sentiment regarding LeBron James’s merit of a Finals MVP award

 
After collecting the character strings and placing them in corpuses, I used a function that would remove stop words, whitespace, and punctuation, as those wouldn’t be of much interest when we tried to find the counts of words that were prevalent among NBA fans.

Lastly, with regards to text cleansing, I changed the text to lowercase. That way, “LeBron,” “lebron” and “LEBRON” can all be considered as the same word when we build a word cloud.

When viewing (and attempting to decipher the word cloud visualization), remember that words that are most often found via Twitter analytics will be larger, brighter, and closer to the center of the diagram.

If you also see symbols, it is likely because emojis and other unorthodox characters weren’t compatible with this method of text mining. Additionally, you’ll see several Twitter handles & popular links which points to how prevalent these users & links are when this topic appears on timelines.

Take a look at some of the clouds for our four arrangements. Keeping an eye out for some of the smaller words will give you insight about what NBA Twitter fans think about when rattling off commentary about their 2017 NBA Finals experiences and the Finals’ MVP hopefuls.
 

NBA Finals have been….

• fire – That seems antithetical to what I’d expect
• better – This could be speaking to the extent to which Golden State is better equipped this year or, potentially, the sentiment around the NBA Finals could be extremely positive.
• panther, trailer – NBA Twitter could facetiously propose that the Black Panther trailer has been more intriguing than the actual Finals itself.
• awful, boring – This notion seems to be a direct product of the frequent blowouts and mismatches Golden State creates.
• know, along, dominate – Did Twitter know who would dominate this series all along? This sentiment appears congruous with the “awful” & “boring” perceptions.
• OKC – This disdain is carrying over, though Oklahoma City has been out of the playoffs for nearly two months.

 

Kevin Durant for 2017 Finals MVP….

• congrats, win, wins – Twitter deems his crowning a fait accompli.
• terrific – Undeniable, Kevin Durant has ensured that he wouldn’t simply be “carried” to a championship.
• Russell – Inevitable
• hate, disrespect – Geez.

 

Stephen Curry for 2017 Finals MVP….

• 287, averaging, rpg, ppg, apg – 28.7 is recollective of his scoring average during the first 3 games of the 2017 NBA Finals. He has surely been more proactive than last year.
• might, sniff, nearly – So, is Twitter proposing that thre is a chance that Steph could take the MVP? Could it be retribution or compensation for his first Finals appearance that hadn’t rewarded him with a ring?
• tripledouble – Steph’s game 2 triple double was marvelous. Could it give him greater consideration during the vote?
• deservedly
• unreal – It seems as if Stephen Curry has re-ascended to his pre-2016 Finals stature.

 

LeBron James for 2017 Finals MVP….

• unanimous, goat – As some people believe that a series win would propel him over Jordan, it’s not surprising to see this as a recurrent term floating around while discussing LeBron James.
• mvps – Can LeBron James overcome 2 MVP opponents?
• @getnickwright – Of course.
• rigged – Gamme 4 was certainly wild, wasn’t it? This “rigged” notion has been riveting through cyberspace.
• triple, double, machine – I’m amazing the the frequency of these three terms was comparable; it’s very appropriate.
• soldier
• immersed

Sentiment Analysis

 
 
I wanted to use another way to determine if NBA fans enjoyed the 2017 NBA Finals’ festivities. Like last time, I used the RSentiment package which produces entertaining results because it sometimes lacks the nuance to gather the proper sentiment.

[The following is a repost from 2017 NBA MVP Candidates: Twitter Analytics]  

Six potential sentiment categories exist:

1. Sarcasm
2. Very Negative
3. Negative
4. Neutral
5. Positive
6. Very Positive

There are preset words in the package such that if a tweet has words or phrases that represent the sentiment that the preset words are generally associated with, the sentiment calculation will lean toward one of the six categories. For example, “like” may be a preset word in the RSentiment package; because it is most often associated with positivity, a tweet that uses this in abundance will likely be “positive.” The package is a little quirky, so there will be times when we would like to impose a different classification on the program’s interpretation.

For example: “Allen Iverson was an inefficient player, but he’s still worthy of our respect.” – Sentiment: Neutral
I think that’s fair here.

Here are a few random examples of the tweets that emanate from topics like “NBA Finals have been [good/bad/etc.]”:

got the radio on for GAME 3 but so far this year's NBA Finals have been depressing…

— nickie c. (@timepile) June 8, 2017

Sentiment – Negative

The NBA playoffs/finals have been an absolute joke! I feel like I'm watching someone play 2K on rookie mode ? #NBAFinals

— HipKnoTiC (@HipKnoTiC330) June 8, 2017

Sentiment – Positive

That’s pretty funny, but RSentiment doesn’t differentiate between good jokes and bad, uninteresting jokes, apparently.
 

Honestly I feel like the NBA finals should have been cancelled ?????

— Sunflower Queen? (@MyNameIsKaee_) June 5, 2017

Sentiment – Negative

Also: these NBA Finals have been an ALL TIME LOW for defence. Atrocious. 2004 Pistons would destroy them. Sheed is right.

— daniel kosti? (@daniel_kostic23) June 10, 2017

Sentiment – Very Negative

 
Although this sample size is entirely too small to project upon the entire NBA Twitter community, the reviews have seemed to be quite mixed. Kevin Durant has given some fans the taste of true greatness while ostracizing other fans by limiting the suspense.

Overall (considering both studies, wordcloud & sentiment analysis), it seems reasonable to say that our Twitter studies have brought forth a solid representation of what the 2017 NBA Finals has meant to NBA fans across the web.

Some love how greatness has been amplified and how the 2017 Golden State Warriors seem to elevate themselves as the all-time greatest team, but others would prefer if the series just went seven games. The variety of responses is so vast, as is the community of NBA fans.

The post What Is NBA Twitter Saying About 2017 NBA Finals? appeared first on Def Pen.