The NBA is working with Google to create a series of Google+ Hangouts during Thursday's NBA Draft. The Hangouts will involve numerous top prospects, including Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Dante Exum, and Aaron Gordon. Fans will be instructed at NBA.com/DraftCrash on how to set up a Hangout and post links and hashtags to them on various social media platforms. The NBA will then select various video chats at random for players to enter and answer questions within minutes of being selected. Various NBA teams have experimented in recent months with Google+ Hangouts, but this is the first time the league itself has utilized the platform. NBA Senior VP/Digital Media Melissa Rosenthal Brenner said, "We've never had a situation where fans can directly interact like this with a player immediately after they've been drafted. We think this is a really compelling way to connect with their journey to the NBA." Other social media activations for the Draft include a return of the Twitter Mirror photo station for a third consecutive year, an active use of Snapchat for behind-the-scenes images and heavy use of Twitter and Facebook, including repurposing of video clips from the Google+ Hangouts. Game 5 of the NBA Finals was the league's most active day on every major social media platform in terms of engagement, including 6.4 million tweets.
