Jan 25, 2015; Cleveland, OH, USA; Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant (35) defends Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James (23) in the second quarter at Quicken Loans Arena. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports
The NBA season tips off
tonight, so we looked into
MVPindex data to catch a glimpse of the league on social media. The most used platform among NBA athletes by far is Twitter, with 86% of players having an account. This is followed closely by Facebook and Instagram with 59% and 57% of athletes adopting the social media platforms respectively.
It should shock exactly no one that LeBron James tops the list of NBA athletes on social media, but what is interesting is Jeremy Lin’s second place ranking with an MVPindex score of .969. Lin’s large audience and ability to engage them with compelling, and often humorous content on Facebook and YouTube gives him a leg up on the competition.
Two players looking to come back from injury and return to their dominant form are Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant, coming in at numbers 3 and 4 respectively on MVPindex’s Top 5 NBA Players on Social Media list. Bryant is the 2nd most liked active player on Facebook with more than 20 million page likes, and carries the 3rd most Twitter followers among active NBA players with 8 million (Shaq comes in 3rd overall with 11 million). Bryant was also the 3rd most mentioned in the NBA for the past 7 days behind Lamar Odom and LeBron James.
Wrapping up the MVPindex list of top players is the reigning MVP, Stephan Curry. Curry is the 4th most followed NBA player on Instagram, and has the most popular post on the platform in the past month. The post shows Curry’s wife and famous daughter Riley welcoming his newest child, daughter Ryan to the world.
