Broken Ankles, Sauce Castillo, and Tinder Night: How the NBA Culture Revolves around Social Media

                The National Basketball Association has been around since 1946, drawing in billions of people across the world. Just as the average basketball game has evolved greatly over the years, the average basketball fan has also changed. The NBA is unique compared to many of the other popular sports leagues because the culture of the NBA fan base has integrated perfectly with the current social media and technology culture.

There are few sights that NBA fans enjoy more than great plays. In the earlier days, ESPN may show the replay of an exciting part of a game- a buzzer beater or a great dunk. However, if you didn’t catch the highlights part of the show, you may have missed the play. A fast forward to today tells a completely different story. Now, if a great play happens, it will be impossible for an NBA fan to miss it. When Steph Curry crosses over and makes other players fall down, twitter blows up. The sharability of social media creates a larger audience for anything that could possibly happen during a basketball game. 

Fans can also make jokes about things that even the announcers do not notice. For example, there is a rookie in the NBA named Nik Stauskis. He plays for the Sacramento Kings. During one game, a few fans noticed an odd quirk. When an announcer referred to Nik during a game, the closed captions did not call him "Nik Stauskis", but they instead called him "Sauce Castillo". Soon, people tweeted a picture of the incident. Then, it became viral. Soon enough, Sauce Castillo was a trending topic on twitter. A boatload of memes bombarded the internet. When word got back to Nik, he thought that the whole event was hilarious. Thus, a nickname was borne. The Sacramento Kings are even planning a "Sauce Castillo Night", where they will give away free bottles of hot sauce. The whole event is chronicled in this blog. 

The Sauce Castillo event is a great example of how NBA teams heavily monitor their fans on social media. Teams will often hold fun theme nights to appeal the voice of their fans on social media. This is exactly what the Atlanta Hawks had in mind when they held "Tinder Night". It was an event where the hawks encouraged a younger crowd to go to the game and use tinder to match up with other fans that came to the night. The whole arena was decked out in flowers, special shirts, and happy couples. The event was hugely popular. It was a great way that a team used a technology trend to have a very successful connection with their fans. 

Social media and technology is an integral part to the culture of NBA fans. Often, basketball plays will trend on twitter at a speed that few other things can. The NBA is full of memes, such as Sauce Castillo or even Lance Stephenson blowing in Lebron's ear. Also, the NBA successfully uses social media to interact with their fans. This is a great contrast with other sports leagues, such as the NFL, which has a very strenuous relationship with its fans on social media. The NBA holds events such as Tinder Night, and even lets fans vote on which games they want to be televised. Other sports leagues such as the NFL and MLB are very far from this level of fan and league interaction, mediated by technology. Social media trends go hand and hand with the NBA, and the league does a fantastic job of keeping that way.