Brief Social Conversation Analysis: Mavs vs. Heat

I did not watch the NBA finals this year – live sports is the one area that I miss out on by not having a TV – but I did watch social conversation as my friends hated on Bron Bron. I don’t have a real opinion either way. I used to like Lebron and I thought it was fascinating how fast he turned the Cavs into a title contender. But once he started playing on the Heat I couldn’t watch because I find Chris Bosh hard to look at. Plus, I think the purchased talent such as the Heat and Celtics cheapens the thrill of the sport. This is generally, one of the reasons that I like college sports more than professional sports – you only have one Alma Mater, Cam Newton aside.

I have done a brief unscientific analysis of Twitter conversation. Mainly I am interested in seeing who people are rooting for – the Heat or Mavs. My hypothesis is that people  love to hate the Heat. I have broken the analysis down into two pieces. First, conversation of “Go Mavs” (and variants) to “Go Heat” (and variants). This is admittedly simplistic, but shows fan sentiment – if you include “Go Heat” in a Tweet, you are clearly a Heat fan. This will miss a lot of conversation for both teams, but yields results that are representative of overall conversation.

The second analysis shows mentions of the Heat to mentions of the Mavs. Heat conversation includes mentions of Heat players, including nicknames such as Bron Bron. The same is true for the Mavs. The problem with this is that a lot of conversation is just anti-Heat chatter. So if someone sends a Tweet that says “Can I get a binky for baby Bron Bron?” it would be anti-Heat, but would increase Heat conversation overall. And would not mention the Mavs.

Here we go.

Go Mavs vs. Go Heat

Generally what we see here is that prior to the Finals, there were more Heat fans than Mavs fans. The first time that we see the Go Mavs conversation overtake the Go Heat convo, it was the night that the Heat beat Chicago, meaning that the world knew that the Mavs were the last defense against a Heat championship. This, combined with overall higher conversation for the Mavs between that point and the end of the playoffs, indicates that the world was generally rooting for the Mavs over the Heat.

Mavs total conversation vs. Heat total conversation

This graph, as mentioned earlier, just compares total conversation around the Heat vs. Mavs. Note that these sample sets are not mutually exclusive. So this shows what people are most interested in – the Heat or the Mavs (and their associated players) – whether good or bad. So Heat conversation is “Go Heat” or “Heat, burn in hell.” What we see in the chart below is that most people talking about the game today were talking about the Heat, not about the Mavs, even though we see in the chart above that there are many more Mavs fans than Heat fan talking on Twitter. This means that we have a lot of anti-Heat conversation filling in the logical gaps in the data.

An interesting insight into the human psyche – see that first peak in conversation? Not where the game started, but where the 2nd-quarter scuffle broke out. Ah, how we love conflict.