This past March, Mackenzie Forrest, a star basketball player at Denver-area Lakewood High School, was killed due to injuries she suffered in a late-night car crash. She was beloved by her peers and coaches, and her passing was sudden and shocking. Because of all of these factors, our primary goal was to swiftly and publicly support her family, friends and the community -- and ultimately to honor her life.
To recognize "Mac" (as she was affectionately known), and to support her family and the LHS community, we decided to put together a tribute video involving as many members of the Denver Nuggets as possible. Although it was a game day on a road trip, we were able to get nearly all of our players to participate.
Instead of personalizing their messages, we asked each player and coach to simply state, "33 Forever", which was the hashtag that we'd seen used already on Twitter by her friends and family. The hashtag commemorated Mac's high school basketball jersey number, and we felt the repetition of the phrase/hashtag would be powerful.
In addition to our native video tweet (as well as hosting and promoting the video on our website: http://www.nba.com/nuggets/video/33-forever-031516), we hoped to use our influence to get Mac's favorite player in the world, Steph Curry, to also acknowledge her life on his Twitter. Knowing getting arguably the most popular player on the planet to do something like this wasn't likely, we nevertheless planned to reach out to our digital counterparts with the Golden State Warriors to make the ask.
Our tribute video tweet was retweeted 741 times, liked 1,097 times, and ultimately reached 800,895 people. The hashtag #33Forever was trending in Denver, as well. In addition to the compelling data behind its success, our tweet received significant local support and acknowledgement from Mac's high school, hundreds of her friends, as well as a number of media outlets (including the Denver Post and a number of news stations, both digitally and on-air).
In addition to the results of our video tweet, we were beyond thrilled to have successfully influenced Steph Curry to honor Mac's life as well. Later that day, his tweet included #33Forever, and was retweeted 6,285 times, reaching over 9,000,000 people!
As a follow-up, Mac's parents were invited to and honored at a Denver Nuggets game along with a tribute video for their daughter, which played in-arena on the jumbotron.
#33Forever.
