Reviewing NBA TV’s archives of monumental games, the key games were identified: Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant’s infamous 81-point game against the Toronto Raptors, Former Chicago Bulls guard Nate Robinson performance in the 2013 NBA Playoffs, Game 4, of the first-round series between the Brooklyn Nets and Bulls, and NBA Legend and former Detroit Piston guard Isiah Thomas's 25 points on an ankle injury. The Turner Sports NBA marketing team worked directly with Bryant, Robinson and Thomas to have them takeover @NBATV handle, to interact with fans and fuse the conversation on all platforms, NBA TV, NBA.com and social media. Throughout the re-air of the game, the athletes provided tweets that highlighted the game as well as interacted with fans. Turner’s social marketing team determined the impact that the three events had by analyzing important metrics including overall social commentary surrounding the telecasts, usage of the event-specific hashtags, fan sentiment, and follower growth on @NBATV Twitter handle during the event. In terms of social commentary, the live athlete tweets caused considerably more mentions and social impressions surrounding the live tweeting re-airs of the Hardwood Classic games, when compared to Hardwood Classic games without athlete involvement. . Also, the athlete interaction with fans created twice the social reach than a regular NBA TV regular season game, which typically has higher ratings and overall interest. Outside of regular season NBA games and the documentary on The Dream Team, Kobe’s infamous 81-point game re-air was the most socially engaging telecast in the history of the network.
http://sports.turner.com/Awards/2013/NBA/KobeTweets/
