Words per Dribble
Reviewing NBA Finals Journalism
Apologies for being a bit late with posts lately. I’ve been traveling around the world (literally) and working on a big piece coming soon. If you know anyone who might be interested in a data-driven look at the emotional state of sports fans, consider sharing this Substack with them. Now, on to this week’s meta review.
We were treated to an excellent NBA Finals, and excellent reporting on those Finals games. From lopsided pre-series predictions (including my own preview and Jalen-based prediction) and shocked reactions to Haliburton’s Game 1 buzzer beater, to concern over Hali’s calf and sadness at the achilles tear, and ultimately the coronation of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as Finals MVP and the celebration of the Thunder’s dominance, media outlets covered it all.
Extensively.
I went through three primary sources for NBA content, The Athletic, The Ringer, and NBA.com, to see just how much digital space they dedicated to June NBA games. It was a lot . . .
The Athletic alone published ~36,000 words over the three day-stretch around Game 1. The most active writing day reached 28,000 words following Game 7.
Just these three sources penned a combined 337,166 words on the NBA Finals. That amounts to a 1,350 page magnum opus, roughly the length of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or the first three-and-a-half Harry Potter books.
Or in basketball terms:
Each Finals team made 37 field goals per game, while the Thunder made five more free throws, 25.1 to the Pacer’s 20.1.1 That's a total of about 834 makes. These three media outlets wrote 404 words for each time the ball went through the hoop.
The Oklahoma City Thunder dribbled the ball around 7,700 times in the seven-game Finals, while the Pacers dribbled 6,800 times.2 These three media outlets wrote 23 words for each time a player bounced the ball.
In a seven-game series there are 20,160 seconds of action. These three media outlets wrote 17 words analyzing each second of game play.
That’s a lot of words. What were they saying?
About 1/3 of the content was positive,3 with the Ringer as the most cheery of the group. They published pieces like “The Unshakable Cool of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander” and “The Unlikely Symmetry of SGA and Haliburton” which starts with a reference to 17th century Flemish painter Cornelis Schut.4
The Athletic published upbeat stories including one on lessons to learn from the Thunder and great video breakdowns of the masters at work. It wasn’t all praise however; they also ran pieces highlighting criticism of the broadcasters, court design, referees, and players.
Unsurprisingly, coverage on the NBA’s own site employed the most neutral language, simply reporting updates and accomplishments.
Coverage gradually turned more towards the negative, though that is partially due to smaller sample sizes in early June. However, there was a noticeable change in tone, as the each team failed to capitalize on series advantages and the concern over Haliburton’s leg grew.
For what it’s worth, Charting Hoops aims to have a more positive outlook on basketball, and it seems like I’ve achieved that so far! 45% of my content is positive, with only 11% deemed negative.
This is actually my most neutral post so far, but as mentioned I’ll have a whole piece on happiness coming soon.
Free throws played a big role in deciding this series.
Interesting to note how much more the Pacers moved the ball. They had around 100 more touches per game than the Thunder in the series.
I analyzed sentiment using the nltk Python package, and categorized each individual sentence as positive (> 0.1 polarity), negative (< -0.1 polarity), or neutral.
Why didn’t I think of this?!