NBA Social Rankings: Who Won The Week?
Welcome back to The Crossover’s weekly social media power rankings, where we determine who won the week off the court. After the 13th week of the NBA season—one that saw plenty of fallout from the release of All-Star starters—there’s a familiar name atop the rankings, but plenty of fresh faces and old friends. We’ll rank performances from best to worst. Here’s how the week shook out:
1. Joel Embiid
Another week, another haymaker for Embiid. He began by pulling in All-Star votes with a Triple H-inspired entrance to the 76ers' game against the Hornets.
He followed that up by changing his Twitter avi to liken T.J. McConnell to Michael Jordan.
Then, he called Milwaukee (or at least the BMO Harris Bradley Center) a “s---hole.”
He capped that off by drinking a two-liter Shirley Temple on Instagram live at 1:15 a.m. ET on a game night… then going out and dropping 26 and nine in 27 minutes in a win over the Blazers.
He was also a big winner this week for finishing third in fan voting among Eastern frontcourt players with over 922,000 votes. It would have made him a starter, if not for new rules which factor in player and media votes.
All in all, a ho-hum week for the social media machine.
2. Jahlil Okafor’s father
When a Sixers blogger is disgruntled over your son starting, you fire back. And oh my goodness, did Jahlil Okafor’s father fire back.
3. Dirk Nowitzki
It’s sort of sad seeing Dirk try to get any lift out of his old legs these days, but his self-awareness makes it easy to cope. The seven-footer actually dunked this week, something that surprised him very much.
4. Zaza Pachulia
Nearly as good as Dirk’s tweet was Zaza’s zinger. Too bad he didn’t make the All-Star Game starting lineup.
5. Enes Kanter
Not many tweets were better than this one from Kanter, which flamed All-Star voters.
6. James Harden
Very cool of James to do this, but what is a 100-year-old woman going to do with a basketball?
7. Ben Golliver
This is perhaps the greatest basketball tweet I’ve seen in years.
8. Tim Duncan
[youtube:https://youtu.be/-9N7QV7jAWY]
A boring commercial for a boring cereal featuring a boring player. It’s wonderful.
9. Cleveland Kavaliers
They stole the Korver Kounter right from the Hawks.
10. Shaq
This was very good content.
