NBA Reddit Comment Volume by Wins and Losses
How does each NBA fan base react (in terms of comment volume) following wins and losses? Keep your salt at home and come see why many players don't touch social media anymore.
[NOTE] Originally posted to reddit.com/r/nba. Posting here for posterity and to build my brand 😎 and to update with some final graphs following the Kawhi Kraziness
First Post - All-Star Breakish
Hey /r/nba,
I've been scraping data from each NBA team's subreddit since the beginning of the season. This includes the top posts from the day and all the comments. Now that we're halfway through the season, I have a considerable amount of data and I'm trying to find anything interesting buried in the data. My first attempt is to compare the subreddit activity based on number of comments to the status of a game.
The plots were generated using Chartify, a python plotting library from Spotify. Data was scraped using a python script on my server set to run every morning at 4:00am EST. I'm hoping by 4:00 am all the west coasters are done venting about their teams :P
Let me know what you think and if you have interesting ideas for all this data!
P.S. I have the same data for all the NHL subreddits, so there may be some interesting comparisons coming in the future!
Graphs Following Kawhi 🤖 Watch + Russ 🔁 CP3
The data is still being collected, but I have to stop somewhere so I can revamp the data collection process. I don't think the NBA world is on the edge of their seat waiting for JR Smith to sign with the Shanghai Sharks. However, I will update this if Carmelo Anthony signs with an NBA team.
Without further ado, here are what I'm calling the final graphs for the 2018-2019 Season.
Analysis-ish
When Did My Team's Season End?
In my opinion, the most interesting, or at least the most satisfying and validating part of all these graphs is how you can clearly exactly when a team's season ended. Particularly, my favorites from an analytics stand point are the Rockets graph and Portland's graph. Such an exponential trend in comment volume and then crickets. Though through the lens of a Celtics fan, I love the Lakers and Philly graphs 🤗
Draft Day Excitement
Some fan bases really got all hot and bothered on draft day, and rightfully so in many cases. The Pelicans fan's have every right to be super excited for Zion in the face of a miserable season surrounded by AD controversy.
The trend of draft night comment volume seems to be just one shinning moment for all of the non playoff teams. At least the fans still have hope I guess? Even the Wizards showed some life on draft night!
Funniest among the lottery teams are the Cavs. I'm glad they're excited for (looks at notes) Darius Garland. That was far and away the highlight of their season 🤭
Free Agency Craziness
Cross referencing the Thunder, Lakers, Raptors, and Clippers' charts pinpoints the day Kawhi signed with Clippers and somehow swept Paul George out of OKC. I really hate that this was one of the most exciting moments of the entire season in my opinion. This Woj bomb is up there with Kawhi's Game 7 shot against Philly and Dame ending OKC's season (and both of these moments are captured clearly in the charts!)
Planned Improvements
There are two areas I'd like to make improvements. First, I need to either read up more on the reddit api to better group comments by day. My existing strategy scrapes once a day at ~3:00am Eastern time. This seems like it's missing some West Coast comments and pushing them to the next day, skewing the results slightly. I need a better heurstic to decide what day a comment really belongs to. Perhaps I could make it dependent on some time delta before and after a game.
Further, I want to make the graphs more than pictures. I'd love to let people interact with them and potentially make a note on a data point saying "Oh, this was Kahwi's first game back in Toronto".
Overall, I'm super thrilled with how the project turned out and I'm excited to iterate and make improvements.
Ok. Thanks. Bye.