One had a long shot that led to a big win, the other was a big shot whose win was a long time coming. So who had the bigger weekend on Twitter? Reigning NBA MVP Steph Curry, who probably sealed another award with his 38-foot, game-winning shot Saturday night, or Leonardo DiCaprio, who finally broke his six-nomination Oscar losing streak with his first Best Actor award.
A look at Twitter data compiled by Nielsen and analyzed by Canvs, which measures emotional reactions in TV-related posts parsed by Nielsen, suggests the two stars made a lot of fans very happy on a weekend filled with big moments.
To some extent, it’s not even fair to compare the two. Curry’s team, the defending league champs, were playing a mid-season game on a Saturday night between teams from the Bay Area and small-market Oklahoma City. Such games typically draw online attention only from a hardy band of hard-core fans, fellow players and journalists. For comparison, the two other NBA games televised Saturday generated less than 8,400 reactions (Boston vs. Miami) and less than 5,700 reactions (Portland vs. Chicago).
Its about time #Leo
— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) February 29, 2016
The Oscars, by contrast, are annually one of the most closely watched events on TV, and now on social media. This year, despite the lowest ratings since 2008, the event still generated more than 7.2 million tweets, including more than 2.4 million with an emotional reaction. And of those Oscar tweets with a reaction, roughly 30 percent were about DiCaprio finally winning after six nominations and a celebrated career stretching back to his childhood. But Curry is still in this contest, like he and his team have been all season (they lead the NBA with a 53-5 record). The Warriors trailed by double digits late in regulation before tying the game in the last several seconds to force overtime. Then, as the teams looked headed for a second overtime, Curry pulled up and swished a slightly preposterous jump shot from close to the mid-court line, winning the game, tying a league record for three-point shots in a game and sending Twitter abuzz.
All told, the game sparked more than 1 million Twitter posts, including more than 276,000 with an emotional reaction. More than 47 percent of the tweets included some variant of Curry’s name. And 38 percent of the posts expressed some variant of “crazy” or “ridiculous,” a heartfelt expression of the unlikely nature of that game-winning shot. Now that’s a big score, and a big weekend.
Steph curry is God. I’m done.
— Chris Baer (@CBaer20) February 28, 2016
.@StephenCurry30 has a chance to be the greatest player we’ve ever seen, if he plays at this level for the next 4-5yrs!
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) February 28, 2016
This was a guest post by Canvs.