In two days we'll finally tip-off the ultimate (and far too drawn-out) battle for 2014-15 NBA supremacy. And while we're often told that basketball is a "team game," this series will go a long way in ultimately determining the legacies of each team's premier star. On one side you have the greatest player of the generation, on the other you got the current MVP.
Since the postseason began these two have been the center of many of the league's storylines. ESPN's talking about them, we're talking about them, your friends on social media are talking about them. If you're tuned into the league, you're tuned into Steph Curry and LeBron no need for his last name because he's like Cher. While it may seem like both are equally referenced during these playoffs (whether it's a story revolving around LeBron winning the East without Kevin Love, or Steph doing a postgame interview with his daughter) that's not really statistical evidence. Facebook's data team actually sorted through the figures from more than 26 million users who left more than 165 million posts, comments and likes (just on these two teams since the start of the postseason on April 18th). That's what data team members (should) refer to as "a buttload."
So what did the numbers say?
Let's just say if this were an election, Steph Curry would've gone the route of Walter Mondale. That's to be expected. LeBron's the most talked about athlete on the planet, no one's in his universe. His freakin' headband gets more mentions than most superstars. Loved or hated, people can't stop gabbing about him (as you can see):
1.
LeBron grabbed nearly every county east of Nebraska, while Steph was left with roughly two-thirds of California (and the majority of Southwest Alaska for some reason).
Unless things have changed when we were in school, there are 50 states, out of those 19 went unanimously to LeBron. Those regions were as follows: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Hawaii.
Also of note is the fact that the Warriors dispatched (in order): New Orleans, Memphis and Houston, and all three of those areas (perhaps looking ahead?) would still rather talk about LeBron.
Furthermore, Steph Curry's home state (North Carolina) only had two counties giving him love, neither of which was Mecklenburg, the county where both Charlotte and Curry's alma mater (Davidson) reside.
That's not the way to get him to flip coasts come free agency.
Finally the top five most talked about players for each squad were fairly predictable, though we'd guess there were massive drop offs from one to two:
