It may feel like Cleveland is its own island, like, as the T-shirt says, it’s us against the world. However, at least according to a new set of Twitter data, more states are rooting for the Cleveland Cavaliers to do well in the NBA Conference Finals than any of the other three teams (see map above).

The sports betting site Sportsbetting.ag found the information by geotagging more than 500,000 tweets, which looked for each team’s primary fan hashtags.

Here’s that breakdown of those hashtags:
Cavs
#whateverittakes
#defendtheland
#believeland
#gocavs

Celtics
#cusrise
#celticpride
#celts
#goceltics

Rockets
#runasone
#gorockets
#rednation
#htownpride

Warriors
#dubnation
#strengthinnumbers
#gowarriors
#warriorsground

According to the data, the Cavs garnered a little more than 241,000 positive tweets during the recent NBA Conference Finals, much larger than the Warriors’ near-76,000 overall. But it’s still somewhat surprising, at least to us at Scene, that more states aren’t all in on the Warriors, because who doesn’t like a winner?

Ryan Taylor, a promotions associate for the sports betting site (who lives in Indiana and claims he even rooted for the Cavs during the Pacers series), tells Scene that the data can be attributed 100 perfect to the “LeBron James effect.”

“The Warriors have become ‘villains’ of sorts since Kevin Durant joined their team, as many sports fans feel they basically created an unstoppable all-star team and made the NBA far less competitive,” Taylor says. “A couple years ago [this data] would have showed a different story.”

As far as the rest of the map is concerned, it makes sense that the Celtics have all the love in the Northeast, but who knows what the team’s attraction is for  Alaska, North Dakota and Nebraska. Meanwhile Rockets loyalty is only found in the state of Texas. Sorry, James Harden. 

This article appears in May 16-22, 2018.

7 replies on “More Americans Are Rooting For the Cavs Than You Think, According to Twitter Data”

  1. The Deep South rooting for a Yankee team from Ahia? And not one from Texas?
    Now THAT is a big surprise!

  2. Ohio is closer to the south than progressive Boston or the Bay Area… That’s for sure.

  3. Ohio is flyover country to the elites in Boston or SF.–but so is the rest of the country…hence the urge to root for a Midwestern team. A Warriors-Celtics matchup would totally suck for the 99 per cent.

  4. No, they’re rooting against a Boston sports team. They couldn’t care any less about the Cavs.

  5. Before I moved to Cleveland, I loved the Red Sox, because they were just like my poor bedraggled Cubs. I even used to call them the Red Cubs. They choked like the Cubs, too.

    Once their teams began winning consistently, Boston fans became more obnoxious and arrogant with every championship. And then Boston began winning titles in all four major sports, year after year. Boston’s fan base got drunk on victory, and became assoholics.

    I hate them, and all their teams, even more than the fans and teams from New York.

  6. I hate these national or from some other region who ALWAYS tries to group CT in with Boston! That is how I know these are false stats! CT is in the NY/NJ/CT Tri-state area and no where near Boston! They did this during the NFL playoffs too. CT cheers for NY teams and no part of CT is in the Boston region!!!!!

  7. Sportscasters on network and cable broadcasts routinely favor whoever is playing any team from Cleveland. They seem to do this no matter what sport is being televised. It happens whenever the Cavs are on national TV…and during nationally televised Tribe games as well.

    But the worst offenders are the shmucks who cover the NFL. They seem pissed at having to do play-by-play of a Browns game, and they favor the opposition, no matter what city the game is in or what team the Browns are facing. Especially the jamokes on CBS. They HATE Cleveland!

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