The Cleveland Cavaliers are champions of the NBA world. Lebron James brought a title home. Cleveland won their first major sports title since the 1960s. What does this have to do with technology?
The 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers are mostly made up of Millennials (young adults born between 1981-1999). Many Cavalier fans are Millennials. This means great social media moments, especially during the celebration. We weren’t disappointed. Lebron took several selfies with fans and his family. Tweets flowed. Cleveland star Kevin Love tweeted, “Long live the king” (referring to king James). The Cavaliers front office tweeted, “First of 33 teams to ever overcome a 3-1 deficit.” Snapchat photos show the Cavaliers passing the NBA trophy around on the flight home. Celebrities joined the social media fun. Cleveland legend Drew Carey showed off a $5,000 Las Vegas betting ticket. Under the picture he said, “Let’s go Cavs!” Basketball legend Magic Johnson congratulated James with a tweet. He congratulated James for bring a world title to his home state of Ohio (this is big of Johnson. He’s a Michigan resident. Do you know the rivalry between these two states?!) President Obama tweeted his congratulations to the Cavaliers. Even space celebrated. NASA sent out pictures taken from outer space. This picture showed Cleveland lit up in celebration the night they won the championship.
Sports and social media are going hand in hand. We should expect this in the future. Imagine being a kid in the stands that night. Imagine you take a selfie with Lebron, Kevin Love, and your other NBA heroes. You have a story to tell your friends. You have a story to tell future generations. You have pictures to back it. Imagine being on that team. You get countless congratulations from people you’ll probably never meet. We complain about the evil social media can cause. Unfortunately, there is a lot of evil social media can cause. But there’s a lot of good social media causes. This celebration is a good cause. This is how social media should be. Who will win it all in 2017?