By Sarah Borchardt
Basketball. Twitter. Humor. Three of my favorite things. Oregonians love lots of things too, one of them being their beloved NBA team, the Portland Trailblazers. The Blazers were just recently eliminated from the NBA finals by the reigning runner-ups, the Golden State Warriors, despite the hatred most native Oregonians have for this team (although I’m a Bay Area native, so go Dubs!). Due to high profile, highly intense players such as Draymond Green, the series got heated at a few times, and what better way to address these situations than by taking to Twitter? I’m fairly certain the Blazers could not think of a better way to handle being swept out of the series by the Warriors than humor, because there was no shortage of it on their profile, and I had no complaints about the entertainment I got from this.
During their short, four game series against the Warriors, the Blazers social media team was able to take their losing streak and turn it into humor. During their game four loss, they even tweeted a photo of the lights in the stadium with the caption “Well, at least the lights looked good”. In addition, they took a lot of tweets both their fans and Internet trolls were posting at them, and responded to them in clever ways. A personal favorite of mine was when the combined two of my favorite things, and tweeted at Kim and Kourtney Kardashian. Kim, while on her own hilarious Twitter rant, tweeted that Kourtney had thrown up in her bed four times on vacation and continued to sleep in it. The Blazers responded to this tweet, “It happens”. So unrelated, but so hilarious and a great way to keep fan’s spirits up during a string of losses.
Personally, I find this kind of social media usage hilarious and it truly makes me love an organization more when I can see its humor shine through in appropriate ways. If one scrolls through the Blazers Twitter feed, you’ll see everything you’d expect to see on a basketball team’s Twitter, but with some random humor mixed in. Who doesn’t love someone who can make fun of themselves? That’s exactly what the Blazers are doing, but on an organizational level. I laugh every time I look through their feed.
This kind of humor didn’t end with the season. Just this week, the Utah Jazz were next up against the Warriors, and suffered a very similar series to that of the Blazers. The Blazers took to Twitter to share their condolences with the Jazz, and tweeted “We feel you, @UtahJazz”. Both the Warriors and the Jazz responded in GIF form, leading to a lot of NBA-wide humor that had me laughing at my computer screen. While I love watching basketball, I might be more excited to see the future Twitter humor that comes with the rest of the NBA Finals than the actual games.
Sorry Blazers fans, but while we watch Golden State inevitably continue winning (please, no more 3-1 jokes!!), I hope to see more and more humor out of these organizations. Bring on the Warrior wins, and bring on the humor. And maybe in the off-season, keep collaborating with reality TV stars on Twitter? I couldn’t get enough.
Speaking of sports Twitter, don’t let this subject go and come hear from this week’s guest speaker, sports reporter and long-time writer for the Cubs, Julie DiCaro! See all you sports and Twitter fans in Allen 140 on Thursday at 5:45!