Twitter reacts to NBA’s ban of Donald Sterling

Wednesday, 30 April 2014

In a live press conference today, @NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced a lifetime NBA ban on Los Angeles Clippers’ (@LAClippers) owner Donald Sterling in response to racist comments the league says he made in a recorded conversation.

When news breaks live, Twitter is the place where we go to share our own reactions to the news and see what others have to say about the event, in real time. Today’s press conference was no exception. During the announcement, the conversation and reaction flowed on Twitter from sports reporters and news organizations, current and former players, team owners, avid fans and observers.

From the scheduled start of the live press conference at 2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m. ET, there were over 1.3 million Tweets sent about the rapidly-unfolding story. The TPM peak of 37,960 came as Twitter reacted in the minutes after Commissioner Silver announced the lifetime ban of Donald Sterling from the game.

And this is how the news spread around the world, in this map of reaction in the moments after the ban was announced (click image to see it animate):

Map of Tweets around the NBA press conferenceClick image to interact with the map 

Before, during and after the press conference, Twitter revealed an overwhelmingly positive response to the NBA decision. Here’s a custom timeline highlighting some of the reaction: