Basketball and the Internet, it seems, are a match made in digital heaven and the NBA recently continued its social media dominance by reaching a major YouTube milestone: 1 billion total video views on its official channel.
To celebrate its massive achievement, the league put together the video mashup above to show off some of its most viral, Internetty moments since becoming the first sports league to launch its own channel in 2007. There's LeBron James and Shaq in an All-Star dance-off, Brian Scalabrine explaining his "White Mamba" nickname, Dwight Howard yelling unintelligibly with his mouth full, and an assortment of trick shots, slams and buzzer-beaters. The mashup is embedded above and worth two minutes and 46 seconds of your time.
So why is the NBA so popular on YouTube? Smart marketing and great content. High-flying dunks are among the greatest highlights the sports universe is capable of producing, and basketball allows its players' personalities to shine through like few other sports.
The NBA announced a plan last November to stream more than 350 of its minor league games live on YouTube, but is socially dominant on other platforms too. It claims more than 325 million combined likes and followers for official player, team and league pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Chinese networks Sina Weibo and Tencent. In May, the NBA became the first sports league to reach 5 million Twitter followers, and now has more than 6.3 million.
Which NBA videos have been the biggest hits on YouTube over the past five years? Funny you should ask! Here's a countdown of the 10 most popular:
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