The Golden State Warriors are but one of 30 NBA teams. Yet they get far more than one-thirtieth the attention of NBA fans.
One gauge: visits during the regular season to ESPN.com’s online hubs for individual games, which include recaps, box scores and play-by-plays. Of the games for which data is available,27 22 of the 23 with the most unique visitors included the Warriors. (The one game that didn’t involve the Warriors, Kobe Bryant’s last game, ranked second.)
The online hubs for Warriors games averaged more than three times the unique visitors, visits, page views and total minutes that an average NBA game hub received. The Cavs, Lakers, Spurs and Thunder were next in game-page popularity, way behind the Warriors.
| RELATIVE TO AVERAGE | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | UNIQUE VISITORS | VISITS | PAGE VIEWS | TOTAL MINUTES | AVG. TIME SPENT ON PAGE |
| Golden State Warriors | +223% | +239% | +227% | +277% | +39% |
| Cleveland Cavaliers | +53 | +54 | +49 | +49 | +9 |
| Los Angeles Lakers | +48 | +49 | +36 | +35 | +12 |
| San Antonio Spurs | +44 | +46 | +39 | +51 | +12 |
| Oklahoma City Thunder | +40 | +43 | +38 | +42 | +5 |
| Portland Trail Blazers | +5 | +6 | +6 | +11 | +14 |
| Miami Heat | +5 | +5 | +10 | +10 | +4 |
| Utah Jazz | 0 | 0 | +4 | +8 | +6 |
| Boston Celtics | -2 | -2 | -3 | -4 | +2 |
| Los Angeles Clippers | -3 | -1 | -6 | 0 | +18 |
| Chicago Bulls | -6 | -7 | -8 | -14 | -6 |
| New York Knicks | -6 | -8 | -12 | -17 | -4 |
| Minnesota Timberwolves | -7 | -9 | -6 | -11 | -10 |
| Dallas Mavericks | -8 | -8 | -5 | -4 | +5 |
| Houston Rockets | -9 | -11 | -8 | -12 | -3 |
| Memphis Grizzlies | -12 | -12 | -10 | -11 | -4 |
| Charlotte Hornets | -18 | -20 | -17 | -25 | -6 |
| Atlanta Hawks | -19 | -19 | -16 | -16 | 0 |
| Orlando Magic | -20 | -21 | -19 | -23 | -11 |
| Detroit Pistons | -21 | -23 | -24 | -31 | -12 |
| Washington Wizards | -22 | -23 | -24 | -27 | -6 |
| New Orleans Pelicans | -23 | -25 | -25 | -31 | -10 |
| Toronto Raptors | -26 | -27 | -23 | -27 | -5 |
| Indiana Pacers | -26 | -28 | -24 | -31 | -9 |
| Sacramento Kings | -30 | -31 | -27 | -30 | 0 |
| Philadelphia 76ers | -31 | -33 | -31 | -38 | -15 |
| Milwaukee Bucks | -33 | -35 | -31 | -37 | -12 |
| Brooklyn Nets | -34 | -36 | -34 | -38 | -8 |
| Phoenix Suns | -34 | -35 | -31 | -32 | +2 |
| Denver Nuggets | -36 | -38 | -34 | -39 | -6 |
On days they played, a Warriors game boosted minutes spent on all of ESPN.com’s game hubs by four times more than the typical game. And the Warriors’ appeal spilled over into the days after they played, too, as games that started at 7:30 p.m. out West went past midnight in time zones farther east and as fans woke up to check how many threes Steph hit or whether Draymond got a triple-double. The day after the Warriors played a game, they boosted overall visitors to NBA game hubs on ESPN.com by an amount four times greater than the average game played that same day.28
Viewers also tuned in to see the Warriors play live online in far greater numbers than for most other teams. Of the 20 most-watched games on ESPN’s live streams this season, 13 were Warriors games (Bryant’s finale was No. 1) — though the selection bias of there being an awful lot of Warriors games available for viewers to stream surely skewed the rankings. Demand to see the Warriors or Bryant in person was high, too: Ticket prices for Lakers and Warriors games have been high all season and spiked for their finales Wednesday.
| DATE | WINNERS | LOSERS | TOTAL TIME VIEWED (RELATIVE TO MAX OF 100) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/13/16 | LA Lakers | Utah | 100 | |
| 4/13/16 | Golden State | Memphis | 66 | |
| 11/4/15 | Golden State | LA Clippers | 62 | |
| 2/6/16 | Golden State | Oklahoma City | 53 | |
| 2/27/16 | Golden State | Oklahoma City | 53 | |
| 10/28/15 | Minnesota | LA Lakers | 48 | |
| 12/25/15 | Golden State | Cleveland | 43 | |
| 3/19/16 | San Antonio | Golden State | 43 | |
| 4/1/16 | Boston | Golden State | 42 | |
| 11/4/15 | Cleveland | New York | 40 | |
| 11/20/15 | Golden State | Chicago | 40 | |
| 10/28/15 | Oklahoma City | San Antonio | 37 | |
| 4/9/16 | Golden State | Memphis | 35 | |
| 1/20/16 | Golden State | Chicago | 33 | |
| 3/23/16 | Golden State | LA Clippers | 32 | |
| 2/3/16 | Golden State | Washington | 31 | |
| 11/11/15 | Dallas | LA Clippers | 31 | |
| 10/30/15 | Cleveland | Miami | 30 | |
| 4/13/16 | Boston | Miami | 30 | |
| 1/27/16 | Golden State | Dallas | 29 |
Some of this is self-fulfilling. ESPN.com — and much of the rest of the sports media, including us — has covered the Warriors furiously all season. A game featured at the top of the home page on NBA game nights naturally will get a lot of traffic, and often that was a Warriors game. But much of the outsize interest in the Warriors is organic: The Warriors were the most searched team on Google last year. And it’s not hard to understand why people would want to watch, read about or track the stats of the defending champs who set the wins record and feature, in Curry, the MVP and revolution.
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CORRECTION (April 18, 6:35 p.m.): An earlier version of a table in this article showed the incorrect winner for the Golden State-Oklahoma City game on Feb. 27. Golden State won, not Oklahoma City.