Over at Nate Silver’s 538 blog — I’m no Paul Krugman, I love it — they went into Google trends and looked up which teams have been searched the most on the world’s largest search engine over the last decade.
The results? Pretty much what you’d expect.
This is not a surprise, maybe only how much the Lakers lead by. However, for most of the last decade the Lakers have been a powerhouse team. The 538 story notes if you just use this year’s data the down Lakers fall way behind the Heat.
The NBA remains a star driven league for most fans, especially the more casual ones. They want to see Kobe Bryant and LeBron James right now. It’s not shocking. If those stars are in a large market and the team does well, the popularity goes up exponentially. This all just really verifies what we already knew about the league.
Hat tip to Lang at NBA.com’s All Ball blog, who I’m sure is Googled more than any other NBA journalist.
