PURPOSE
As a sports fan, I was taken by surprise when I heard that Kobe Bryant had passed away. For the next few days, all I saw on social media and television were tributes to the basketball star. Everyone from celebrities to ordinary people had something to say about his career. After talking with my friends, we concluded that Kobe Bryant’s death might be the biggest one that we have experienced in our lives. This inspired me to do a sentiment analysis on Twitter to see what people were saying about Kobe.
I saw a lot of posts on social media after he passed away and while the large majority seemed very positive, there were a few people who mentioned some of his character flaws. My goal is to see what people thought about Bryant and his legacy based on their tweets from different hashtags. His life and career did have some controversy, so I was interested in seeing if that had any effect on how people viewed him.
I am also hoping to learn some new methods for coding so that I could conduct similar projects in the future. Twitter offers an enormous amount of data for companies and organizations, so learning how to access and use that data now will give me practice and a baseline to do a quick little project like this in the future with trending topics.
Exigency
The topic of Kobe Bryant and his legacy is important to investigate right now because he passed away almost two months ago, and at the time, his death shocked the world. Bryant had become synonymous with the game of basketball, despite controversy early in his career. As a sports fan, I felt directly impacted, and as the days and weeks went on, the sport seemed to stop and mourn his passing.
Understanding Bryant’s legacy is timely because this August he will be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame. It makes sense to research this topic now to understand how people felt about his life because it did not come without conflict.
Bryant went straight from high school to playing professional basketball, while most athletes attended some college before turning pro. Some former players, coaches and fans viewed Bryant as arrogant early on in his career. However, the biggest influence that taints his All-Star legacy was a 2004 rape accusation. Despite the charges being dropped after a settlement, many people were upset that Kobe was able to walk away virtually unharmed from the case and go back to playing basketball as though everything was normal.
Kobe went on to become one of the best basketball players in NBA history over the course of his 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers. He ranks fourth in all-time scoring with 33,643 points, was an All-Star in 18 seasons and won five NBA Championships.
Following his death, his basketball career was talked about, and people shared their favorite memories of Bryant, but one ESPN reporter shifted the narrative. Elle Duncan shared a small anecdote of the time she met Kobe.
I asked him for advice on raising girls, seeing as though he quite famously had three at the time and he said, “just be grateful that you have been given that gift because girls are amazing.”
He said his wife really wanted to try again for a boy but was jokingly concerned they might have another girl, to which I responded, "four girls, what would you think?"
Without hesitation, he responded. “I would have five more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad.”
Over the next week, the conversation about Bryant shifted from him as a basketball player to a father, an advocate for women in sports and most famously, a Girl Dad.
My goal with this project is to see and understand how people reflected upon the career of Kobe Bryant and the man he was on and off the court.