Skip to main content

Twitter gives NBA fans a reason to celebrate with new team emojis

best fantasy basketball apps bball header and featured
yobro10/123RF
No sports-related tweet is complete without an emoji, or three. What’s even better is when your team gets its very own personalized Twitter icon. That’s exactly what the NBA unveiled today for every single team in the league, all of which will be in play throughout the entirety of the 2016-17 season.

Each icon corresponds with a team’s logo and can be activated by entering the team’s official hashtag. The latter include an assortment of phrases — from the conventional (#BullsNation for the Chicago Bulls) to the inventive (#OwnThe Future for the Milwaukee Bucks) — that will be familiar to fans, but may leave everyone else puzzled.

Recommended Videos

#NBA fans…. Use your team's hashtag to unlock their emoji! pic.twitter.com/FTzCjEQjS9

— NBA (@NBA) October 24, 2016

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Considering Twitter reportedly charges brands up to a million dollars for a single emoji during major events, it’s rather generously been doling them out to national sports leagues. Last month, the social platform assigned a hashtag-activated emoji to all 32 NFL teams just in time for its Thursday Night Football live-streams.

To ensure basketball fans don’t feel left out, Twitter is set to broadcast two original NBA live shows, beginning on Tuesday with The Starters — described as a live podcast made exclusively for the platform. Another, as yet undisclosed, NBA Twitter show is also reportedly in the works, meaning those emojis will be put to good use outside of live games. The Starters is also available to those without a Twitter account, and can be streamed on the service’s live-streaming apps for Xbox One, Apple TV, and Fire TV.

Twitter previously teamed up with the NBA for a set of emojis dedicated to every All-Star 2016 starter and reserve player. It also tweeted out a series of 360 videos, created in partnership with Samsung, behind-the-scenes from the NBA Finals in June. The 2016-17 NBA season commences on Tuesday.

Saqib Shah
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Saqib Shah is a Twitter addict and film fan with an obsessive interest in pop culture trends. In his spare time he can be…
I paid Meta to ‘verify’ me — here’s what actually happened
An Instagram profile on an iPhone.

In the fall of 2023 I decided to do a little experiment in the height of the “blue check” hysteria. Twitter had shifted from verifying accounts based (more or less) on merit or importance and instead would let users pay for a blue checkmark. That obviously went (and still goes) badly. Meanwhile, Meta opened its own verification service earlier in the year, called Meta Verified.

Mostly aimed at “creators,” Meta Verified costs $15 a month and helps you “establish your account authenticity and help[s] your community know it’s the real us with a verified badge." It also gives you “proactive account protection” to help fight impersonation by (in part) requiring you to use two-factor authentication. You’ll also get direct account support “from a real person,” and exclusive features like stickers and stars.

Read more
Here’s how to delete your YouTube account on any device
How to delete your YouTube account

Wanting to get out of the YouTube business? If you want to delete your YouTube account, all you need to do is go to your YouTube Studio page, go to the Advanced Settings, and follow the section that will guide you to permanently delete your account. If you need help with these steps, or want to do so on a platform that isn't your computer, you can follow the steps below.

Note that the following steps will delete your YouTube channel, not your associated Google account.

Read more
How to download Instagram photos for free
Instagram app running on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Instagram is amazing, and many of us use it as a record of our lives — uploading the best bits of our trips, adventures, and notable moments. But sometimes you can lose the original files of those moments, leaving the Instagram copy as the only available one . While you may be happy to leave it up there, it's a lot more convenient to have another version of it downloaded onto your phone or computer. While downloading directly from Instagram can be tricky, there are ways around it. Here are a few easy ways to download Instagram photos.

Read more