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Bullets Forever is 16th in the NBA Grammar Power Rankings

Bullets Forever commenters averaged 4.37 grammatical errors per 100 words in our comments according to Grammarly, an automated proofreader. That makes us the 16th best fan community based on commenting prose. (Hope that's not an error.)

By Albert Lee Updated

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I hope this is not a grammatical error.
I hope this is not a grammatical error.
Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports

Grammarly, an automated proofreading application recently scanned every 50-word comment on all 30 SB Nation NBA team blogs* going from October 20, 2015 back until they had a sample size of 100 comments. After their application scanned these 100 comments on every blog, the company created a statistic on how many typographical and grammatical errors appeared per each 100 words typed.

On Tuesday, Nick Schwartz of USA Today's For The Win released the rankings on how each blog's community performed. Based on Grammarly's analysis, Washington Wizards fans -- or more specifically Bullets Forever commenters -- averaged 4.37 errors per 100 words typed. That figure is 16th in the NBA, third in the Southeast Division, and eighth in the Eastern Conference. All Eastern Conference blogs' commenters averaged 4.29 errors per 100 words typed, compared with Western Conference blogs' commenters who averaged 4.28 errors per 100 words typed.

Here is a table of the error stats for all of our team sites, sorted from top to bottom.

Rank Team Blog Conference Division Errors per 100 Words
1 Minnesota Timberwolves Canis Hoopus Western Northwest 1.69
2 Denver Nuggets Denver Stiffs Western Northwest 1.97
3 Milwaukee Bucks Brew Hoop Eastern Central 2.43
4 Philadelphia 76ers Liberty Ballers Eastern Atlantic 2.45
5 Memphis Grizzlies Grizzly Bear Blues Western Southwest 2.47
6 Toronto Raptors Raptors HQ Eastern Atlantic 2.47
7 Sacramento Kings Sactown Royalty Western Pacific 2.52
8 San Antonio Spurs Pounding the Rock Western Southwest 2.54
9 Golden State Warriors Golden State of Mind Western Pacific 2.78
10 Los Angeles Lakers Silver Screen and Roll Western Pacific 2.9
11 Orlando Magic Orlando Pinstriped Post Eastern Southeast 3.64
12 New York Knicks Posting and Toasting Eastern Atlantic 3.65
13 Indiana Pacers Indy Cornrows Eastern Central 3.78
14 Houston Rockets The Dream Shake Western Southwest 4.12
15 Charlotte Hornets At the Hive Eastern Southeast 4.33
16 Washington Wizards Bullets Forever Eastern Southeast 4.37
17 Chicago Bulls Blog a Bull Eastern Central 4.43
18 Brooklyn Nets NetsDaily Eastern Atlantic 4.52
19 Boston Celtics Celtics Blog Eastern Atlantic 4.91
20 New Orleans Pelicans The Bird Writes Western Southwest 5.11
21 Cleveland Cavaliers Fear the Sword Eastern Central 5.5
22 Miami Heat Hot Hot Hoops Eastern Southeast 5.51
23 Detroit Pistons Detroit Bad Boys Eastern Central 5.55
24 Los Angeles Clippers Clips Nation Western Pacific 5.64
25 Phoenix Suns Bright Side of the Sun Western Pacific 5.65
26 Dallas Mavericks Mavs Moneyball Western Southwest 5.7
27 Portland Trail Blazers BlazersEdge Western Northwest 5.81
28 Atlanta Hawks Peachtree Hoops Eastern Southeast 6.78
29 Oklahoma City Thunder Welcome to Loud City Western Northwest 7.41
30 Utah Jazz SLC Dunk Western Northwest 7.85

And below are some quick, light-hearted takeaways:

  • Congratulations to the Canis Hoopus community for being the most diligent with prose in the SB Nation NBA blogosphere. The future is certainly bright for the Wolves with Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins leading the way.
  • Three of the four best blogs' commenters in these rankings represent teams who didn't make the 2015 NBA Playoffs. Those sites were Canis Hoopus (1st), Denver Stiffs (2nd), and Liberty Ballers (4th).
  • The commenters at Golden State of Mind represent the Warriors, who won the NBA title this past summer. GSoM was ninth, which is high considering that there could be so many "AHHHHHHHHHHH! LOOK AT HOW STEPH'S DOING AGAIN! AHADFSFASDKFASDFDSJKAFDSAFKL!!!!!"'s when Stephen Curry does Stephen Curry things in their GameThreads. Like their own Andy Liu wrote earlier this week, I have no words to describe how that man is playing right now, but I digress.
  • We talk a lot about the possibility of Thunder forward Kevin Durant signing with his hometown Wizards in 2016 when he is expected to be an unrestricted free agent. The fact that Welcome to Loud City commenters' grammar was the second worst in the NBA isn't exactly making a compelling case for him to stay next season. :P
  • Going back to you guys, Bullets Forever community, I'm pleased to see that we demolished Peachtree Hoops in these rankings. It gives us a little revenge after losing three consecutive heartbreaking losses to the Atlanta Hawks in the playoffs last season. Peachtree Hoops was 28th. Ouch.
  • That said, I'm also a little disappointed that we weren't in the Top 10. I don't find your comments hard to read at all. Like I noted with GSoM'ers possibly going bonkers with Curry -- though I'll admit that I don't go through their GameThreads on a day to day basis -- what do we do when our guys go bonkers? We say things like "B3AL", "HILDR3D" and "HUMPTHREES" in GameThreads that hurt our stats. Possibly a lot. Maybe Canis Hoopus prohibits these ism's to pad their stats? ;)
  • Oh yeah, I didn't forget because we have this "beef" with our friends at Fear the Sword. Congratulations BF community! We outperformed the Cavs fans with our grammar!

With these stats now in the public eye, I've now realized that almost anything -- even grammar -- can be a competitive race.

* Ridiculous Upside, Sonics Rising, and Swish Appeal are also SB Nation NBA blogs but do not directly cover an NBA team.

UPDATE on November 4, 2015: The Grammarly team reached out to us and gave details on how the SB Nation NBA blogs' error stats were calculated:

We began by collecting the first five comments posted under articles on each official NBA team blog on SB Nation until we had gathered a total of 100 comments for each team. Each comment contained at least 50 words and was posted within an average timespan of two months ending October 20, 2015.

Using Grammarly, we identified the errors in the comments, which were then verified and tallied by a team of live proofreaders. For the purposes of this study, we counted only black-and-white mistakes such as misspellings, wrong and missing punctuation, misused or missing words, and subject-verb disagreement. We ignored stylistic variations such as the use of common slang words, team nicknames, serial comma usage, and the use of numerals instead of spelled-out numbers.

Finally, we calculated the average number of mistakes per one hundred words by dividing the total word count of the comments by the total number of mistakes for each team.

TL;dr version: Grammarly only looked at comments that were substantiative by setting a minimum of 50 words before grading it. This helps take away the comments that are one or two words in GameThreads, or any other article on the site. Therefore, it also adds validity to these rankings.