2017 Year in Review: Bullets Forever’s most read pieces and largest audiences

We are less than one week from the end of the calendar year. So starting today, let’s revisit some of our top pieces from the 2017 calendar year.

Today, we will share with you the pieces that you read the most from the year that almost was. To help us, we will use the most objective tool to figure that out: website data.

So here we go!

Top 5 most read pieces on BF for 2017

#1. Otto Porter can’t be a max player unless he stops using watermarked photos on Instagram (Jake Whitacre) - One of the biggest stories in the calendar year of 2017 was about Otto Porter’s contract extension. Will he or won’t he get his maximum contract extension? He did, but Jake took issue with some watermarked images that he posted on his personal Instagram account. Getty Images isn’t cheap for average folks like you and me, but it’s worth the investment if you’re Porter!

#2. Wizards fan knocks out Celtics fan in Game 7, causing a bloody mess (Albert Lee) - Another major news story headline of 2017 was the Wizards’ seven game second round playoff series against the Celtics. Tensions were a bit too high between one Wizards fan, who punched a Celtics fan in the face. Blood was shed, which isn’t cool. What’s even less cool is that the Wizards also lost the series on that day in May.

#3. Wizards trade Andrew Nicholson, Marcus Thornton, first round pick to Brooklyn for Bojan Bogdanovic, Chris McCullough (Jake Whitacre) - Trade season is one of the “high times” during the NBA season. Last February, the Wizards pulled the classic “Ernie Grunfeld special” trade where unproductive players and draft picks are traded for other players who could provide a short term boost. The good news about that trade is that Andrew Nicholson’s contract was off the books, but the bad news is that Bogdanovic was a three month rental, McCullough still struggles to get playing time, and the Wizards didn’t have a first round draft pick for the second straight season.

#4. Wizards trade options: Lou Williams is a perfect, but potentially costly fit (Tony East) - Lou Williams is the textbook definition of a WizKiller. He isn’t an All-Star caliber guard, but has a knack for getting points off the bench when they’re needed the most. I think he would have been a good addition if he were acquired, but ... I guess his calling was with the Clippers instead last summer in free agency.

#5. NBA Free Agency: Otto Porter reportedly agrees to four year, $106 million offer sheet with Brooklyn Nets, Wizards intend to match (Jake Whitacre) - The biggest story in the offseason for the Wizards wasn’t the new players they brought in. Rather, it’s that they doubled down on their core players. Yes, Porter signed a max deal with the Nets, who have plenty of cap space to throw at. But there wasn’t any doubt that he wasn’t returning. The only thing to watch however, is that Porter’s contract ends the same year that Bradley Beal’s does.

The Most Read Mystics piece of 2017

Elena Delle Donne’s upcoming marriage gets The Knot’s Wedding nod (Elle Ward) - The biggest story of the 2017 Mystics season was Elena Delle Donne getting traded to D.C. of course. Her arrival and presence also gave us windfalls all around on most Mystics pieces we wrote last summer. Besides Delle Donne’s arrival in Washington, she also got married in the fall. This post focused on the announcement itself, which continued to get consistent page views well into the fall.

We’ll look at some more Mystics content in-depth later in the week as a separate post.

The Most Read FanPost of 2017

The front page, or www.bulletsforever.com proper is the most viewed URL within our domain of course. The second most viewed page is our FanPosts section, where you create your own FanPosts. Some of our best FanPosts are also put on the cover and we have a hub for them right here. But this was the most read FanPost from this year:

Petition to Keep Phil Chenier (Tracy Murray) - NBC Sports Washington (f/k/a Comcast SportsNet Mid Atlantic) announced that the former Bullets star would no longer be the full-time color analyst starting in the 2017-18 season. Before his successor, Kara Lawson was brought on board, we still had a petition by fans to keep him in.

Though the petition didn’t totally change NBC Sports Washington’s mind, Chenier will still do some color analyst work alongside play by play announcer Steve Buckhantz this season. Lawson, who also does work for ESPN, will likely miss some games due to women’s college basketball or even an NBA game like during Christmas. These will likely be the times when Chenier is at the booth next to Buckhantz.

Top Audiences that read Bullets Forever in the United States

Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

We are based in the Washington, D.C. area, so it’s no surprise that the DMV had the most page views. But which state (or federal region) ranked the highest? Virginia had the most page views in 2017, followed by Maryland. Washington, D.C. is a federal region instead of a state, and it was third. After these three regions, the Top 5 states based on website traffic are as follows:

1. California
2. New York
3. Texas
4. Florida
5. Pennsylvania

And here are the Top 5 metropolitan areas after Washington’s, just so you know:

1. New York City
2. Baltimore
3. Los Angeles
4. Bay Area, California
5. Philadelphia

After Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland, our traffic is more or less proportionate to the rest of the United States. Of course, our traffic will lean toward the mid Atlantic as opposed to the heartland, which is like South Dakota and Kansas.

Top Countries that read Bullets Forever

Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images

We’re based in the United States, so it’s no surprise that Americans comprise the vast majority of our readership. We are based in Washington, D.C., so that means the D.C. area makes a significant portion of our readership as mentioned previously.

That said, we have consistent readership from all over the world. Though they don’t make up the majority of our traffic, we’ve had some readership groups from some nations who log on and read our content every day. Here are the Top 5 countries that read our content:

1. Philippines
2. Poland
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. United Kingdom

We’ll get a little more in depth on our non-American readers in another article. We’ll also focus on how readers in Poland, the Czech Republic, France, and Belgium because the Wizards and Mystics have players from these countries.