Basketball is an inherently social sport, which implies that social dynamics within a team may influence the team's performance on the court. As NBA players use social media, it may be possible to study the social structure of a team by examining the relationships that form within social media networks. This paper investigates the relationship between publicly available online social networks and quantitative performance data. It is hypothesized that network centrality measures for an NBA team's network will correlate with measurable performance metrics such as win percentage, points differential and assists per play. The hypothesis is tested using exponential random graph models (ERGM) and investigating correlation between network and performance variables. The results show that there are league-wide trends correlating certain network measures with game performance, and also quantifies the effects of various player attributes on network formation.
