Playground →
At 0.8972 and 0.8942 respectively, Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers sit so close together at the top of Charlotte's neighbor set that they effectively form a single pole — a Carolina football signal embedded in the audience of an NBA team. That pairing is the structural story here.
The shape is two-peak, with those two neighbors pulling well ahead of the rest. Zion Williamson (0.82) and the Atlanta Falcons (0.82) form a secondary tier, followed by Southern Company (0.79), Greg Olsen (0.79), the Jacksonville Jaguars (0.78), Bojangles (0.78), Clemson Football (0.78), and the New Orleans Pelicans (0.77). Five of the ten neighbors are Sports Teams and three are Athletes — the cluster is overwhelmingly sports-shaped. The two non-sports entries, Southern Company and Bojangles, are regional Carolinas and Southeast brands, suggesting a geographic layer underneath the sports one. No other NBA team appears in the top 10, which means the audience overlap runs more strongly toward NFL franchises and individual football players than toward basketball peers.
The overall picture is an audience defined less by basketball fandom in the abstract and more by a specific regional sports identity — one where football and the Carolinas geography are as central as the NBA itself.
