Is the NBA the best example for Social Media Marketing?

All we hear about in social media conferences and articles is how social media can be used  to make money, and how can we integrate it into our marketing strategy! When professionals talk about best practice examples Red Bull, Heineken or Australia are the one mentioned over and over again. I always wonder why the NBA never gets mentionend, as in my optinion their social media strategey is among the best in the world. So hear's my little take on why the NBA can no longer be ignored in this conversation.

Brand	Likes on Facebook	Talking about on Facebook	+1 on Google+	Twitter Followers	Youtube Subscribers	Instagram Followers
NBA	18.540.734	468.121	2.595.289	8.691.093	4.707.579	1.530.000
NFL	8.577.617	351.616	2.183.335	5.346.679		946.000
MLB	4.950.724	181.036	2.154.238	3.290.452	199.063	662.000
Champions League	15.247.312	285.030	35.090	3.042.340	-	6.884 (not sure which one's the official profile)
Euroleague	207.546	10.126	1.326	200.151	62.040	-
Red Bull	41.214.251	372.863	2.704.351	1.232.083	3.041.276	987.000
Heineken	15.873.961	302.001	-	67.625	44.018	3.559

All Data is based on 20.11.2013

Since David Stern took over as NBA-Comissioner in 1985 the NBA has steady grown from a tape-delayed league to one of the most famous sportsleagues worldwide. When Stern started out he realized that TV is the key to success and shifted the leagues attention to this matter. With the establishment of lucrative TV-Deals the NBA grew to a large sportsleague in the 90's. When social media networks started growing the NBA quickly started adjusting to this new tool to promote their product. Social media is probably the most important vice to spread their slogans/products/news all over the world and to reach a completely new audience. When we look at the statistics we see that the NBA is one of the top players in social media marekting. The NBA is spread across diverse social media channels and hence reaches the most people via social media. The NBA shows us pn how to connect with all kinds of groups of interest - Twitter to get the latest News, Facebook and Google + to interact with the user and provide a better viral effect for their daily added videos to their YouTube channel.
With over 4.7 million people following them on YouTube they are among the biggest channels on YouTube. Using it to connect with their audience via emotions. And last but not least they have also the biggest crowd among sportsleagues on Instagram. They provide the whole package.
Nba.com is for now the only bigger sportsleague that has an integrad "pulse" on the site that counts the total number of how often a player gets mentioned and also how often a player is mentioned per hour in order to see who's right now the most talked about player. That's why a lot of the social networks, like Facebook for example choose to test a lot of new developed stuff with the NBA. It is a very good measurement tool to see if something works or not.
So in conclusion I believe you have to give credit where credit is due and that's why I wanted to briefly bring up the NBA as one of the biggest players in the social media marketing nowadays and should be strongly considered when searching for a good example of how to integrate your strategy into the social media networks and really connect with your user.