#NBAAll-StarWeekend2016

Emojis are essential to any text, tweet, snap, and caption. These fun faces are more than just an embellishment on how happy your are to talk to your BFF. Emojis have come a long way from the generic smiley face.  Over the past few years we have seen a few developments with skin color, relationships, and the long awaited middle finger emoji. Apple, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter have all improved or added emojis for their users. Twitter began to create a special emoji when you use specific hashtags. This started with the 2014 World cup when they introduced "hashflags":

Majors brands and events have been receiving this extra special something for recently like Coca Cola, Toyota, Star Wars, and the American Music Awards. These hashtags have been used for major sporting events as well including the College Football Playoff Championship and Super Bowl 50. The 2016 NBA All-Star Weekend is the newest sporting event to get in on the action. There are 32 new hashtag emojis for this event for players and basketball fans (including myself) are loving it. Check out all 32 below:

Whether or not you are a huge basketball fan if you know who these players are these emojis sum them up in an emoji perfectly! I have to admit when I saw these I laughed out loud because these are so spot on. The official 2016 NBA All-Star twitter account used them all throughout the weekend. 

I'm sure that this will have a positive impact on the impressions and mentions the NBA and All-star weekend would normally receive. Even if the impact is not that large of a difference it is so much more fun to tweet about these games now. I don't know if this is temporary or forever, but I sure hope these are here to stay!