Explain in X Terms

Submission 4,375

Part of a series on Basketball. [View Related Entries]

About

Explain in Basketball Terms, also Explain in Fortnite Terms and similar inquiries, is an explanation format that involves a certain event being explained by drawing parallels with a prominent sport or a video game. First gaining virality in comment sections under posts about football and basketball, the inquiry format achieved a significant presence on social media in 2022.

Origin

"Explaining in basketball terms" is an instance of metaphorical explanation in which a parallel is drawn before a situation unknown to a user and a situation in a familiar setting, i.e. basketball. The method of "explaining in basketball terms" has been mentioned online since at least the early 2010s, and likely before that (early Twitter^[1]^[2]^[3] mentions shown below, left and right).

"Explaining in basketball terms" began shaping into a meme format in the spring of 2019, as comments requesting to translate football and baseball news started appearing in replies to news posts by ESPN, Bleacher Report and other sports outlets, with other users replying with such explanations. For example, on March 5th, 2019, Twitter^[4] user @NoahK2044 posted such a request, with user @fcknTERRY replying (exchange shown below, left). On March 12th, Twitter^[5] user @RayanRayanouti asked to explain American football news in basketball terms, with user @KeyBloo providing an explanation (exchange shown below, right).

Through 2020 and early 2020s, the trend developed further, first to include requests to explain sports situations in football (both association and American), and later to translate them to Fortnite and other video games.

Spread

Already in mid-2019, the presence of requests to translate situations in other sports to basketball terms became a subject of mockery. For example, on July 14th, 2019, the news account @FadeawayWorld posted a tweet^[6] calling out the requests as "annoying and embarrassing." The tweet (shown below, left) gained 35 likes in three years.

For example, on January 6th, 2020, Twitter^[7] user @Q_yoU_Ayee replied to a request with a tweet that gained over 480 retweets and 7,000 likes in three years (shown below, left). On October 4th, 2021, Twitter^[8] user @smamitex explained the October 2021 Facebook Outage in football terms, with the tweet gaining over 1,100 retweets and 32,500 likes in one year (shown below, center). On July 8th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user @IAMTHESLIME_ commented on the current status of the Elon Musk Twitter Deal by explaining it in Fortnite terms, with the tweet gaining over 90 retweets and 3,000 likes (shown below, right).

The trend reached significant popularity in 2022, as Fortnite and other popular multiplayer games such as Apex Legends were requested for metaphorical explanations.