The cross-influence of culture and the NBA has always been well-pronounced. From Allen Iverson bringing hip-hop to the game with his anti-establishment attitude and style to boot to the social justice movements the players have given support to, the league has been one of the most in-tune with its audience and has taken steps to make the sport an activity not just in exercise, but culture itself.

A big way we start to see this is through the All-Star Game’s fan vote. While it’s generally supposed to be a way for fans to express who they want to see in the game, it’s often left up to how celebrities and media personalities outside the game decide to influence their fans that ends up swinging things like the voting system.

And once again, the Golden State Warriors managed to jump lightyears ahead.

While nothing is more powerful than getting bots to elect an agency’s favorite player as the captain of an All-Star team, K-Pop fans are pretty damn close in how much of an impact they can make. Which is why it was a smart move to make a Warriors fan with global influence an international ambassador for the team.

Enter Kunpimook Bhuwakul, better known by his stage name “BamBam”, a member of the K-Pop boyband Got7. BamBam is a Thai singer/songwriter who, at 24 years old, already has over 9 million followers on Twitter and has been involved in the media/advertising business, using his platform to endorse products in his home country of Thailand.

While it’s a safe guess to say most NBA fans aren’t too familiar with K-Pop and its stars (similarly to how most K-Pop fans on the other side of the world probably don’t know or talk much about the NBA outside of the guys like Steph Curry or LeBron James), the Warriors announced that after he had helped players like Steph get their vote counts up for the All-Star voting, BamBam would become the official global ambassador to the team, helping to promote the Warriors internationally.

Oh, and it’s very likely that through the help of his fans, he turned Andrew Wiggins into an NBA All-Star starter:

Wiggins should be an All-Star this year. But because he plays with two excellent players, his leap likely wouldn’t have been recognized if he didn’t make the starting line-up. Two-Way Wiggs is, as BamBam said above, one of the best two-way players in the NBA. He should get that recognition, and if it takes him getting an ASG starter spot over Devin Booker for him to get it, then so be it.

Warriors fans and K-Pop fans across Twitter united in what was one of the most unexpected phenoms we’ve ever seen on social media, introducing a cultural exchange that was supportive of each other’s values, and educational in a lot of ways as people were able to not just learn about, but embrace the unfamiliar to them.

(Photo credit: NBAE / Getty Images)