CLEVELAND, Ohio - While the Cavaliers battle the Golden State Warriors on the court, the Cleveland Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony are duking it out on social media.

Good friends in the artistic realm, the two orchestras have been engaged in a musical war of words on Twitter throughout the NBA Finals. Fans, too, have gotten into the act, using the site as a platform from which to lob humorous taunts back and forth in support of their hometown teams.

A few excerpts from Game 3 Tuesday:

The Cleveland Orchestra threw the first verbal punch, asking whether the Warriors will be able to "Handel" a game in "the court of King James." Absolutely, San Francisco said, noting "We're not Straussed at all."

San Francisco then boasted it would pull ahead for good, predicting The Q would resemble composer John Cage's famously silent "4'33"." Not so fast, retorted Cleveland. "Right now our fans are sounding fortissimo."

The sparring escalated from there. San Francisco took a shot at Cleveland's championship drought, only to have Warriors star Stephen Curry likened to Salieri in comparison to Mozart, i.e., Cleveland's LeBron James. San Francisco then bemoaned "out-of-tune officiating" and accused their opponents of emptying their spit valves, a la brass instruments.

It's fun reading, no matter which team you're pulling for. As one commenter put it early in the series, for two such normally reserved organizations as the Cleveland Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony, such a heated exchange can only be described as a display of "serious at etude."