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Welcome to today’s edition of The Baseline!

Every Friday at 9:36 AM EST, I break down the latest industry insights across the marketing and creator economy in basketball culture.

Let’s get started…

FAST BREAK

Here’s what you missed this week:

🏆 The New York Knicks won the NBA Cup (their first title since 1973) but decided not to hang the banner at MSG, while the previous two NBA Cup winners raised banners in their home arenas (Lakers and Bucks).

💵 Each New York Knicks player won $530,000 in prize money from winning the NBA Cup. Jalen Brunson revealed he’s sharing his prize money with Knicks employees, Mikal Bridges wants to buy one of Mitchell Robinson’s trucks, and Karl-Anthony Towns is donating to his youth sports program in the Dominican Republic.

🏟️ The discussion after the NBA Cup game was that next year’s Finals will move out of Vegas and potentially be hosted at a storied college arena, such as Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium.

👑 Nike Basketball brought their Chosen 1’s high school invitational back home to LeBron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary to celebrate the launch of the “From This Point Forward” LeBron XXIII sneaker.

☎️ AT&T and the NBA are giving away unlimited NBA League passes with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivering the assist.

🃏 Caitlin Clark and Panini announced a special collectible trading card set, Chronicled, that celebrates the WNBA star’s legendary career moments.

🇩🇪 With help from Moe and Franz Wagner, adidas Basketball announced their new sponsorship with the German National Basketball Team.

🐝 The Charlotte Hornets are partnering with Honeywell to transform their arena into an AI-powered venue using real-time data across power security, energy management and life safety systems.

💰 NBA veteran Omri Casspi closed a $60 million fund for his venture firm Swish Ventures, as his organization looks to back companies across cybersecurity, infrastructure and AI.

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THE POINT FORWARD

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POST-GAME

Thanks for reading—I’ll see you back here next week!

And if you enjoyed reading today’s newsletter, please share it with one friend.

- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻