Welcome to this week’s edition of The Baseline!

This is your weekly blueprint for basketball culture: brand insights, marketing strategy, creator tools, and business resources.

MARKETING BLUEPRINT

Adam Silver assembled the avengers of creators and built a secret creator program you’ve probably never heard of.

Let's step back, though, and understand why he did this.

The NBA has had two main objectives over the past few years:

🌎 Grow Globally

🍼 Connect Younger

In today's era, every brand, including the NBA, is realizing that their own channels aren't enough.

To scale and grow, you need to multiply your content distribution.

Case in point:

📈 The NBA’s Creator Correspondent Program generated over 650 million creator views last season.

How it works:

Creators like Kai Cenat, Lethal Shooter and Rachel DeMita are all enrolled as one of the league’s select creators.

They get exclusive access to marquee NBA games and events like Creator Cup Series, NBA All-Star Weekend and Summer League.

In exchange, they share their content and bring new audiences and subcultures that connect to the NBA.

Plus, the creators are the first to experience new products from NBA partners like Meta Quest 3 and WSC’s AI Video Editing tools.

It’s a win-win for everyone.

It’s not slowing down either, as the NBA has reinvested in its creator program while continuing to set the digital marketing standard of excellence.

Does your brand have a creator strategy?

How are you partnering with creators?

Let me know!

FREE THROWS

Sharing the tools and resources that I’m using this week:

📊 Sportsball - A great Instagram account to follow if you’re into Sports x Data x Storytelling.

💻 Mr. Mockup - Huge collection of high quality free mockups for graphic assets. Plus, each mockup is free for personal and commercial use!

📲 The Creatorverse - Weekly newsletter breaking down the success stories and case studies of some of the best creators and brands on social media.

There’s a reason 400,000 professionals read this daily.

Join The AI Report, trusted by 400,000+ professionals at Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Get daily insights, tools, and strategies to master practical AI skills that drive results.

Sign up now for free and work smarter, not harder.

FAST BREAK

Here’s what you missed this week:

🏆 Caitlin Clark was officially named TIME’s 2024 Athlete of the Year, while a renowned valuation expert in the field of finance researched and estimated that Clark had an economic impact on the city of Indianapolis of over $36 million.

💰 AJ Dybantsa – the top-ranked prospect in the 2026 NBA Draft class – has committed to BYU with a reported NIL package of $7 million.

👟 Derrick Rose starred in the official Fear of God Basketball II release as designer Jerry Lorenzo shared his thoughts on the future of performance basketball footwear.

🇨🇦 The WNBA officially announced the Toronto Tempo, the league’s first international expansion team, which will tip off in 2026.

🏀 Unrivaled had a significant week as they announced Under Armour as the league’s official uniform partner, and they signed Paige Bueckers and Flau'jae Johnson to NIL equity partnerships.

🔟 Kobe’s signature sneaker line with Nike continues to dominate the NBA, with four of his shoe models ranking in the top 10 for most-worn sneaker models (by total playing time) this season across the league.

✅ PrizePicks remixed the classic NBA Jingle Hoops commercial with their creator partners Druski, Spice Adams, BigXThaPlug, Funny Marco, and Sketch.

🎄 The NBA dropped their official Christmas Day commercial as they Regifted Jingle Hoops.

📈 The WNBA is listed as the #1 fastest-growing brand among all US adults in 2024.

POST-GAME

That’s all for this week.

Hope you enjoyed reading The Baseline today.

If you found something interesting or useful, share today’s newsletter with a friend who works in basketball culture.

- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻