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Welcome to The Baseline!

Every Wednesday at 9:36 AM EST, I break down the blueprint for basketball culture and share the newest creator tools and resources.

Before we jump right into it, quick question for you:

If you said 👍 Yes, hit reply and let me know — what’s one thing you’d want this platform to include?

NIL BLUEPRINT

This future #1 pick might be the most NBA ready prospect since LeBron but it’s his marketing blueprint that’s setting a new standard for how athletes build brands in the NIL era.

Most college freshmen wait until they make the league to think about a marketing system but AJ Dybantsa is already building his brand’s empire to not limit his commercial potential.

With over 1 million total followers, he’s not just posting highlights but he’s building a multi-platform ecosystem where every channel has its own purpose:

On YouTube — it’s travel vlogs, fan on the street interviews, and he shows his life beyond basketball.

On TikTok — it’s trending challenges and dances.

On Instagram — it’s podcast appearances, brand partnership content, and basketball moments that blend culture with performance.

He even uses a text messaging service to connect directly with fans, building an audience database that most pro’s don’t even have.

He has also already partnered with Fanatics, Nike, and Red Bull, and has one of college basketball’s highest NIL valuations ($4.4 million 👀).

With his dad leading the charge and Shaq’s agent advising the family, AJ Dybantsa is not waiting to make the NBA to build his brand.

He’s proving the future of athlete marketing starts before the spotlight arrives and he’s setting up his success with one post, one platform, and one fan text message at a time.

Find your customers on Roku this Black Friday

As with any digital ad campaign, the important thing is to reach streaming audiences who will convert. To that end, Roku’s self-service Ads Manager stands ready with powerful segmentation and targeting options. After all, you know your customers, and we know our streaming audience.

Worried it’s too late to spin up new Black Friday creative? With Roku Ads Manager, you can easily import and augment existing creative assets from your social channels. We also have AI-assisted upscaling, so every ad is primed for CTV.

Once you’ve done this, then you can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative variants and Black Friday offers. If you’re a Shopify brand, you can even run shoppable ads directly on-screen so viewers can purchase with just a click of their Roku remote.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

Use code GET5K now

FREE THROWS

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

📹 Video Database - A curated library created by the team at Cut30, featuring the best short-form videos to inspire and reference for your next short-form video.

🪄 Magic Path - Design faster and smarter with this AI-powered design tool that lets users generate, edit and prototype user interfaces from text prompts (think ChatGPT meets Figma).

📸 Squoosh - Shrink your image file sizes while maintaining high quality to help with faster loading times.

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POST-GAME

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

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

- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻