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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Baseline!

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

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

MARKETING BLUEPRINT

Board games are BIG business—a $12 billion industry that’s rapidly resurging in popularity.

And where there’s financial potential and opportunities to connect with new audiences, trends are born.

That’s why I’m predicting an uptick in Board Game x Basketball collabs over the next 12-18 months.

Kicking off the trend is The King, as we saw Nike and LeBron collaborate with Monopoly for a limited edition release of their LeBron XXII sneaker.

We also saw the NBA G League's Capital City Go-Go design custom Scrabble uniforms and auctioned off their game-worn jerseys, with proceeds going towards a holiday Toys for Tots initiative.

Here are my top 4 board game collab ideas for your favorite brands and basketball players:

❓ The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame should release a special edition of the game "Guess Who?" where you guess each class of inductees.

1️⃣ adidas Basketball and James Harden should team up with Uno to create a pair of Uno Harden Volume 8s because “my homies call me UNO tho!”

🟡🔴 This one is too easy, but Connect 4, you gotta connect with Dalton Knecht for a pair of Jordan 39 PEs.

🩻 Lastly, we need the Operation and Kawhi Leonard board game collaboration just because……

FREE THROWS

Sharing a few of my favorite tools and go-to resources:

📝 The Notes app on your iPhone is one of the most powerful tools available. Here are 7 features you may not know about…

🤣 I'm bullish on meme marketing, as today's memelords will be tomorrow's CMOs. Memelord Technologies is the first SaaS platform that empowers you to quickly create and edit your own memes to capitalize on viral internet trends.

💬 One of my favorite newsletters is written by Shaan Puri (Investor, Entrepreneur, Creator). It's called "5 Tweet Tuesdays," and it's a weekly (quick) summary of the 5 best business tweets out of the 500 million tweets posted each day.

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

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FAST BREAK

Here’s what you missed this week in basketball culture:

🕺 LaMelo Ball pulled up to his 50-point game in the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine to promote his new Puma x LAMELO BALL MB.04 Scooby-Doo sneakers.

🏀 State Farm signed its second-ever NIL partnership with USC’s JuJu Watkins, and the insurance company also sponsors her docuseries, "On the Rise: JuJu Watkins," which airs exclusively on Peacock.

🥃 University of Kentucky alumnus and Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo has teamed up with Maker’s Mark to launch a limited edition bottle, featuring a custom blend created with his mom, Marilyn, to be sold in Miami.

🧊 Trae Young signed with Jordan Brand, ending his sneaker free-agency after his partnership with adidas ended last season.

✅ Nike Basketball launched a new social media campaign celebrating its NBA City Edition Jerseys to spotlight local hoops culture in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

.🦊 De'Aaron Fox and Curry Brand announce December 6th as the official release date for the Curry Fox 1 sneaker drop.

🐭 The NBA announced a Disney Alt-Cast with Mickey & Friends for the Spurs vs Knicks Christmas Day Game.

💰 Giannis Antetokounmpo has launched his venture capital firm, "Build Your Legacy Ventures," focusing on investments in sports and entertainment—and has already invested in Candy Funhouse and Unrivaled Basketball.

✌️ LeBron announced his break from social media after agreeing with Rich Kleiman’s message about sports media's excessive coverage of negative stories.

POST-GAME

That’s all for this week.

I hope you get to enjoy some family time, good food, and college hoops and thanks again for subscribing to The Baseline.

- Jeff Chen | 🏀💡👨🏻‍💻