Magnified impressions
BASKETBALLNEWS.COM gives fans a different perspective on the day-to-day lives of our favorite National Basketball Association (NBA) players through content produced not by them themselves but by the players close to them.
The platform is a storyteller from the lenses of people who are close to our hard court heroes and also who’ve been with these professional athletes for a long time.
In my conversation with basketballnews.com co-founder and CEO, Scott Hale on my program, “Sports For All,” there are a lot of stories out there about players—from their charity work to their offseason workouts to just how they deal and relate with people.
In an article written Todd Ross Nienkirk on fourkitchens.com, Hale says, “The players thought the journalists were there for them, when in actuality, if no one covered the NBA it wouldn’t be as big as it is and the players wouldn’t get the salaries they do. It’s funny to watch the players on staff now on the media side—they’re realizing the work ethic that goes into being a writer and are gaining more respect for the journalists now that they’re on the other side.”
In a reversal of roles, you now have the players and people close to them writing and narrating their stories.
It’s a business model that’s worked for Scott and the people he works with since they started during the NBA bubble in 2020.
Again from fourkitchens.com, “There are so many vivid stories to be told, and I think if we tell them in a way that sports is the backdrop, you wouldn’t have to be a huge basketball fan to follow them.”
There are people who follow players just because they’re good people. That they’re better people off the court than on it.
Like other platforms, they’ve had to evolve and adapt to executing and implementing events and activities online.
I follow professional athletes like UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira because of his story and charity work he does for communities in his native Brazil.
Moving forward, basketballnews.com is looking at the NCAA as student athletes capitalize on their name, image and likeness to create opportunities. Europe also beckons for basketballnews.com and maybe perhaps other sports as well.
In the end, when all is said and done, stories will be written and told about how people conduct themselves and how they treat other human beings. As professional athletes, these stories are more magnified and scrutinized because of the names and faces where the stories came from.