Naked Brands: The Future of Basketball

Author: David Perell URL: https://www.perell.com/blog/naked-brands-basketball One-line: The basketball installment of the Naked Brands series — LeBron’s “The Decision” marked the shift to an age where athletes circumvent media outlets, express themselves, and connect with fans on their own terms.

Key claims

• On social media, people want to connect with people — not companies, and with stars — not teams. “The Decision” set dominos in motion just days after LeBron opened his Twitter account and launched his website and management company.
• “The Decision” was decade-defining. It ushered in an age where athletes “express themselves, circumvent large media outlets, and connect with fans on their own terms.”
• The NBA gives athletes a bigger megaphone, encouraging vocal roles in politics, culture, and social action. Per the New York Times, the league solved the attention problem by becoming “a place for latching on to players and teams… [via] tweets that develop a public-facing personality.”
• Fans demand more than play — transparent relationships, exclusive merch, firm social stances; it’s only a matter of time before athletes run their own YouTube vlogs.
• The medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan): “All media works us over completely… and leaves no part of us untouched.”
• Beats by Dre is the template. Jimmy Iovine seeded prototype headphones to LeBron’s manager before the 2008 Olympics; “the hype was immediate” and athlete-driven demand followed.

Notable quotes

“On social media, people want to connect with people — not companies. Likewise, people increasingly want to connect with stars — not teams.”

“Societies have been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication… The medium is the message.” — Marshall McLuhan

“The N.B.A. seems to have hit upon a solution to a problem that is vexing sports officials everywhere: how to get young people to pay attention.” — New York Times

How it connects

• Naked Brands — the parent essay; this is the basketball installment of the series.
• Jimmy Iovine — the Beats by Dre marketing playbook of seeding products to athletes.
• Marshall McLuhan — the “medium is the message” frame from Understanding Media.
• Not So Lazy & Entitled Millennials- David Perell — where Perell makes the “basketball reflects the future of work and culture” argument explicitly.