Somewhere underneath the lighting fixtures of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center over the weekend, the Jabbawockeez danced throughout a tv particular that may have been an e mail as a part of the “most culturally relevant basketball experience on the planet.”
That’s what the indicators known as it, anyway. It used to be the first-ever NBA Con, the league’s riff on Comic-Con. The basketball-themed Lollapalooza used to be a three-day smorgasbord of style, track and basketball.
But observed thru any other lens, the conference used to be an intriguing window into how the league sees itself as a industry.
For the NBA, the celebs are larger than the video games—cultural presences a long way past the ground. The NBA took good thing about that by way of conserving the conference throughout its summer season league in Las Vegas, when rankings of stakeholders from the union, retired avid gamers, house owners, common managers, avid gamers, sponsors and enthusiasts descend on Nevada.
“When you ask people about the NBA, for them, it’s not a company,” stated Mark Tatum, the league’s deputy commissioner. “It’s existence. It’s their tradition. The NBA is that this tradition of track and model and leisure and magnificence.”
More than 25,000 fans attended, mostly paying $30 to $250 to get in. But really, cultural relevance is priceless, especially when sponsored by Michelob Ultra. (They were there too.)
The convention floor was set up to evoke the spirit of New York City, with park benches, Jenga, cornhole and pickleball courts. There were neighborhoods titled the Drip, the Collection, the Network, the Park and the Convos.
The Drip, where sponsors set up shop, was the real core of the convention.
Sure, a convention does help the league reach fans in a way it otherwise wouldn’t at a time when LeBron James isn’t playing every night. On Saturday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver detailed a new in-season tournament during a bloated television special. But throwing an NBA con meant the league also created an opportunity for new intellectual property. It sold NBA Con merchandise and created a new Twitter account, though the account had fewer than 2,000 followers on Monday compared with nearly 44 million on the league account.
There was an AT&T booth, where a sign read, “Step into the highlight and sing their own praises your hearth have compatibility.” Fans lined up and shot slow-motion videos of their outfits under a fancy spotlight.
Another booth, run by a memorabilia company, MeiGray, sold game-worn jerseys. Its main podium showed a mannequin wearing a jersey that Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic wore in Game 2 of the NBA finals last month. It sold for $150,000. Next to that was a smaller podium with a jersey that Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler wore during Game 3 of that series. It sold for $17,500. To the victors—the Nuggets—go the bigger boxes and higher prices.
Tucked in a back corner of the convention space was an exhibit called “Rings Culture,” from the jewelry store Jason of Beverly Hills. It displayed several replicas of championship rings. It might’ve been the perfect place for a heist in a movie like “Ocean’s Eleven.”
The night before the convention, the NBA held a walk-through for journalists. Tristan Jass, a YouTuber known for trick basketball shots, displayed some of his skills on a makeshift court. But before doing so, he described his ascension to fame.
“We simply left a path of inspiration around the globe,” Jass told the crowd.
His first shot was a heave from a spot adjacent to the court behind a chain-link fence. He missed the first two attempts, but hit the third. It was impressive. His second shot was a full-court launch from the opposite corner. This one didn’t go as well. After at least 20 misses, some observers—the uninspired ones, clearly—moved on to the rest of the tour. When a shot rimmed out, Jass muttered, “Those ones harm.”
The biggest draw for the weekend was a panel discussion with Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar moderated by Isiah Thomas, the former Detroit Pistons star. There were a couple hundred seats, but a long overflow line for spectators trying to catch a glimpse of a basketball torch being passed. Wembanyama was the much-heralded No. 1 pick in the NBA draft last month.
There was a larger backdrop too: Abdul-Jabbar’s conversation with Wembanyama in that 30-minute panel was more time than he had spent chatting with James in the last two decades combined. Last month, Abdul-Jabbar told reporters in Los Angeles that he had “by no means had an opportunity to truly communicate to LeBron, rather then two or 3 mins.”
At NBA Con, Abdul-Jabbar said he was struck by how much the game had changed.
“The other tasks and what’s anticipated of more than a few avid gamers in more than a few positions,” he said. “It’s truly been thru an incredible trade, and for quite a lot of mins, I simply sat there and questioned, ‘Would I be capable of compete?'”
Abdul-Jabbar spent 20 seasons in the NBA and retired in 1989 as the career scoring leader. James surpassed his record in February.
“Sure would were great, regardless that, in an effort to fly from town to town in a constitution jet like those guys do,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “I didn’t get to do that. I could have played longer.
To that end, the convention served not just as a branding exercise for the NBA, but also the players themselves. Scoot Henderson, the 19-year-old who was drafted third by the Portland Trail Blazers last month, is part of a new generation of stars with a marketing reach that players from Abdul-Jabbar’s era would find unrecognizable. Most players are active on social media, which has given them expanded ways to build an audience. Henderson was interviewed on a panel by former Knicks star Carmelo Anthony — delivering a signal that the league viewed Henderson as next in the star lineage.
“I’ve been serious about myself as a industry for a minute,” Henderson said afterwards. “The name. A corporation—that’s who I am.”