BRADENTON, Fla. – IMG Academy feels like the evolution of the Cobra Kai gym from The Karate Kid. Everyone there is bigger, stronger, and more singularly focused than high schoolers are supposed to be. The weight room rivals many ACC schools, and signs reminding you to hydrate could’ve easily been put there by Texas football coach Tom Herman. It’s here that Gatorade chose as home for its Sports Science Institute, and it’s here that a group of us are learning about sweat tests for the first time.
It’s 2017, so it’s naive in this era – where everybody needs something, everybody wants something, and quid pro quo isn’t a foreign saying as much as it is a way of life – to assume anything is done out of the goodness of anyone’s heart. Altruism as a concept means a heck of a lot less when billionaires can erase years of hard work off the internet due to a petty squabble. But symbiotic relationships still have their place. Some of the earliest strong economies were based on trade, and a healthy exchange is what Gatorade and IMG Academy get out of each other, and what the NBA is hoping to accomplish through its relationship with Gatorade in partnership for the NBA G League.
A true minor league system has been missing in basketball for quite some time. Instead, there are offshoots of how players can work their way up if they’re not ready for prime time out of the chute. Guys could go overseas, play four years in college, or toil away in the D-League, which had steadily been building from year to year.
NBA G League president Malcolm Turner wants to change that, and the 2017-18 season – starting on Nov. 3 – is his first true chance to do so.
Turner envisions a 1:1 ratio where every NBA team has a G League affiliate, and two-way contracts are just the beginning toward establishing a firmer relationship between those teams and NBA G League squads. Having 30 NBA G League teams (a goal for next year) isn’t enough; there has to be a reliable path forward (as proven out by players like Jonathon Simmons and Hassan Whiteside), true development of talent, and increased resources.
There’s also the nature of research, nutrition, and sports science. And that’s where Gatorade comes in. The NBA G League partnership, at first blush, felt like the Microsoft Zuneination of the D-League. Slap a name on it, brand it, and let the jokes fly. But there’s a true value to what the NBA can get out of this. Each team will have access to experts and extensive testing, much like the sweat testing a few of us received on the court at IMG Academy in late October. As a result, Gatorade gets a much more rigorous data pool of top-tier athletes to continue to fine tune their formula and roll out new products. Real-time beta testing is a luxury a lot of companies don’t have, and they invested heavily (in name and in dollars) for the privilege.
This is only the beginning, Turner indicates, and the league (as well as Gatorade) are using this year to establish a baseline. He discussed that and more, explaining why this partnership is a two-way street, and where he believes the NBA G League can go moving forward.
Martin Rickman: Well, it’s got to be really an exciting time for you guys to kind of see. Announcements are fun, press releases are great, promo photos and logos are all amazing, but to have a season be here and all the hard work that everyone’s put in. I mean, how do you feel just knowing that you’ve come all the way from then to now where there’s an actual proof in the pudding?
Malcolm Turner: Yeah, we’re thrilled with the progress. There’s still a lot of opportunities out there and we know we need to roll up our sleeves and go get it. But, there’s no doubt about it we’ve been in growth mode on a number of fronts, getting all of our teams one to one affiliated with an NBA team. We’re growing NBA ownership of our teams. In three years we’ve gone from under 25% of our teams actually owned by the affiliate NBA team, to over 85, 90 percent. Then obviously the overall growth in the number of teams. A record 26 teams on the floor for this season. Washington’s already announced it’s 27 for 18/19. We’ll expect we’ll have one to two additional announcements for 18/19. Who knows, it’s possible we may actually reach 30 teams well ahead of schedule by 18/19, but that’s a pace that we think we can certainly hit by the 19/20 season for sure. It’s exciting.
Here today with Gatorade and Gatorade Sports Science Institute and the robust content of that partnership, we’re thrilled at the new identity and so we’ve made the shift to NBA G League, but really the content of this partnership is what’s so compelling for us. The actual tools and research and education and innovation that we can deploy across our footprint ultimately geared towards how can we help our players, not just facilitate, but accelerate the achievement of their performance goals is what’s really exciting. So, we’re thrilled Gatorade was a founding partner with this league and our longest standing active NBA partner. I really think this is just a wonderful way to deepen our relationship going forward.
The jokes are obviously, you move from a D to a G, and there is a little bit of humor at that expense at the beginning, but when you start to see what’s beyond that with the ability to really help these athletes. The D League for a long time and also an opportunity to play in Europe, overseas, there wasn’t continuity. Things were different. They didn’t have standardization. You never know how much money somebody’s going to make from week to week. But, to have the NBA looking over this and have things be symbiotic, but also have this performance aspect of it added in, that’s just something that can only help the minors.
Absolutely.
I mean the system will get better and then the tether will be stronger.
No doubt about it. I mean, we have no interest in style over substance. That’s what’s so exciting about what we’re doing with Gatorade. Yes, the change D to G kind of speaks for itself. And taking on Gatorade’s own identity within our brand structure certainly speaks to the depth of the partnership. There’s so much here where we’re again really providing our players with real tools and insights, our trainers, our coaches, which is really important. As the NBA G League, we remain a development league. What Gatorade is able to provide not only accentuates on-court performance, but now importantly what happens off-court, away from the game, recovering from a game, getting ready for a game. Those things are critical and so the tools that we’re able to provide for our teams, we couldn’t be happier with the level of engagement that we’ve had with our partner Gatorade and the Gatorade Sports Science Institute.
It’s really such an exciting time because you have the rebrand, along with the performance aspect of it from this, and then working toward getting a team for every team, as well as two way contracts, which are going to be such an incredible opportunity for some guys to really show up once the injuries start to take hold and everything like that, the ability to then sign that player, the tie is there but what else are you looking to do moving forward?
Yeah, so the two-ways, I’m glad you mentioned that. Obviously, as we grow and add teams we have rosters to fill. So, the two-way system, it’s critical and really an exciting development within our business where it’s yet another tool that allows us to add better and stronger talent to our league even faster as we continue to grow our number of teams. You’re absolutely right. Once we reach 30, and again we’ve talked about the timeframe to do so, that’s when I think it gets really interesting for us in terms of what next. We will continue to develop talent throughout our system. Player development has been our focus, but players, coaches, trainers, front office staff, officials, et cetera, all that will continue. So, we will continue to create throughout the NBA system, but I think some of the things beyond that …
I think we will grow into a place where we’ll start to take a look at international opportunities. How can we help further our broader NBA goals internationally and keep markets of interest I think is a natural next step for us. In some respects, we’re already dipping our toe in the water in a very meaningful way in that respect with our relationship with US Basketball where the NBA G League will start to fulfill national team opportunities on FIBA’s new competition calendar that ultimately is the road to qualifying for the Olympics. We just really launched that relationship six to eight weeks ago with winning the FIBA AmeriCup with head coach Jeff Van Gundy coaching our squad of NBA G League players. We’ll have additional windows this November and February. In a lot of ways, we’re already migrating and starting to explore opportunities for us to help plug some gaps, realize some opportunities overseas.
Ultimately I think from a development standpoint, and that means a lot whether it’s players, coaches, trainers, and so forth, but we’ll certainly continue to serve our role as a test bed as R&D within the NBA. So whether it’s the playing rules themselves, whether it’s emerging technologies, whether it’s working with partners like Gatorade and Nike on trying out some things together and test and learn and all of that is a role that we’ll continue to play not only within the NBA but also for our important partners like Gatorade.
Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s been really interesting to see the rule changes and testing and the things that go along with that. You have on-court beta testing and the ability to have sample sizes. How important in the NBA is sample size, to be able to do that and say, “Okay, maybe we’ll try out a different shot clock,” or, “Maybe we’ll try out a certain rule here or there, add a ref, take a ref away?” You can say that in theory and everybody in basketball Twitter is always talking about these things, but to be able to physically get those data points has to be incredibly useful.
Absolutely. I think it’s one of the parts of this role in this league that I really enjoy the most where we can identify an issue and we get in quick and nimble fashion. Let’s craft a test, let’s test the thesis and see what the data tells us. That’s really exciting when you have that ability to be quick and nimble. Whether it’s consulting with the NBA competition committee on a matter or whether it’s a new technology that’s emerging where we think it’s kind of interesting but we’re now quite sure how it works and kind of want to play around with it a little bit, I think that’s really exciting where we have that opportunity where through a quick and nimble fashion we can embrace a number of testing initiatives on court and off.
Finally, how important but also how encouraging are the success stories of either having a guy like Stack win NBA G League Coach of the Year or have a player like Jonathon Simmons come up from the ranks and become such an important part of this league. You can use these stories to point to for both coaching, whether it’s a retired player or someone who’s trying to get into coaching ranks or players who know that the struggles are there and that the hard work is there, but you see these guys that pay off and you can point to those guys.
It’s really important. Those are great examples there. Danny Green from the Spurs was in New York when we were rebranding. We did a takeover of the flagship NBA store and Danny Green came in for that, but Danny also talked about the role that this league played in launching his NBA career, drafted into the NBA and out of the NBA, but really he used the NBA G League as his path back and the rest is history. Too, Hassan Whiteside, he was in the office as well. Here’s a guy who was our first NBA Gatorade Call-Up who would go on to sign a max NBA contract. He talked about how his time in this league was where he kind of figured out how to be a professional and his game really started to come together. He credits a lot of his coaches within the NBA G League for making that pivot in his career. So, all of those stories are really important for us.
It’s also interesting now to wonder who’s next whether, on the player front or coaching front, that’s always an interesting underlying storyline in terms of what are the next stories going to be for this year and who’s going to pop and who’s going to take that next step. We’re always excited about that development. I always like to say part of our mission is to help NBA dreams come true whether you’re a player, a coach, trainer, or an official, if you want to participate in this game at the highest level with the NBA. That’s in part what we serve. We can be a launchpad for that within the NBA G League.
