Have you ever wondered how to measure Victor Wembanyama’s height in Oreo cookies, how birth order affects NBA performance, or which zodiac sign is the best at basketball?
Chances are you haven’t. But for those questions and others you didn’t even know you had, the NBA Research & Development Department has an answer.
The account’s bio proclaims it’s, “The official unofficial testing lab of the NBA,” and it’s not entirely unsanctioned.
NBA R&D is the brainchild of NBA Take-Two Media, a collaboration between the NBA and Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the NBA 2K video game series. The new entertainment company, shorthanded as NBAT2, formed last summer and produces competitive gaming, social-first content, original programming and live events.
Basketball, yes. But fashion, baddies, and astrocartography, too
NBAT2 CEO Andrew Perlmutter said the partnership taps into basketball’s broader appeal.
“Basketball, as a force, isn’t just a sport and it doesn’t just reflect culture. It shapes culture,” Perlmutter said. “And it is wired into so many other facets of culture that we all love, whether it’s gaming or fashion or music or color theory or astrocartography.”
NBA R&D explores many of those concepts in its videos, which follow an experiment format reliant on a plethora of graphs and absurdly large calculators but shot in a style that feels like a workplace comedy mockumentary.
The mad scientists both in front of the camera and behind the scenes are members of a five-person team led by Cayla DeRegis, NBAT2’s director of social. As of Jan. 16, the R&D Instagram account has about 26,200 followers with some posts amassing tens of thousands of likes.
“They’re all built around the idea that NBA Take-Two really embodies, which is that basketball is connected to so many other facets of culture,” DeRegis said. “The term ‘NBA research and development department’ came up and we spent the entire hour talking about this idea. After that creative session, we kind of took it more seriously and decided to really build out the world of NBA R&D and the experiment format kind of came out of that initial conversation.”
The NBA R&D creative process begins with daily hourlong brainstorm meetings, which DeRegis characterized as having “writer’s room vibes.” Once an experiment idea is hatched, it can take anywhere from a few hours to weeks to research, shoot and edit the content.
Some experiments are rooted in actual gameplay, like analyzing whether lefthanded players outperform righthanded players, or attempting to predict Kevin Durant’s Rockets scoring average based on players who previously completed the NBA jersey rainbow.
Other concepts pull from the league’s off-court storylines and social conversations. The R&D team invented a baddie performance index to quantify how NBA players score compared to their average when an attractive woman sits courtside. In another pair of videos, they use tarot to predict a WNBA champion and use astrocartography to trade Los Angeles Lakers players.
NBA analysis, but tailored for casual viewers and non-fans, too
DeRegis said her team is aware that the account’s audience is a mix of longtime NBA fans and people who have never watched a basketball game, so they try to make content that appeals to everyone.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, is bring in those people that make basketball and sports more accessible,” DeRegis said. “That’s something that we were really excited about with this initial idea, is taking something that is so inherent to sports culture, which is like numbers, stats and analysis, and spinning it on its head to make it more entertaining for people who don’t really know as much about the game.”
Some videos include cameos by current and former NBA players including Karl-Anthony Towns, Donte DiVincenzo, Carmelo Anthony and Lance Stephenson.
Celebrity cameos aren’t limited to basketball players. Olympic gymnast Suni Lee appeared in a “Courtside Baddie 101” video where she lectures R&D team members on the steps to becoming a courtside baddie (spoiler alert: Olympic medals help).
Perlmutter and DeRegis said the account regularly receives positive online comments from players, who are excited to collaborate with the R&D team because of the playful, low-pressure environment.
“They’re people, too, and helping them tap into their off-court personalities, who they are as people, helping them build their brand, that’s part of our mission,” Perlmutter said. “We get the privilege of putting them in those frames, and it often brings out a really fun, authentic version of them that they’re proud of and that the audience is really keen to see.”
Interactive elements a key component of NBAT2’s popularity
The account’s bio includes a hotline that people can call to leave ideas for experiments, part of an intentional effort to involve the audience in the science. After a recent video ranked the top 80 hottest NBA players, R&D invited viewers to submit their own rankings through an online form.
“I think that’s what is really powerful about 2K is how interactive it is,” Perlmutter said. “Social media today is very participatory. The trends and the content creators who are, I think, most beloved are folks who make the user feel like the user, the fan, can participate in the activity – and I think we’re trying to embody that with all of our programming.”
In addition to the R&D account, NBAT2 operates an NBA 2K League that features NBA players and content creators competing with fans in virtual and live in-person events. Another NBAT2 project is a travel show hosted by former Chicago Bulls star Joakim Noah called, “NOMAD,” which examines culture through the lens of basketball and which Perlmutter describes as sharing a loose kinship with Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations.”
The goal behind it all, Perlmutter said, is to connect with young people who consume entertainment on social media and who are just as interested in celebrity culture or video games as they are what happens on a competitive basketball court. Ideally, NBAT2 will appeal to its existing core of 2K users and simultaneously expand its reach to an entirely new audience.
Asked to choose her favorite NBA R&D video, DeRegis protested that it was like being asked to choose her favorite child. As the self-described “astrology witchy girl” of the group, she is partial to concepts that include an astrology angle. However, the beauty of the wide-ranging experiments is that there’s something for everyone.
That’s why DeRegis isn’t surprised NBA R&D has resonated with people.
“I think we were really passionate about it and we all just kind of knew in that room that this was a winning idea,” she said. “So I don’t think that I’m surprised, but I’m very happy with the results in that our feelings of it being a good idea really were correct and paid off.”