NBA, every mention
38 scenes (2026), the whole family · ← back to NBA
tap a year for its mentions
every year 2026 anyone Ben Gilbert 51David Rosenthal 48Steve Ballmer 2Michael Mauboussin 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where NBA comes up
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- ▶ 1:08:48 David Rosenthal The biggest point of leverage that they could possibly have over the cable operators because all ESPN has to do is threaten to pull the plug on any given cable operator and say to, you know, their thousands or millions of subscribers out…
- ▶ 1:12:29 David Rosenthal MLB, NBA, they do a big NFL deal in 1998 to get Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football rights for ABC.
- ▶ 3:30:51 Ben Gilbert And the, the NFL, the NBA,
- ▶ 3:33:45 Ben Gilbert Will just be captured by the rights holders like the NFL and the NBA.
Formula 1: Fast cars, celebrities, and B2B software (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:23 Ben Gilbert So listeners, just like our NFL, NBA, and IPL cricket episodes, this show is about the business of F one.
- ▶ 1:56:32 David Rosenthal In other sports like the NFL or the NBA, except instead of on the players, the salary cap is going to be on the investments into the cars.
- ▶ 3:06:15 David Rosenthal And it was so perfectly made for what everybody in the sport needed at the time, because if you had made Drive to Survive for, I don't know, let's take, um, the NBA.
- ▶ 3:16:17 Ben Gilbert It's more than most NBA games.
- ▶ 3:52:54 Ben Gilbert So then my key question, the, and, and the one, the one unfilled in puzzle piece in all of your minds should be Ben and David are obsessed with the communist capitalism of the NFL and the fact that the NFL, the NBA, MLB, NHL, these are…
- ▶ 3:57:28 David Rosenthal I mean, the NBA is inching closer, but still isn't there.
- ▶ 4:27:30 Ben Gilbert If you liked this episode, go check out our other sports episodes, the NFL, NBA, IPL cricket, some good ones in there.
The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:43 Ben Gilbert Now, listeners, just like our NBA episode a couple of years ago, this is an episode on the business of football.
- ▶ 2:37:00 Ben Gilbert On NFL games versus just over 50% for the NBA and 44% for Major League Baseball.
- ▶ 2:47:15 David Rosenthal I don't think this ever would have happened or happened in the same way in the NBA.
- ▶ 2:47:20 David Rosenthal The NBA embraced both social media and the strategy of letting players have their own platforms, be their own voices and promote the league through that.
- ▶ 2:50:26 Ben Gilbert And as we talked about on our NBA episode, I mean, basketball's entire future growth and
- ▶ 2:52:14 Ben Gilbert The NBA and Major League Baseball teams have to pay to operate farm teams that no one wants to watch or play in, and the NFL gets all the benefit of all the development of all of these players in their college years for free.
- ▶ 3:06:15 David Rosenthal We talked about this a lot on the NBA episode, but just to recap here, because the story hasn't really changed.
- ▶ 3:06:42 Ben Gilbert Want to follow NFL stars the way they want to follow NBA stars on social media?
- ▶ 3:06:46 David Rosenthal I think if I remember it, the core thesis of our NBA episode is what they got so right through the social media era was give the players the voice, give the players the platform.
- ▶ 3:08:04 Ben Gilbert So players are definitely variably rewarded based on their value to any given team, but the NBA and the MLB are way less equal than the NFL.
- ▶ 3:08:13 Ben Gilbert The superstars in the NBA, like LeBron James, including sponsorships, makes one hundred and twenty seven million dollars a year.
- ▶ 3:08:44 David Rosenthal But the players, I think other league players and especially the NBA have been able to build wealth and businesses and revenue streams much better than NFL players because
- ▶ 3:35:12 Ben Gilbert Yeah, the eighteen billion figure, but the NFL completely overtook the NBA to be the Christmas tradition.
- ▶ 3:35:22 David Rosenthal Hey, NBA's got a new big meteorites deal.
- ▶ 3:39:29 Ben Gilbert We made some pretty hefty points around Gen Z and their love for the NBA and how the NFL doesn't really hold a candle.
- ▶ 3:39:48 Ben Gilbert They stream the NBA, they stream the NFL, they
- ▶ 3:39:56 Ben Gilbert That would be the real way to answer this question, but I do kind of want to walk back some of my concerns about the NFL's future because Gen Z likes the NBA more.
- ▶ 3:40:08 Ben Gilbert And we also talked a lot, even not with Gen Z, just about the rise of the NBA and popularity and fame and all that stuff.
- ▶ 3:40:22 Ben Gilbert The NBA Finals per game draws just ten million viewers, down from its peak in the 25 to thirty million during the Michael Jordan era in the nineties.
- ▶ 3:40:42 Ben Gilbert Even the NBA's national broadcast, not just the regional sports networks, but the national ones on ESPN and TNT, those average one to two million fans.
- ▶ 3:41:11 David Rosenthal But that said, even now, a couple years later, and even now after the Taylor Swift crossover, the social media gap between players in the NFL and players in the NBA absolutely still persists.
- ▶ 3:41:51 David Rosenthal They're a bunch of NBA players with 20 to 30.
- ▶ 3:41:54 David Rosenthal You know, you can debate the value of all this, but like, it's wild that number one in the NFL is under eight and one in the NBA is a 157 and number two is 60.
- ▶ 3:42:08 Ben Gilbert I bet this is true when you look at follower counts, but if you think about it a different way, which is how much social media stuff do I get about NFL versus about NBA, most of the time when you follow LeBron, it's not like he's putting…
- ▶ 3:49:14 David Rosenthal You know, if you look at the NBA, if you look at MLB, if you look at Formula One, if you look at IPL, the fact that so many of the stars came from other countries and bring that fan base along with them is huge, and that has never happened…
- ▶ 4:01:57 David Rosenthal Josh Harris, who is the co-founder of the huge private equity firm Apollo, and already owned the Philadelphia 70 Sixers in the NBA and the New Jersey Devils in the NHL.
- ▶ 4:16:12 Ben Gilbert If you liked this episode, check out our episodes on the NBA, IPL cricket,