nba
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Bill Duffy and the $3 million promise
A missed deadline cost Anthony Carter millions. Bill Duffy spent 17 years making it right - one revealing chapter in a basketball career built on relationships that outlast the deal.
JH Design puts a price on team spirit. From $120 to $10,000.
A reversible varsity jacket and a crystal-covered leather edition live in the same catalog. Inside the Los Angeles company that gives sports loyalty something to wear.
The Dallas Mavericks Are Building a Business Bigger Than Basketball
Dallas has one NBA team, but the company behind it now sells far more than a seat and a score. Its next act connects local television, direct streaming, hospitality, retail and a proposed 104-acre arena district.
Atlanta's Hawks Learned to Sell More Than Basketball
The box score is only the front door. Behind it sits an Atlanta entertainment business that sells belonging - through basketball, concerts, commerce, civic programs and one very busy downtown arena.
The Miami HEAT Turned Two Words Into a Business System
Miami sells basketball, tickets, media, merchandise and access. The unusual part is the operating doctrine behind all of it - a thirty-year effort to turn standards, conditioning and a sense of place into a product fans can recognize.
LA Clippers
For decades, the Clippers rented a stage in someone else’s story. Intuit Dome gives the franchise its own building, its own data and a much bigger business to run.
GLD (The GLD Shop)
GLD (The GLD Shop) is a Miami-based direct-to-consumer jewelry brand founded by Christian Johnston in 2015. It designs classic and custom chains, pendants, watches, and accessories that blend streetwear culture with fine-jewelry craftsmanship. Backed by officially licensed partnerships with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA, and WNBA plus pop-culture collabs and celebrity fans, GLD has grown from a Pittsburgh basement into an international brand often called the 'Nike of men's jewelry.'
WIT
WIT is a New York-based gamification and digital activation platform that helps pro sports teams and Fortune 1000 brands turn casual fans into engaged, identifiable participants. Through a library of 30+ turnkey experiences - giveaways, polls, brackets, vote-to-win, fan maps and fan walls - WIT collects first-party data, sources authentic fan content, fulfills sponsor obligations and drives revenue. Founded in 2018 by Vaidhy Murti, it now powers activations for roughly 100 venues, leagues and teams across the NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, NWSL and NCAA, plus brands like Coca-Cola and Bud Light.
PredictionStrike
PredictionStrike is a sports stock market where fans buy and sell shares of professional athletes with real cash. Share prices rise and fall based on how athletes perform against their fantasy projections plus supply and demand. Founded in 2019 by childhood friends Deven Hurt and Brad Chabra, the New York company has raised roughly $16M, counts 275,000+ registered users, and has processed over $140M in lifetime transaction volume across football, basketball, soccer, baseball, hockey, and MMA.
Deven Hurt
Deven Hurt is the co-founder and CEO of PredictionStrike, a New York based platform he calls a stock market for sports fans, where users buy and sell virtual shares of NBA and NFL players whose prices move on real on-field performance. A Harvard College bioengineer turned Harvard Law graduate, he ran cybersecurity work touching Nike and the NBA before building the company with best friend Brad Chabra in 2018. He raised a $10M Series A led by Bullpen Capital, grew the platform past 200,000 users and $100M in transactions, and reached per-user profitability in late 2024.
Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant is a 14-time NBA All-Star, 2x champion, 4x Olympic gold medalist, and one of the greatest scorers in basketball history. Standing 6'11" with guard-like skills, he redefined the power forward position. Off the court, he co-founded 35 Ventures with manager Rich Kleiman, building a 100+ company investment portfolio spanning AI, fintech, media, and sports. One of only three NBA players to hold a lifetime Nike deal, Durant is as formidable a business operator as he is a basketball player.
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and media personality who turned a $6 million software company sale into a dot-com-era $5.7 billion windfall, bought the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million and won an NBA championship, became a household name on Shark Tank, and now wages a one-man war on America's pharmaceutical industrial complex through his Cost Plus Drugs company.
Josh Waitzkin
Josh Waitzkin is a chess International Master, two-time Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands World Champion, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, bestselling author of 'The Art of Learning,' performance coach to elite athletes and executives, and founder of The Art of Learning Project. A prodigy who drew with Garry Kasparov at age 11, starred in a Hollywood film about his own chess career, won a martial arts world title on his birthday, became Marcelo Garcia's first-ever black belt, and now consults for the Boston Celtics from a jungle compound in Costa Rica where he trains big-wave foil surfing with Laird Hamilton.