Live From the NBA Draft: NBA Digital Puts Social on the Floor With Multiple Sets The social-media circuit moves from behind the scenes to front and center By Kristian Hernandez, Assistant Editor
Friday, June 21, 2019 - 10:32 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Last night at the NBA Draft, the social-media world once again exploded with hot takes, player profiles, and collegiate-highlight reels. With the event's popularity on the rise, the team at NBA Digital has made some changes in its onsite presence, shifting its behind-the-scenes activities to the limelight in the form of two physical sets visited by players moving along their path of media obligations.
Fresh Tape built a miniature replica of the Draft stage, complete with Draft board and commissioner podium.
Last year, Bob Carney [VP, emerging media, NBA] thought that some of the most interesting parts of the Draft happen backstage, where fans can't see it. says Melissa Brenner, EVP, digital media, NBA. One of them are these social-media booths, which we had set up where the players would come through the Brooklyn Nets weight room. [This year,] it's such a great moment because you get to see the player walk across the stage.
A Primetime Stop on the Media Trail
In the beginning, digital coverage of the NBA Draft was not nearly as complex and thorough as it is now. And, Brenner notes, the procedure of getting the job done was rigid and rudimentary.
[The players] would talk in a confessional style to the camera about their family, how they were feeling, and what [this night] meant in their journey, she says. There would be a lot of clerical and administrative things that would go on where you would make sure that you check-marked [all of your boxes] for Twitter and Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
My Family!! #NBADraft
A post shared by NBA (@nba) on Jun 20, 2019 at 8:41pm PDT
--
Today, the NBA has broadened its creative palette and established a primetime location on the media trail. An onsite NBA TV show interviews the selected player moments after Commissioner Adam Silver makes the announcement. When the short segment concludes, the player encounters two sets that capture the unforgettable moment of becoming a professional athlete. The league tapped Fresh Tape, a Denver-based creative agency specializing in studio sets, to construct them, which took 20 hours over two days to complete.
The first is a reduced-scale replica of the stage, including the familiar NBA Draft board and commissioner podium. The player expressed feelings of gratitude to and appreciation of the person or people who most impacted his trajectory. After concluding the message, the player wrote down a phrase with his signature and placed the plank on the replica Draft board.
Next was the Twitter-centric social stop, which incorporated elements of a basketball court and the hashtag symbol that has become synonymous with the platform. Here, the player chose a hashtag phrase that best described his thoughts and feelings immediately after being drafted into the NBA.
Welcome to the NBA, @Zionwilliamson! #NBATwitter pic.twitter.com/bMsGdSBRBQ
- NBA (@NBA) June 21, 2019
Live vs. Edited: Finding the Proper Application
To cover the entire event as efficiently as possible, Brenner and company blended scheduled posting and real-time recordings.
Some of [the posts] are live, [and] others are edited [by a backstage edit team]. It's a little bit up to the producer to decide what [is shot live] due to the noise of the arena and how we think the audio is, she said. Usually, we prefer to cut and trim [the footage] because, with some platforms, we have to be really [time-]sensitive.
In addition, an all-hands-on-deck approach was required. Besides the scripted stations on the main floor, other platforms -Instagram, Facebook, YouTube - covered different aspects of the Draft, such as the fashion sense of No. 4 overall pick and future New York Knick RJ Barrett.
View this post on Instagram
@rjbarrett shows off the #NBADraft suit details!
A post shared by NBA (@nba) on Jun 20, 2019 at 12:19pm PDT
--
Everybody is a content person, [even] people who are not normally staffed to the digital department. [For example,] I'll walk by someone and send [a picture] to one of our lead users and say, Hey, I found this, Brenner says. It usually doesn't make [our social-media channels], but, for the one or two times that it does, I feel pretty great because I got something [that] they thought was high-quality.
First-Person Accounts: Leveraging Players' Followings
Although the NBA pushed out a majority of the content generated on Draft Night, the players who experienced the pomp and circumstance provided first-hand commentary on the festivities with the help of basic re-tweeting and Greenfly, a league partner that offers an avenue for reliable content-sharing between two parties.
The hashtag was the focus of the NBA's Twitter-centric media stop.
This technology allows us to send content to players and players to send content to us really seamlessly. Our players have huge followings - in many cases, larger than the NBA or our teams, says Brenner. The [Philadelphia] 76ers have actually mobilized their whole staff with over 100 content producers to help tell a story that's bigger than what's happening here. [Also,] we'll be talking to the [newly drafted players] at the Rookie Transition Program on what Greenfly is so we can get them onboard. It's been a great symbiotic relationship.
Moving on Up: From Behind Curtains to the Draft Floor
The inner workings of NBA Digital's Draft coverage have grown exponentially. And, in a league that is fully embracing and diving deep into the depths of social media, NBA Digital's Draft Day schedule is expected to become even busier.
When Sam Farbe
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Live From the NBA Draft: NBA Digital Puts Social on the Floor With Multiple Sets The social-media circuit moves from behind the scenes to front and center By Kristian Hernandez, Assistant Editor 
