There can be power in a phrase. For basketball video creator and podcaster Kenny Beecham, “enjoy basketball” has gone from a regular signoff to a mission statement to a company. It’s a company whose approach and coverage is far different to a lot of what we’ve seen around the NBA, and that’s won praise for Beecham and his colleagues from even NBA commissioner Adam Silver. But Beecham told Awful Announcing in a recent interview he didn’t initially envision that phrase leading to all this.
“It started just as a mantra for my YouTube channel. I used to do these daily recaps of what was going on in the league, and I would end the episode by saying ‘We got a lot of games tonight, enjoy the basketball, y’all.’ And it became like this mantra.”
Beecham said that mantra wound up being embraced by fans of his show, which he thinks was partly due to the way it contrasted with other NBA coverage.
“It feels like there’s not a lot of positivity about basketball itself,” he said. “It went from a mantra to a company just because I was like, ‘There’s not a lot of people within the space that are trying to put out the positive message of this game.’”
Those are certainly sentiments shared by NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Silver has often criticized the way many media figures talk about the league. And he recently expressed that to Beecham on Beecham’s Numbers on the Board podcast, which is part of the Enjoy Basketball podcast network. There, Silver cited the company as a positive force in NBA media coverage.
“I respect the job the media does, and it’s not a suggestion that people shouldn’t ask tough questions or be critical or talk about things they don’t like about the game. But I would say, and it goes exactly to your production company, Enjoy Basketball, that sometimes I think they don’t spend enough time talking about why people love this game.”
Elsewhere in that podcast, Silver said he doesn’t want to eliminate critical coverage, but he appreciates the different approach Beecham and his company are bringing.
“You’ve said it so well, enjoy basketball. And I think it’s just the joy that this game brings to so many people’s lives. Sometimes if you just looked at the coverage, and again, this is not a shot at the media or any particular announcer because that’s their job. But I just feel like maybe it’s more the league should be doing to uplift the game, to find ways to celebrate everything about it.”
A recent example of that message came from Beecham’s February “Dear NBA” video on his Kenny For Real channel, which has racked up more than 570,000 views. That saw him discuss how hopeful and optimistic he was about the state of the game, sharing both his feelings and statistics to back them up.
Beecham told AA he was motivated to make that video based on the wider media conversations around the NBA at that time.
“There was all the dialogue at the time about who should be the face of the league. And I think what made me really want to make that video was the conversations when Anthony Edwards said ‘I don’t want to be the face of the league, that’s what Wemby [Victor Wenbamyama] wants to do,’ and then LeBron came in and said ‘Who wants to be the face of the league when everybody’s, for lack of a better term, s****** on the product?’ All of the discourse around the league was ratings, it was face of the league, it was ‘This was going wrong, this is going wrong.’”
“The idea behind the video, it wasn’t, like, a great structured video. It wasn’t like something I researched for three weeks before I put it out. It was ‘I’m going to go into my office, and I’m going to just talk from the heart, and whatever happens, happens.’”
“I’m happy that I did publish that video, because there was a moment in time before I hit from unlisted to public, [where I thought] ‘Is this even worth saying? Will it have any positive impact?’ And I’m happy I did publish it. I don’t know if it does have a longer life or impact on the sport or the way it’s looked at, but I’m happy I gave my piece.”
A key element of that video was how Beecham went beyond just his personal opinions on the league to use statistical information from Genius Sports/Second Spectrum, Cleaning The Glass, and more to refute some claims elsewhere about the current NBA style of play. Beecham said that was crucial to strengthening his case.
“There’s a certain portion of fandom that will hear what you’re saying, but they won’t believe it or take it at face value. So you have to go out there and say ‘Here’s why I’m saying this. Here are the numbers that back up my point, whether you agree or not.’
“It was important for me to bring up some of these numbers about the transition between the long two-point ball and the three-point ball, the pace, and all of these different things, because, honestly, I do believe it legitimizes some of the arguments that I was presenting when you have real evidence behind it. And the majority of it is opinion-based, don’t get me wrong, but if my opinion is backed by some type of statistics, I feel like it just holds just a little bit more weight.”
Of course, debates without much statistical evidence are frequently seen on a number of NBA broadcasts and other debate shows covering the league. Beecham feels there could be room for more statistically-focused (or at least statistically-backed) takes.
“I think that there is a portion of NBA media that is missing that. Me and my guys call it ‘That boy nice,’ that approach to watching basketball. I do think there has to be some type of balance between the two, because as much as I am a ‘That boy nice’ type of viewer, I also like to back that up with the numbers to prove that that boy is nice.”
Beecham said he understands why those shows don’t always go much into numbers, though. He thinks part of that involves the ease of watching the NBA casually.
“It’s a really tough situation to be in, and that’s why I don’t envy the people that have to make the decisions on what goes on TV on a night-to-night basis,” he said. “Because though I am in the market for something like that, a show that does go into the analytical part of basketball, I don’t know if that’s what the consumer wants for a real show. I would love for somebody to test it out, give it a chance and see if it performs well.
“But the reality is sometimes it when it comes to basketball, I think out of all the major sports, basketball is the easiest to debate and the easiest to consume. And if it’s so easy to consume, it’s so easy to have an opinion on, right?”
Some of the opinions there aren’t even on the on-court games, but on what personalities like ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins or TNT’s Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal are saying. Beecham said the focus on the people who talk about the NBA rather than the league’s actual games can be a distraction at times.
“I have conflicting feelings about it. I do believe that a lot of the time when it comes to basketball, it’s again not just about the product, it’s about the people talking about the product.”
But Beecham said he also understands why that can happen at slower points of the season when there aren’t as many natural on-court storylines, which he thinks was part of what escalated the coverage of the Stephen A. Smith-LeBron James situation.
“Thinking about it from the perspective of the people that are making these decisions at ESPN, in the middle of March, the NBA season is not very fun,” Beecham said. “There’s some stars that are out with injury, there are so many teams coasting their way up to the finish line, there’s so many teams tanking. So they think ‘The biggest athlete in our sport just talked about our talent on our network, we have to kind of rebut that.’
However, Beecham (like Silver) didn’t find the way that conversation became personal to be a good look for anyone.
“It does become unfortunate when it becomes really personal. But I can’t fault the people making the decisions. But I do recognize that that whole thing is probably pretty bad for the game, and the way we talk about the game, and the way we consume basketball in general.”
Another example of what Beecham saw as unnecessary negativity came with TNT Sports’ coverage of All-Star Weekend. He said while he enjoys Inside The NBA overall, especially from the perspective of “a comedy show with a little bit of hoops,” and is happy that it will be sticking around on ESPN next year, that show’s ASW coverage seemed to bring a particularly negative slant this year.
“We can all admit that All-Star Weekend was not good. But before it even started, the people at the desk were telling the audience that this is about to be bad. So I just think there has to be some type of balance.”
Beecham sees some of the negativity around the NBA coming from the prominence of former players turned media figures who don’t like the changes from when they played.
“A lot of those guys don’t love the direction of the league. So if the people on TV or through the major basketball podcasts are saying how much they dislike the product, I think it just trickles down to the fans.”
He views that as a sharp contrast to the NFL, which has also undergone dramatic changes in style (especially in recent decades’ emphasis on passing over running), but isn’t taking as much flak from prominent former players.
“On the NFL side, you just don’t really see that often.”
That doesn’t mean Beecham’s advocating for constantly consuming the NBA uncritically or through rose-tinted glasses, though. And he recognizes that some critical coverage can be more desired by fans.
“It is a lot easier to be successful in the basketball space by being more negative than positive, yeah. Some of my most viewed videos are from the negative perspective. For example, last year the Chicago Bulls had zero trades at the trade deadline, a team that most people recognized was a mediocre roster with some expiring contracts and some valuable pieces. They did zero trades.
“And me being a passionate Bulls’ fans, the minute that the trade deadline hit, 2:00 p.m. I think was the time here in Central, I made a video just basically honestly trashing the people in charge making these big decisions. And that video was my most-viewed video of the month in the first 12 hours after I posted it. You know that is not always my approach, obviously, we enjoy basketball. But I think there has to be a balance there.”
Even when it comes to criticism of teams and players, though, Beecham is still doing it from a perspective of love for the league and the sport. And he said the positive support that viewpoint has received is what led to him taking Enjoy Basketball from a mantra to a company.
“I started it as a mantra, and I’m looking at the comments section and the people are saying it with me. And then it became like a real-life business.”
Enjoy Basketball as a company revolves around that mantra, with Beecham saying their top goal is to build a community that feels the same way.
“The business itself, it is like the name says it all. We’re just trying to continue to preach how much the game matters to us and how fun basketball is when you take it at face value. And we just want to curate a community of people that also enjoy basketball.”
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“It basically started off as a merch brand,” he said. “Watching other creators create companies, it was something I really was passionate about. … A lot of creators with millions of subscribers went from just content creators to businesspeople and I based. I admired that. So we started off as merch and it was like, ‘Hold on, we may have something here on the content side.’”
On the podcast network front in particular, Enjoy Basketball has three shows under its umbrella. The lineup there includes Numbers on the Board with Beecham and three of his childhood friends, Beecham’s solo podcast Small Ball with Kenny Beecham, and the recently-launched basketball interview show T’d Up With Pierre Andresen. Those podcasts are in conjunction with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, and Beecham said working with that company has been a terrific experience.
“It’s been amazing. You know, we met with the Omaha team a few years back as we were just figuring out our options. We were with Turner/Bleacher Report/House of Highlights for some time…we hit free agency, and we took meetings from so many different people, and Omaha felt like it was the best fit for us. They had very similar ideas about what content was.”
Beecham said he and Enjoy Basketball are trying to bring the same kind of critical-but-positive approach to the NBA that Manning has brought to his NFL projects.
“If you think about who Peyton Manning is, and you think about the ManningCast and all of the different projects he’s on, he’s always preaching how much he just enjoys football and the NFL,” Beecham said. “Very rarely are you going to hear Peyton Manning say anything super negative about the league. So it just became a really good match.
“They were looking for basketball content, we happened to have at that point one of the biggest basketball podcast that wasn’t led by a former player, so it became a match made in heaven. And we’ve been enjoying our time with them. The team that they’ve curated has meshed very seamlessly with our team. And it’s been great: how many people get to say that Peyton Manning’s their boss? That’s pretty cool, right?”