That bold claim was further echoed by …

That bold claim was further echoed by commissioner Adam Silver, in an interview with Ben Thompson of Stratechery. Silver said, “This is going to be, without doubt, one of the most important relationships that the NBA is going to have going forward because it’s gonna define how we relate to our fans.” So this is significant, or at least the NBA wants it to be. The meaning of the merger is also a bit hard to parse for sports fans, beyond the fact that the NBA just joined forces with one of earth’s most powerful technology companies as a means of improving its product. The commissioner has talked in terms of getting the NBA from a “one to many” experience to a “one to one” experience. While that makes some sense, it’s not easy to picture what it means tangibly. Isn’t sports all about having a collective “one to many” experience? Does a “personalized experience” mean Kings fans now get their own unique reality in which the Kings actually win games? After some phone calls and some digging, I got a better sense of what the NBA envisions for itself and why this is happening.