An Interview With The NBA Research & Development Department
The viral account on your FYP.
If Bravo and ESPN had a baby, it would be Impersonal Foul. This newsletter is free, but consider becoming a paying subscriber for $6/month to support the work that I’m doing.
For partnership inquiries or to just say hello, email madeline@impersonalfoul.com.
At least a dozen people sent me a link to a new Instagram account called NBA Research & Development Department after they posted a Reels determining how many Oreos tall Victor Wembanyama was.
I was intrigued. Was this some sort of subtle #spon con by Nabisco? A soft launch of an NBA partnership next season? Or was this just Adam Silver’s finsta?
In the bio, the account described itself as the “…official unofficial testing lab for the NBA” and provided a phone number for leaving feedback for the NBA.
I started seeing more videos pop up on my FYP on that other app—including my personal favorite: Is an NBA player’s on the court performance impacted by a courtside baddie being in attendance?
Another outlines where Los Angeles Lakers players should be traded to based on their astrocartography. If you know anything about
, we looked at Aaron Rodger’s astrocartography to determine that Rodgers shouldn’t play for the Jets, so this was very on brand.After a bit of digging, I discovered the account was created by Take-To-Interactive in partnership with the NBA as part of their new venture, Take-Two Media.
The new venture combines “…competitive gaming, social and long-form entertainment programming and live events,” according to a press release.
And, of course, it would do my readers a disservice if I didn’t reach out to Cayla DeRegis, NBAT2’s Director of Social, and one of the brains behind the account.
DeRegis shared how the team came up with the account, why they decided to launch with that Oreo video, and more.
I’ve made this newsletter free, but if you like this conversation consider becoming a paying subscriber to support the work that I’m doing.
Enjoy!
How @NBAResDev Was Created
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Can you share how you came up with the idea for the account?
When we first started developing ideas for content, our creative meetings were super unstructured— we would sit around, pitch ideas, and see what made us laugh.
Lauren—who’s in a lot of our videos—came up with an idea to survey people from different cities about what they'd want their NBA team to look like (team name, mascot, colors, etc.) if we expanded there.
We kept building on more survey and science-y ideas like that until someone on the creative team suggested turning all of these ideas into a full-on NBA research and development department that we build out on social.
We all had so much fun building out that world, we knew it was going to be super fun and entertaining to make—which is usually a good sign that it'll be fun and entertaining for people to watch.
I read the press release in The Hollywood Reporter about the partnership between the NBA and Take-Two Interactive. It hints at creating more content similar to this. What gap are you aiming to fill in the market for basketball fans?
There’s so much incredible content out there about basketball as a sport, but we saw an opportunity when it comes to the culture and people in and around basketball.
We’re focused on the human side of the game—the players and their quirks, the fans with unhinged theories, and the moments that happen off the court.
Our goal is to close the gap between players and fans through storytelling that feels personal and entertaining. We want fans to feel like they’re not just watching the game, but like they’re actually a part of it.
While I’m mainly focused on the content side of things, we’ll also be exploring other ways people can engage with the game—like through a competitive gaming league, live events, and collaborations that connect basketball to the culture around it.
Roughly how long does it take to research each topic?
It really depends on the topic—some of the quicker ones take 2–3 hours to pull all the data together, while others have taken a couple days to compile.
My favorite video is when you analyzed on-the-court performance based on whether there’s a courtside baddie attended the game. How did you come up with that idea?
Victoria (also featured in a few videos!) from our design team slacked me after OG
killed it when Suni Lee attended a Knicks game and was like you MUST study the
effect of hot girls on the court.
There's so many times when the Baddie Performance Index has come into play— we couldn't even fit them all into the video.
Between coming up with the concept, researching it, editing, and shooting it, how many people are working on the series right now?
There’s a small team of us working on the series right now—a couple of producers, a strategist, an editor, a designer, and me (the Director of Social here at NBAT2).
What’s been your favorite topic to dig into so far?
This is so tough— I studied engineering in college, so I have a soft spot for any idea that involves way too much math for the result (like when we found out when Alaska will produce the next NBA star), but the most fun to make was definitely when we traded the Lakers based on astrocartography.
Have there been any topics that didn’t make it, but you still feel strongly about?
Yes, absolutely. We're still a new account, so there's a lot of topics we haven't gotten to touch on yet.
We’re especially interested in making more videos that tap into identity—from where you’re from, to how you dress, to who you root for, and even beyond that to the things that really make you who you are.
We want to connect fans to their favorite players on a more personal level, in ways that still feel really absurd and fun.
I noticed you launched the account without any hashtags or an intro video. What was the strategy behind that? I thought it was super smart.
I don’t really think hashtags matter that much anymore—if the content is good, people will find it.
The algorithm is smarter than a hashtag, and if we focus on making ideas we really believe in, we know the right people will find it.
If we didn’t have fun making it, we know people won’t have fun watching it. As for the intro video, we didn’t feel the need to explain ourselves right away.
We’d rather let people figure it out over time and help shape it with us. Fan feedback— all the comments, DMs, phone calls, emails we get— isn’t just important to the brand, it is the brand.
It drives the content we make and will help shape the entire world of NBA R&D, including the research characters we’re building.
Your first video was seeing how many Oreos tall Wemby is. How did you come up with that and why did you decide to launch with that as your first episode?
We keep every idea the team’s ever had (the good, the bad, and the very bad), and once we locked in on NBA R&D, we went back into our idea sheet and picked the ones that felt like a fit.
Measuring Wemby in Oreos felt like the right kind of nonsense to launch with. It perfectly captures what we’re doing: putting a lot of effort into low stakes results.
Also, that shoot was absolute chaos. I was working remotely that day and kept checking in on the team and every time I did, the Oreos had fallen again. It took forever.
What’s next for the series? Will we see any player cameos in upcoming videos?
I can’t reveal it all, but we’ll definitely have player cameos coming through. We’ll also be launching new types of experiments—hosting focus groups at our NYC office, showing up at NBA events to interview fans and players, and running player-specific experiments in the lab when they come in to the office.
We're also planning to get on more platforms soon so we can get more fans engaging with the lab.
Is there anything else about the series you think my readers would want to know?
Call us! If you have an experiment you want us to run, we'll do it and even call you back with the results before the video goes out.
Our number is 929-548-1578.
Other Pointless Sports Gossip
I’m sorry, but you cannot tell me that Nikola Jokic doesn’t view his job as a professional basketball player as a 9-5 when he’s reacting like this after one of his horses won a race. (via X)
Uh oh: A bunch of NFL players face fines and possible suspension for allegedly selling their allotted Super Bowl tickets for above face value. (via ESPN)
After Red Bull’s longstanding principal Christian Horner was fired, their star driver Max Verstappen has some…things to say… Next season of Drive To Survive is gonna be so good. (via F1)
Ummm…did you know that Mussolini’s great-grandson is a professional soccer player in Italy??? (via The Athletic)
If Bravo and ESPN had a baby, it would be Impersonal Foul. This newsletter is free, but consider becoming a paying subscriber for $6/month to support the work that I’m doing.
You can follow me on Instagram here, Twitter here and TikTok here. Enjoy the endless void of content!
Excellent article!
this is really really good!