NBA Awards in New York

A month into agency life after a decade inside the NBA, an RFP landed for the league's first-ever Awards Show in New York: design a set, define the process, and deliver quick-turn custom graphics to talent as they arrived. I split it into two parallel builds — the look, and the machine behind it. The look started as a research binge: pulling comps by the dozen and reverse-engineering how each was built. LED wall or LCD? Plexiglass flooring — and if so, what color reads best on camera? I landed on a 10x10 LED screen with reflective flooring for a mirror effect, then had to source all of it in New York from a desk in San Diego. Same long-distance game for the crew: I scoured reels across the New York market until I found the right freelance DP — in Philly. Then New York taught me a lesson in logistics: the venue — Basketball City on Pier 36 — was a union house, meaning only union hands could touch anything on-site — down to the crew delivering the reflective flooring. That added a second full round of remote vetting, sourcing, and onboarding before a single case rolled through the door. The graphics were their own production. We knew the nominees but not the guest list, so we built custom backgrounds for every nominee — team colors, highlights, stylized name treatments — plus themed generic sets so any guest could step in without breaking the look, and I shepherded the full package through approvals with both the client and the NBA. The machine: enough footage for a punchy 10-second cut, but under 90 seconds per guest so the station never became a bottleneck. Then the owner asked if I'd direct the talent myself. I'd never done it. I said yes anyway.