制造潮流

Joe Drape

You may long for the old Boston Garden and its parquet floor. You may miss the short shorts of John Havlicek and Larry Bird. But the championship banners - all 17 of them - are still here in this newer arena called TD Garden， and they tell the story of one of the most iconic franchises in sports.

你大概向往老的波士頓花园球馆及其拼花地板。也许你怀念约翰·哈弗里切克和拉里·伯德的短球裤。但总冠军旗帜——总共17面——仍然悬挂在名叫TD花园的新球馆，这些冠军旗帜讲述了体育史上标志性球队之一的凯尔特人的故事。

But I didnt come for history.

但我并不是为历史来的。

Instead， I wanted to know how the N.B.A. has become the Netflix of sports properties， a league whose players are helping transform the way sports are being bought， sold and consumed in much the same way the streaming services have changed entertainment.

相反，我想知道NBA如何变成了体育界的Netflix。我想知道这个联盟是如何在球员的帮助下改变了体育被购买，销售，消费的方式，就像流媒体改变娱乐圈一样。

In the land of likes and#hashtags and stories， LeBron， K.D.， Kyrie and their peers are usually just seconds away from going viral. The N.B.A. and its stars have pumped out a staggering amount of content across social media platforms：Twitter， Instagram， Facebook， YouTube and Snapchat. So far this season， the league claims， it has had one billion actions such as likes or shares and two billion views of video highlight packages or player proclamations on these platforms.

在“点赞”和“热词”以及故事性方面，勒布朗·詹姆斯，凯文·杜兰特，凯里·欧文和其他NBA球员通常距离病毒性传播只有一步之遥。NBA及其明星在Twitter，Instagram，Facebook，Youtube和Snapchat这些社交媒体平台上产出了数量惊人的内容。联盟表示，本赛季截至目前，他们在社交媒体上获得了10亿点赞或分享，视频或球员在这些平台上的视频点击量达到20亿。

No one has ever accused the Celtics of being hip， nor the city itself of welcoming progress with open arms. The Boston Globe recently published a multipart series on the citys troubled racial past and present. And the Celtics havent harnessed the power of social media as aggressively and creatively as， say， the Atlanta Hawks or Portland Trail Blazers.

没人指责凯尔特人想变得时髦的打算，也没人指责波士顿这座城市接纳改变的做法。《波士顿环球报》最近刊登了一系列文章，讲述这座城市种族问题令人困扰的过去和现状。而凯尔特人还没有像亚特兰大老鹰或者波特兰开拓者一样那么激进地发挥社交媒体平台的威力。

Yet even the hidebound Celtics are trying to jump on board.

即便如此，连守旧的凯尔特人也想跟随这股大潮了。

"On the surface， we are a traditional old-school brand，” said Rich Gotham， the Celticspresident，“but underneath we are quite evolved."

“从表面上看，我们是一个传统，老派的品牌。”凯尔特人总裁里奇·哥谭表示，“但内部我们的进化很快。”

The teams ownership group， led by chairman Wyc Grousbeck， is composed of private-equity veterans. Fifteen years ago， the group bought the Celtics for$360 million， a bargain. They not only wanted to hang another championship banner here — the last had come in 1986 - but also sought to unlock the value in what had become a moribund franchise.

主席維科·格罗斯贝克领头，凯尔特人的所有者是一群私人股权投资者。15年前，这些人用3.6亿美元这个优惠的价格买下了凯尔特人。他们想的不仅是再升起一面总冠军旗帜——当时最近一次夺冠还是1986年——他们还想解锁一个濒死球队的全部价值。

Enter Gotham， a tech executive， charged with identifying the teams consumers and making it easy for them to fall in love again with the Celtics. It helped that money guys and tech evangelists were becoming part of other N.B.A. franchises as well as the leagues front office.

作为科技企业的管理层，哥谭首先确定了球队消费者主题，让他们能够更轻松地重新爱上凯尔特人。有钱人和科技界人士进入NBA球队，成为联盟管理人员在这个过程中也起到了作用。

Their goal was to push the N.B.A. past the N.F.L. in popularity and， yes， make a ton of money.

他们的目标，是推动NBA的人气超过NFL，当然，也要赚很多钱。

When the Celtics were losing， it meant employing "dynamic pricing，" otherwise known as dropping the cost of tickets to put fannies in the seat. When the team was winning， it meant presenting at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference about the role of advanced analytics in the Celticssuccess.

凯尔特人成绩不好时，球队会采用“动态定价”，也就是降低球票价格，留住球场观众。当球队赢球时，他们会在MIT斯隆体育分析大会上展示高阶数据分析在球队成功中起到的作用。

Both here in Boston， and around the league， executives came to the conclusion that their most valuable asset was a generation of basketball players who were bigger， faster and more talented than those who came before. Players who also cared deeply about how they dressed， what music they listened to and what was going on in the world.

不管是凯尔特人还是整个联盟，高管们均得出一个结论，他们最有价值的资产，就是比前任更高，更快，更有天赋的一代球员。而这一代球员同样关注自己的穿着，听的音乐以及世界上正在发生的一切。

Even better， these players had come of age with smartphones and social media and were eager to broadcast their tastes and opinions to whoever was listening.

锦上添花的是，这些球员来自智能手机和社交媒体时代，他们更加渴望将自己的品味和观点传播给愿意倾听的人群。

"We have thoughtful， socially conscious and digitally savvy players，" Gotham said. "All we needed to do is turn them loose."

“我们拥有的是有思想，有社会意识，懂得数字时代的球员。”哥谭表示，“我们需要的就是放松对他们的限制。”

Imagine hearing that from the Patriots owner Robert Kraft across town， or Jerry Jones in Dallas， or any N.F.L. executive.

想象一下从凯尔特人同城的爱国者队老板罗伯特·克拉夫特，达拉斯牛仔老板杰里·琼斯或者NFL的高管口中能否听到这样的说法。

No one in the N.B.A.s league office flinches when LeBron James wears one black and one white shoe with the word "equality" written on them， as he did on Sunday in a game against the Washington Wizards in the shadow of the White House. He then posted a photograph of them on Instagram， which quickly garnered more than one million likes.

当勒布朗·詹姆斯周日在白宫所在地华盛顿与奇才的比赛中穿上一只黑，一只白，写着“平等”字样的球鞋上场比赛时，联盟高管没人感到害怕。詹姆斯随后在Instagram上发了一张球鞋的照片，很快便获得了超过100万的点赞。

The league helps its stars expand their reach by offering regular programming on Twitter， by live-streaming games on Facebook and by blasting out highlights on Snapchat.

通过在Twitter上定期发出内容，在Facebook上直播比赛，在Snapchat上发送精彩镜头，联盟帮助他们的球星巨大扩大影响力。

This partnership has not only given voice and weight to different points of view， but it has also helped drive interest in N.B.A. players off the court.

这种合作关系不仅让球员得以发出不同观点，同样也让外界对NBA球员场外生活产生了兴趣。

"Its important to remember how black-dominated the N.B.A. is as a sport， and as a result you are getting viewpoints on civil rights and equality that you dont necessarily hear all the time，" said Ramesh Srinivasan， a U.C.L.A professor and a scholar of technology， politics and society."The league knows it cant stop these athletes， so instead they have embraced them and provided a bigger megaphone."

“重要的是要记住，NBA是一个黑人为主体的项目，因此你会听到平常不太容易听到的关于民权和平等这类话题。”UCLA教授拉梅什·斯里尼瓦桑表示，他也是研究科技、政治和社会问题的学者，“联盟知道他们无法阻止球员，所以他们接纳了球员，给他们提供了更大的扩音器。”

This is the same N.B.A. that in the late 1970s and early 1980s worried that it was losing popularity because it was too black. This is the same N.B.A. that in 2005 instituted a dress code to distance itself from hip-hop culture.

这还是那个在70年代末，80年代初担心因为“黑人过多”而流失球迷的NBA。这也是那个在2005年实施着装令，希望与嘻哈文化切割的NBA。

Now Drake， Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper are courtside fixtures as well the source of the music blasted out of arena sound systems.

如今，奥布瑞·德雷克、肯德里克·拉马尔和Chance the Rapper都是比赛常客，球馆功放系统也都在播放他们的音乐。

Of the hundreds of millions of N.B.A. fans， 46 percent are under the age of 35， according to Gotham. Each morning， my soon-to-be-13-year-old-son watches the previous nights highlights on Snapchat. He heads to YouTube， where compilation videos of each basket can turn a two-hour game into 20 minutes.

哥譚表示，数亿NBA球迷中，46%年龄在35岁以下。每天早上，我即将年满13岁的儿子都会在Snapchat上观看前一晚比赛的集锦。他还会去Youtube，上面有很多只有进球的视频，这些剪辑能把一场两个小时的比赛缩短为20分钟。

"On the surface， we are a traditional old-school brand，” said Rich Gotham， the Celticspresident， “but underneath we are quite evolved."

“从表面上看，我们是一个传统，老派的品牌。”凯尔特人总裁里奇·哥谭表示，“但内部我们的进化很快。”