And they were roommates! 🏟️

Happy Friday! Between listening to TTPD and watching the NBA/NHL playoffs we hope you can squeeze some data storytelling into your schedule. Our agenda this week includes:

🏟️🏒🏀 One bedroom | 55 bathroom apartment
💸🏈📝 Can I get a raise yet?
🏎️📺🤝 Michael Jordan x SportsBall partnership

And they were roommates! 🏠

We’ve all had roommates. Save a couple bucks, have a little fun; it’s great when you’re in a city in your 20s. 🍻

But did you know pro sports teams have roommates too? 🤔 That’s right, over a third of NBA and NHL teams share a stadium during their overlapping seasons.

There are 5 stadiums/cities in particular that are impacted as the playoffs kickoff. Arenas in Boston, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York currently host at least two postseason teams, often on back-to-back nights. 🌙

What’s the catch? The arenas are essentially one-bedroom, 55-bathroom apartments.

Imagine you and a roommate split time in a studio apartment, you’d need to change the sheets each time you switch. 🛌 The same thing goes with arenas.

Between an NBA and NHL game on back-to-back nights, 60 workers will jump into action, switching out the playing surface. The process looks like this ⬇️

• 📦 200 slabs of NBA court are unhooked and packed away.

• 🪑 500 seats are removed from around the court to make room for the larger hockey rink

• 🪵 540 pieces of insulated plywood are removed from the surface of the ice

Voila! In just two hours you’re ready for a hockey game! 🏒

Packed schedule 📅

You might be thinking “Am I crazy or did one of those stadiums in the visualization above have 3 teams instead of 2?”

No, your eyes do not deceive you. In Los Angeles, Crytpo.com Arena hosts the Kings 🏒, Lakers 🏀, and the Clippers 🏀, all of whom are playing their first-round playoff games this week.

As you might expect, this leads to a scheduling nightmare as the arena hosted 210 events in 2023. 😵‍💫

That’s a lot of “changing the sheets”.

But at least the basketball teams can share a court, right? 👯

Wrong. The Lakers and the Clippers have different logos, colors, and branding so no double-dipping.

A lot goes into keeping the sports world moving and we wanted to highlight the exceptional work off the field by people working in the sports industry that aren’t necessarily pro athletes. 🫡

Never split the difference 💵

Last night’s NFL draft was not only the biggest day of the offseason in football, but it was also the biggest day of the millennium for the host city of Detroit. 🚗

More than 275,000 fans descended on the Motor City to watch Caleb Williams get drafted to the Bears as the overall first pick, just missing the 300,000 spectator mark of the 1889 World Fair in Detroit. 🎡

Caleb has been the bell of the ball 💅 in the NCAA for 2 years now, projected as the first overall pick since he was a sophomore in college.

He’s also one of the most anticipated quarterbacks of the last decade and could surely negotiate a huge payday with his new employer… Right?

Not so fast. Since 2011, rookies haven’t been allowed to negotiate their own draft contracts; the NFL sets the price for them.

This shift happened after rookies demanded exorbitant salaries before ever playing a game in the NFL, highlighted by Sam Bradford’s record $78M contract with $50M guaranteed in 2010. 🤑 

The change is good for the league but I’m not sure I’d want to be Cam Newton, the first overall pick in 2011 just after the new rule cut more than 70% of his potential payout. 🤒

The race is on 🐎

Playoffs can be complicated. High seeds, low seeds, home-court advantage, no thanks!

To make it easy on you, the casual fan, we crafted basic playoff trackers to understand where we’re at in the tournament journey.

It’s as simple as this: the first team to win 16 games is the league champion. No need for the other fluff, just get to the magic number.

NBA 🏀

NHL 🏒

Each week of the NBA and NHL playoffs we’ll post these trackers to update you on the current win count of each team to see who’s winning the race.

SportsBall 🤝 Michael Jordan: on the big screen at Talladega

It’s not every day you find yourself sharing an experience with the best basketball player of all time. 🐐

This past weekend SportsBall was doing some research (bachelor party) at the GEICO 500 NASCAR race in Talladega where the team owned by Michael Jordan won the race.

After the victory, the jumbotron flashed up the second and last interview of the day; an exuberant MJ talking about the victory. 🎉 

The first and only other interview? That would be Riley, correctly answering NASCAR trivia questions at intermission with a Budweiser in hand. 🍺

Thanks and have a great weekend!

— Riley and Claire