Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith discusses Lloyd Pierce’s coat drive
Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith helped with assistant coach Lloyd Pierce’s holiday coat drive at Horizon House in Indianapolis.
INDIANAPOLIS — Aaron Nesmith sees untapped potential for athletes and basketball players in particular on the social media front, so the Pacers forward is teaming up with two other NBA players and several other stakeholders to create a social media app built exclusively for basketball.
According to a press release, Nesmith, Cavaliers guard Darius Garland and Celtics guard Payton Pritchard are launching an iOS social media app called Off Court, which will formally launch on Oct. 17. The app allows players to be social media creators and gives them more opportunity to monetize content. According to the release, players can “drop merch, run subscriptions, and post exclusive content, while also sharing podcasts and day-in-the-life vlogs.”
“Players have always been the culture,” Nesmith said in the release. “Now we finally own the platform too.”
According to the release, the idea came from Mac Hunt, Nesmith’s former teammate and roommate and Vanderbilt who is also a co-founder and the CEO of Off Court. Hunt was a walk-on at Vanderbilt and played in just four games, but he also got into music as a singer/songwriter and developed a following on TikTok. On that app, he saw many creators monetizing their influence, but also saw athlete content driving engagement but noticed athletes weren’t benefitting in the same way. Hunt approached Nesmith, Garland — who also played at Vanderbilt — and fellow co-founder Kevin Fee about the idea and Pritchard eventually also jumped on board.
“Players fuel the game, but they’ve never owned the tools to build with it,” Hunt said in the press release. “That’s the contradiction we’re fixing.”
According to the release, “Off Court combines elements of Instagram, YouTube, Patreon, and Snapchat into a basketball-only hub.” It says they already have several NBA players on board as content creators and intend to involve WNBA and college players as well.
“This isn’t just about posting,” Nesmith said in the release. “It’s about ownership. Athletes have never had that before.”