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| Meta Title | Do you know ball? Inside the internet's most obsessive basketball debate. |
| Meta Description | YouTuber Michelle Khare talks about the creative process behind 'Challenge Accepted,' creating content for an audience, and YouTube's move to compete with traditional TV networks. |
| Meta Canonical | com,mashable!/article/what-is-ball-knowledge-explainer-trend s443 |
| Boilerpipe Text | YouTube's television strategy relies on creators like Khare to know what audiences want to see.
Credit: Mashable Composite; Michelle Khare / Youtube
Welcome to
Small Talk
, a series where we catch up with the internet's favorite Extremely Online individuals offline.
At this year'sÂ
Made on YouTube
 event on Sept. 18, creators like Michelle Khare received exciting news: They will soon be able to organize their videos into seasons and episodes, much like traditional television shows.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan invited Khare on stage for a Q&A to discuss the announcement. Khare is the creator of
Challenge Accepted
, a high-stakes digital series in which the 32-year-old takes on challenges ranging from working as a 911 dispatcher to training as a ballerina. Her videos, known for their premium quality, run between 15 and 24 minutes and consistently attract millions of views. With nearly 5 million subscribers, Khare has built a dedicated audience.
This announcement comes as
YouTube
continues to dominate as the most popular streaming service on U.S. televisions, with
150 million people watching YouTube
on TV screens monthly. The platform's success is driven by its hands-off approach, trusting creators like Khare to craft content that resonates with audiences. Earlier this year,
Mohan urged Emmy voters
to recognize YouTube creators, though popular shows like
Hot Ones
,
Chicken Shop Date
, and
Good Mythical Morning
were
overlooked for nominations
. This latest update solidifies YouTube's growing role in the television landscape.
You May Also Like
Following the announcement, Khare spoke with Mashable about the new feature, what it means for
Challenge Accepted
, and how her creative process fuels YouTube's evolving TV strategy.
Mashable: Have you ever thought about Challenge Accepted in terms of episodes and seasons prior to this announcement?
Michelle Khare:
Our team always tries our best to think about things in terms of seasons and episodes. We think about, "What's the tone of this show? What's the release cadence? What's our format?" Previously, we organized things by season in playlists. Now through the new structure of the television app, we can formally organize things in terms of genre, episode, season, series. It just elevates our content even further.Â
What's your reaction to the update?Â
As creators, we can only focus on the content we create and we put it on the platform. It's really cool that the platform is evolving so that it positions our content as premium. I imagine it has the same feeling as when someone's in a movie and they see the poster in Times Square. As someone who loves premium television content, seeing our stuff in that limelight was really cool. It affirms what we're already doing with
Challenge Accepted
and it makes me even more excited to lean into that episodic format.Â
I imagine it gives you more control of how a viewer interacts with your content.Â
When you watch your favorite premium show, sometimes you'll watch one episode and realize you have 12 more episodes you can finish right after. I hope that [the update] will encourage people to watch more of
Challenge Accepted
when they stumble upon a standalone episode. They may realize, "Oh my gosh, I can watch more of this show, and it's all organized here for me." It takes a lot of the thinking and digging work out of the equation for the viewer.
Do you think the new format will make it easier to attract new viewers?
Right now to discover new content, you open the home pages to tons of videos, or the sidebar, when you're watching one video, you see a bunch of suggested. Now, you're not only introduced to one episode or a new creator but the world of this creator.
Mashable Trend Report
When did you start making your videos for television? What was the process like of shifting over to that level of production?
I'm gonna be honest, it wasn't a conscious choice of wanting to be seen on television. Our team is a mixture of people from both traditional and digital backgrounds. We have people who have worked on feature films, Oscar-nominated stuff, and
Saturday Night Live
. Our output now feels premium, which is a wonderful thing to hear. But genuinely, it's just been about, "How can we make the best 30 minutes possible out of this story?"
Our team leans into [television] because they are from traditional television. But that said, creating for YouTube is a different animal because we're creating with the audience in mind. We're creating with the mindset of respecting the viewers' time, listening to their suggestions, and being aware that their time can be spent anywhere, and that it's on us to make a story that commands and interests their attention for long periods of time.
How do you choose a challenge?
Many of our initial episodes were born out of a whiteboard brainstorm of "What are Michelle's biggest fears?" and "What are the unique situations to put me in to confront them head-on?" We use that as a building block to use the challenges as a way to overcome fears, because it creates conflict and creates story. For example, I want to be a firefighter, but I'm not brave enough. Or I want to be a pageant queen, but I don't know if I'm graceful. We started using those one sentence formats to kind of inspire the different things we do.Â
That's so interesting, I wondered how you created so many challenges with a similar level of intensity.
Conflict creates story. Story creates growth. Watching other people grow are the stories that we're most interested in, whether they're scripted or unscripted. That's really the angle we were coming back from.
Are there any jobs you tried where you thought, "Maybe I should have pursued this instead of being a creator?"
I love being a creator, and I'm not just saying that because we're at Made on YouTube 2024. I really, really love it. Being a professional jack of all trades is my ideal profession. Behind the scenes, I love running our studio, our production company, and our team and growing into [being a] CEO and leader. It's such a privilege to be an entrepreneur in this space. I hope to be doing it for a really, really long time.
Do you have a golden rule for for content creation?
Because our episodes are intense and in-depth, we have a pretty thorough vetting process before we greenlight an episode. We think about how we feel it will perform. Is it something our audience has been requesting? Are we, as a team, excited by it? That's often the question I find us asking the most. Analytics and getting feedback from the audience is wonderful, but we don't move forward unless our team's heart is in it. That comes from a practical perspective because if we greenlight a project we're going to be working on it for the next several weeks or months, sometimes even up to a year.
Challenge Accepted
is a show about pursuing novel life experiences, and I once heard that people who have more novel life experiences feel like their lives are longer. I think about that a lot. It's such a privilege to be able to think critically about where our time is spent and how much joy is created in the day-to-day. Ironically, that has led to the passion that our audience sees in each individual episode.
Is there a challenge you wouldn't accept?
We're really fortunate that we're in this position where we're continuing to push the envelope. We're very inspired by a lot of other creators around us. I'm excited to play in new worlds. What I love is that if you asked me a year ago what the next 20 episodes of
Challenge Accepted
are going to look like, I probably could have told you the next five. But fast forward a year, and there are things that we've released this year that I would have never even conceptualized a year ago.
What I love about the internet is that you can create quickly versus the traditional Hollywood system, where we would have greenlit several episodes a year ago, shoot them whatever, they don't come out for another entire year. A person can grow a lot in a year. So I love being able to create and release as it is relevant, impactful, meaningful, and heartfelt to us in each moment.
What advice do you have for someone just starting and looking for financial stability as a creator?
There's a reason so many people want to be content creators. I'm not going to lie: It rocks. But it's a very slow process that begins with creating content and learning your voice while you have another job. You're doing it in your free time to the point where you can't wait for the weekend because you get to work on this other thing. From there, you develop your voice and consistency. You can fail in a safe environment. Then, you can grow to the point where that becomes your full-time thing. But you have to feel really solid about your content before it becomes your whole world.
How do you combat creative burnout? Obviously, you have a team that supports you.Â
The people I look up to the most are very busy. I love moving at a fast pace. But the best parts of the job are also stepping away from the content and doing things that have nothing to do with making YouTube videos. You have to be a real person to tell real stories. You have to live life to have a story to tell. That time away from filming and producing and the office is so important to know what's really going on.Â
Elena is a tech reporter and the resident Gen Z expert at Mashable. She covers TikTok and digital trends. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in American History. Email her atÂ
[email protected]
 or follow herÂ
@ecaviar_
.
Three basketball content creators are trying to define the internet's favorite sports flex and keep the market from oversaturating.
Credit: Zain bin Awais / Mashable / Getty Images
There's a moment, familiar to anyone who has spent time in basketball corners of the internet, where someone drops a name into the chat — Kosta Koufos, Sundiata Gaines, Jamario Moon — and the room either goes electric or shakes its head in disappointment. On social media, this is called "ball knowledge."
The term has evolved from casual sports-bar shorthand into something closer to a culture and a game of one-upmanship. However, in the hands of a growing class of basketball content creators, it's become a thriving niche on social media. But ask three of the people who've helped shape that culture what ball knowledge actually means, and you'll get three different answers.
More than a name drop
The most common misconception about ball knowledge is that it's just trivia, i.e., name a player nobody remembers and look cool in front of your friends for your esoteric wisdom on early 2010s Detroit Pistons benchwarmers.
Nicholas Harrell, a writer who helps run the
basketball media account halfpast*noon
, pushes back on that immediately. "I wouldn't necessarily limit it to being able to name a specific role player from whatever era," he says. "I think it's got to be a recognition of how the system as a game works in its entirety, and the individual roles that those players play."
So, for example, you're in a circle with a friend, and you name-drop Nik Stauskas as "elite ball knowledge." That's table stakes, the bare minimum. Explaining why Stauskas worked — or why he didn't — is the real test.
Nick Coutracos, who has built a following under the name
Nick Knows Ball,
takes a similar but slightly more democratic view. For him, ball knowledge is "not only knowing players that the average basketball fan wouldn't know, but it's also just understanding how the game of basketball is played." He's careful to add that "you can't just know a random role player that you saw once and remember his name and say, oh yeah, that's ball knowledge."
The distinction matters to him. Coutracos, who was already running a successful basketball media account, didn't start posting about ball knowledge to gatekeep — he started because he was frustrated watching posts celebrate knowing names like Brandon Jennings and Kirk Hinrich and calling it elite ball knowledge. "I remember scrolling through these comments, reading them like, this is a joke, right?" He started posting ball-knowledge-specific videos, including stories about obscure players and reactions to other pages' "elite pulls," and quickly found that his audience felt the same quiet indignation. Ball knowledge was getting too casual, and people wanted a higher standard.
Ethan Ward, the New Zealand–born, Australia-based creator behind
ForgottableNBA
, came at it from a different angle. His page — which he started in September 2024, hitting 10,000 followers within two months — is built around short clips and literary captions about players on the fringes of NBA history. He describes ball knowledge the way a connoisseur might describe wine: There are levels, the bar is always rising, and what counts today might not count tomorrow.
"If they started for a full season, it's probably not ball knowledge," Ward says. "Especially with the way this kind of genre has ballooned — the threshold is being raised every three months."
Ward's origin story is more accidental. He was thinking about what he calls "a gap in the market" — the fact that he had near-infinite access to play-by-play clips from any NBA season going back years from his freelance work. He started with a single clip,
a missed Cory Joseph floater
. The post read "Forgettable NBA Moment No. 1: Cory Joseph tries to beat the clock but fails." People liked it. As more clips got posted, someone asked for a box score. Then the write-ups got longer. Six months in, Ward was doing full long-form posts, and the responses started coming in within hours of posting.
"I didn't realize there was such an appetite for it," Ward says.
What is ball knowledge?
Every culture has its own vocabulary, and the ball knowledge community is no exception. Over hours of conversation, a surprisingly nuanced taxonomy emerged.
There is, first, the question of what makes someone a "pull" — a term for a player whose name earns respectable nods from your friends when dropped in conversation, for a relative combination of obscurity and nostalgia. Coutracos, Ward, and Harrell agree that the best pull is what the latter calls "obscure and recognizable at the same time." He considers Chris Copeland a good example: a six-foot-nine forward who had one memorable run with the 2013 Knicks, could get hot from three, and left enough of an imprint that real watchers of the game remember him fondly. Arnett Moultrie, by contrast, was a process-era 76er who was miscast as a PF who couldn't shoot in an evolving NBA. He's a respectable pull for only the most hardened of zealots.
Then there is the question of the baseline — the floor of ball knowledge, the name that separates people who genuinely follow the game from people who are just adjacent to it. Every creator has one, and the differences reveal just how personal and relative that floor really is.
For Coutracos, the marker is Kosta Koufos. "[He] is the differentiating factor between ball knowledge and not ball knowledge," he says. "He's the most common ball knowledge player, in my opinion."
Harrell's threshold is a bit more sentimental. He mentions Sundiata Gaines, who hit
a game-winner with the Utah Jazz
and had a memorable run at Georgia in the SEC tournament. Gaines isn't famous, but he's not buried, either. "If people did recognize him, their eyes are going to light up right away," Harrell says. "That's sort of the fun part of it."
Ward, who spent his teenage years watching G League games out of New Zealand, sets the floor considerably deeper, depending on how you look at it. For him, the baseline is simply anyone with a reason to exist in memory: "Someone who has a reason to be remembered. Someone who played a couple years. That would be my current parameters for someone starting out." What that baseline actually looks like, though, shifts constantly.
There is also a category of "overused pull." These are names that became so widely circulated they've lost their value. All three agree without much deliberation: Shaun Livingston's mid-range jumper. Brandon Bass. J.R. Smith reverses dunks. These names have been laundered through so many posts that knowing them signals that you're chronically online, not that you know basketball.
The rules, unwritten and otherwise
A few informal laws of ball knowledge have emerged from the community's ongoing self-governance.
Draft position matters. A lottery pick — even a catastrophic bust — carries an asterisk. Anthony Bennett, the infamous 2013 number-one overall pick who never lived up to his draft position, falls in a gray area: Coutracos thinks he should count because the average fan has probably forgotten him, but acknowledges the logic isn't clean. Alex Len, a top-five pick from that same draft, gets an easy veto. "Top five pick within the last 10 or 15 years — no," Harrell says flatly.
Visibility also counts against you. Kirk Hinrich was a solid NBA role player for roughly a decade, which means he showed up on too many screens to qualify as obscure. College prominence doesn't help either, as a player like Trey Burke gets docked by Ward for his Wooden Award–winning career at Michigan, his deep March Madness run, and his my-player-mode appearances in NBA 2K. That's too much cultural footprint. So players like Shabazz Napier, Jimmer Fredette, or Carsen Edwards wouldn't count as ball knowledge on account of their legendary college runs.
But the most interesting rule is the one about relativity. Ball knowledge, all three creators acknowledge, is context-dependent. Coutracos put it simply: "My 11-year-old cousin comes up to me and talks about Ramon Sessions — whoa, that is very impressive. But if you label yourself an all-knowing ball knower and you're 25 years old and you say Ramon Sessions, it's like, OK, that's not that crazy."
"It's relative," he says. "There are levels."
What's it done for the game
The rise of ball knowledge as a genre has had a measurable effect on how NBA history gets consumed online. Players who spent their careers as footnotes are suddenly the subjects of highlight compilations, long-form write-ups, and spirited comment-section debates.
Ward's ForgettableNBA page is perhaps the clearest expression of this shift. His audience isn't just nodding along. They're asking for box scores. They're pulling up Wikipedia tabs. They're arguing, respectfully, about whether a given player qualifies. A Jason Maxiell compilation went viral within a day of posting. A Rodney Hood write-up got people talking about a player who'd been largely forgotten.
"I kind of bridge the gap between the totally obscure players and the role players that everybody likes," Ward says. He describes a sort of natural selection at work: The players with "verve," with a distinct shot or move or storyline, age better in the culture than the workhorses without it. A player with a reliable midrange is more memeable than a screen-setter. A player with a compelling backstory — like Royce White, the first-round pick who never played due to an anxiety disorder affecting his ability to fly — edges toward ball knowledge even as his career stats don't demand it.
"There's something [where] you go, 'I remember him for a reason,'" Ward says.
Harrell points to what the trend has done for fandom broadly, creating a shared language for the kinds of conversations that used to happen only between lifelong fans at sports bars or on the couch during rain delays. "The general basketball community on TikTok started pushing forward this sports-bar kind of conversation," he says. "Naming role players with your friends almost."
Coutracos has watched it become something even more personal. He gets recognized at pickup gyms. He gets tagged in posts about players he's never covered. His comment sections have become arenas where people prove their knowledge or cheerfully get corrected. "I don't want to give off the vibe of gatekeeping the sport," he says. "My main goal is for them to learn about basketball and laugh a little too."
Raising the bar
There's one thing all three creators seem quietly anxious about: saturation.
Names that were genuinely obscure six months ago now have compilation videos and Reddit threads. The posts that used to require actual recall are getting gamed by people who've simply been online long enough to absorb the canon.
"The goalposts are going to keep moving," Ward says. He imagines a near future where Gigi Datome — the Italian forward who had a brief cup of coffee with the Detroit Pistons — stops being an elite pull and becomes a baseline. "Unless it reaches a point of saturation where it doesn't quite get there. I hope Austin Daye stays Detroit-specific knowledge."
Harrell frames it as an authenticity problem. "If your single memory of Shaun Livingston is the mid-range and not everything that came before in his career — which is even more interesting — that's a good example of fake ball knowledge versus real ball knowledge."
But here, too, there's consensus: The solution isn't exclusion, it's depth. All three push back on the idea that ball knowledge should become a velvet rope, a way to dismiss people who aren't sufficiently obsessed.
"I don't want people to be discouraged by learning about the sport of basketball," Coutracos says. "Just because you don't know a random player from 2012 who played seven games doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to learn about the sport."
Harrell is even more direct: "I wouldn't want it used as a barrier to entry for certain conversations. I don't want it to become a status symbol, necessarily."
What they want, it turns out, is for more people to go down the rabbit hole. To look up Sundiata Gaines. To find out how Kosta Koufos actually played. To discover that Jamario Moon had a dunk package that holds up, and that he played seventy-something games with the Raptors before losing games for Michael Jordan's Bobcats.
That's the core of it, really. Do you know ball? You could.
Assistant Editor, General Assignments
Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and
Mother Jones
.
In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and greatly enjoys Detroit sports. If you have any tips or want to talk shop about the Lions, you can reach out to him on BlueskyÂ
@offbrandchance.bsky.social
 or by email atÂ
[email protected]
. |
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# Michelle Khare on 'Challenge Accepted,' making episodic content, and YouTube's television era
YouTube's television strategy relies on creators like Khare to know what audiences want to see.
By
[Elena Cavender](https://mashable.com/author/elenacavender)
Elena Cavender
Elena is a tech reporter and the resident Gen Z expert at Mashable. She covers TikTok and digital trends. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in American History. Email her at [\[email protected\]](https://mashable.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#bbded7ded5da95d8dacdded5dfdec9fbd6dac8d3dad9d7de95d8d4d6) or follow her [@ecaviar\_](https://twitter.com/ecaviar_).
[Read Full Bio](https://mashable.com/author/elenacavender)
on
September 21, 2024
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Credit: Mashable Composite; Michelle Khare / Youtube
***
[](https://mashable.com/series/small-talk)
Welcome to [Small Talk](https://mashable.com/series/small-talk), a series where we catch up with the internet's favorite Extremely Online individuals offline.
***
At this year's [Made on YouTube](https://mashable.com/article/youtube-ai-creator-tools-veo-communities) event on Sept. 18, creators like Michelle Khare received exciting news: They will soon be able to organize their videos into seasons and episodes, much like traditional television shows.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan invited Khare on stage for a Q\&A to discuss the announcement. Khare is the creator of *Challenge Accepted*, a high-stakes digital series in which the 32-year-old takes on challenges ranging from working as a 911 dispatcher to training as a ballerina. Her videos, known for their premium quality, run between 15 and 24 minutes and consistently attract millions of views. With nearly 5 million subscribers, Khare has built a dedicated audience.
SEE ALSO:
[YouTube announces new AI tools for its creators: Veo, Communities, auto-dubbing, and more](https://mashable.com/article/youtube-ai-creator-tools-veo-communities)
This announcement comes as [YouTube](https://mashable.com/category/youtube) continues to dominate as the most popular streaming service on U.S. televisions, with [150 million people watching YouTube](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/technology/youtube-streaming-tv.html "(opens in a new window)") on TV screens monthly. The platform's success is driven by its hands-off approach, trusting creators like Khare to craft content that resonates with audiences. Earlier this year, [Mohan urged Emmy voters](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/youtube-ceo-emmys-creators-1235893700/ "(opens in a new window)") to recognize YouTube creators, though popular shows like *Hot Ones*, *Chicken Shop Date*, and *Good Mythical Morning* were [overlooked for nominations](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/emmys-2024-nominations-snubs-youtube-creators-hot-ones-rcna162395 "(opens in a new window)"). This latest update solidifies YouTube's growing role in the television landscape.
***
**You May Also Like**
***
***
Following the announcement, Khare spoke with Mashable about the new feature, what it means for *Challenge Accepted*, and how her creative process fuels YouTube's evolving TV strategy.
## Mashable: Have you ever thought about Challenge Accepted in terms of episodes and seasons prior to this announcement?
**Michelle Khare:** Our team always tries our best to think about things in terms of seasons and episodes. We think about, "What's the tone of this show? What's the release cadence? What's our format?" Previously, we organized things by season in playlists. Now through the new structure of the television app, we can formally organize things in terms of genre, episode, season, series. It just elevates our content even further.
## What's your reaction to the update?
As creators, we can only focus on the content we create and we put it on the platform. It's really cool that the platform is evolving so that it positions our content as premium. I imagine it has the same feeling as when someone's in a movie and they see the poster in Times Square. As someone who loves premium television content, seeing our stuff in that limelight was really cool. It affirms what we're already doing with *Challenge Accepted* and it makes me even more excited to lean into that episodic format.
## I imagine it gives you more control of how a viewer interacts with your content.
When you watch your favorite premium show, sometimes you'll watch one episode and realize you have 12 more episodes you can finish right after. I hope that \[the update\] will encourage people to watch more of *Challenge Accepted* when they stumble upon a standalone episode. They may realize, "Oh my gosh, I can watch more of this show, and it's all organized here for me." It takes a lot of the thinking and digging work out of the equation for the viewer.
## Do you think the new format will make it easier to attract new viewers?
Right now to discover new content, you open the home pages to tons of videos, or the sidebar, when you're watching one video, you see a bunch of suggested. Now, you're not only introduced to one episode or a new creator but the world of this creator.
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## When did you start making your videos for television? What was the process like of shifting over to that level of production?
I'm gonna be honest, it wasn't a conscious choice of wanting to be seen on television. Our team is a mixture of people from both traditional and digital backgrounds. We have people who have worked on feature films, Oscar-nominated stuff, and [*Saturday Night Live*](https://mashable.com/category/snl). Our output now feels premium, which is a wonderful thing to hear. But genuinely, it's just been about, "How can we make the best 30 minutes possible out of this story?"
Our team leans into \[television\] because they are from traditional television. But that said, creating for YouTube is a different animal because we're creating with the audience in mind. We're creating with the mindset of respecting the viewers' time, listening to their suggestions, and being aware that their time can be spent anywhere, and that it's on us to make a story that commands and interests their attention for long periods of time.
## How do you choose a challenge?
Many of our initial episodes were born out of a whiteboard brainstorm of "What are Michelle's biggest fears?" and "What are the unique situations to put me in to confront them head-on?" We use that as a building block to use the challenges as a way to overcome fears, because it creates conflict and creates story. For example, I want to be a firefighter, but I'm not brave enough. Or I want to be a pageant queen, but I don't know if I'm graceful. We started using those one sentence formats to kind of inspire the different things we do.
## That's so interesting, I wondered how you created so many challenges with a similar level of intensity.
Conflict creates story. Story creates growth. Watching other people grow are the stories that we're most interested in, whether they're scripted or unscripted. That's really the angle we were coming back from.
## Are there any jobs you tried where you thought, "Maybe I should have pursued this instead of being a creator?"
I love being a creator, and I'm not just saying that because we're at Made on YouTube 2024. I really, really love it. Being a professional jack of all trades is my ideal profession. Behind the scenes, I love running our studio, our production company, and our team and growing into \[being a\] CEO and leader. It's such a privilege to be an entrepreneur in this space. I hope to be doing it for a really, really long time.
***
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## Do you have a golden rule for for content creation?
Because our episodes are intense and in-depth, we have a pretty thorough vetting process before we greenlight an episode. We think about how we feel it will perform. Is it something our audience has been requesting? Are we, as a team, excited by it? That's often the question I find us asking the most. Analytics and getting feedback from the audience is wonderful, but we don't move forward unless our team's heart is in it. That comes from a practical perspective because if we greenlight a project we're going to be working on it for the next several weeks or months, sometimes even up to a year.
*Challenge Accepted* is a show about pursuing novel life experiences, and I once heard that people who have more novel life experiences feel like their lives are longer. I think about that a lot. It's such a privilege to be able to think critically about where our time is spent and how much joy is created in the day-to-day. Ironically, that has led to the passion that our audience sees in each individual episode.
## Is there a challenge you wouldn't accept?
We're really fortunate that we're in this position where we're continuing to push the envelope. We're very inspired by a lot of other creators around us. I'm excited to play in new worlds. What I love is that if you asked me a year ago what the next 20 episodes of *Challenge Accepted* are going to look like, I probably could have told you the next five. But fast forward a year, and there are things that we've released this year that I would have never even conceptualized a year ago.
What I love about the internet is that you can create quickly versus the traditional Hollywood system, where we would have greenlit several episodes a year ago, shoot them whatever, they don't come out for another entire year. A person can grow a lot in a year. So I love being able to create and release as it is relevant, impactful, meaningful, and heartfelt to us in each moment.
## What advice do you have for someone just starting and looking for financial stability as a creator?
There's a reason so many people want to be content creators. I'm not going to lie: It rocks. But it's a very slow process that begins with creating content and learning your voice while you have another job. You're doing it in your free time to the point where you can't wait for the weekend because you get to work on this other thing. From there, you develop your voice and consistency. You can fail in a safe environment. Then, you can grow to the point where that becomes your full-time thing. But you have to feel really solid about your content before it becomes your whole world.
## How do you combat creative burnout? Obviously, you have a team that supports you.
The people I look up to the most are very busy. I love moving at a fast pace. But the best parts of the job are also stepping away from the content and doing things that have nothing to do with making YouTube videos. You have to be a real person to tell real stories. You have to live life to have a story to tell. That time away from filming and producing and the office is so important to know what's really going on.
Topics [YouTube](https://mashable.com/category/youtube) [Creators](https://mashable.com/category/creators)
Elena Cavender
Elena is a tech reporter and the resident Gen Z expert at Mashable. She covers TikTok and digital trends. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in American History. Email her at [\[email protected\]](https://mashable.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#dfbab3bab1bef1bcbea9bab1bbbaad9fb2beacb7bebdb3baf1bcb0b2 "(opens in a new window)") or follow her [@ecaviar\_](https://twitter.com/ecaviar_ "(opens in a new window)").
[Home](https://mashable.com/) \> [Life](https://mashable.com/life) \> [Digital Culture](https://mashable.com/category/digital-culture)
# Do you know ball? Inside the internet's most obsessive basketball debate.
Three basketball content creators are trying to define the internet's favorite sports flex and keep the market from oversaturating.
By
[Chance Townsend](https://mashable.com/author/chance-townsend)
Chance Townsend
Assistant Editor, General Assignments
Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and *Mother Jones*.
[Read Full Bio](https://mashable.com/author/chance-townsend)
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April 3, 2026
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Credit: Zain bin Awais / Mashable / Getty Images
***
There's a moment, familiar to anyone who has spent time in basketball corners of the internet, where someone drops a name into the chat — Kosta Koufos, Sundiata Gaines, Jamario Moon — and the room either goes electric or shakes its head in disappointment. On social media, this is called "ball knowledge."
The term has evolved from casual sports-bar shorthand into something closer to a culture and a game of one-upmanship. However, in the hands of a growing class of basketball content creators, it's become a thriving niche on social media. But ask three of the people who've helped shape that culture what ball knowledge actually means, and you'll get three different answers.
## More than a name drop
The most common misconception about ball knowledge is that it's just trivia, i.e., name a player nobody remembers and look cool in front of your friends for your esoteric wisdom on early 2010s Detroit Pistons benchwarmers.
Nicholas Harrell, a writer who helps run the [basketball media account halfpast\*noon](https://www.instagram.com/halfpast.noon/?hl=en "(opens in a new window)"), pushes back on that immediately. "I wouldn't necessarily limit it to being able to name a specific role player from whatever era," he says. "I think it's got to be a recognition of how the system as a game works in its entirety, and the individual roles that those players play."
So, for example, you're in a circle with a friend, and you name-drop Nik Stauskas as "elite ball knowledge." That's table stakes, the bare minimum. Explaining why Stauskas worked — or why he didn't — is the real test.
Nick Coutracos, who has built a following under the name [Nick Knows Ball,](https://www.instagram.com/nick.knows.ball/?hl=en "(opens in a new window)") takes a similar but slightly more democratic view. For him, ball knowledge is "not only knowing players that the average basketball fan wouldn't know, but it's also just understanding how the game of basketball is played." He's careful to add that "you can't just know a random role player that you saw once and remember his name and say, oh yeah, that's ball knowledge."
The distinction matters to him. Coutracos, who was already running a successful basketball media account, didn't start posting about ball knowledge to gatekeep — he started because he was frustrated watching posts celebrate knowing names like Brandon Jennings and Kirk Hinrich and calling it elite ball knowledge. "I remember scrolling through these comments, reading them like, this is a joke, right?" He started posting ball-knowledge-specific videos, including stories about obscure players and reactions to other pages' "elite pulls," and quickly found that his audience felt the same quiet indignation. Ball knowledge was getting too casual, and people wanted a higher standard.
Ethan Ward, the New Zealand–born, Australia-based creator behind [ForgottableNBA](https://www.instagram.com/forgettablenba/?hl=en "(opens in a new window)"), came at it from a different angle. His page — which he started in September 2024, hitting 10,000 followers within two months — is built around short clips and literary captions about players on the fringes of NBA history. He describes ball knowledge the way a connoisseur might describe wine: There are levels, the bar is always rising, and what counts today might not count tomorrow.
> [View this post on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DWjJaqakd2H/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading "(opens in a new window)")
"If they started for a full season, it's probably not ball knowledge," Ward says. "Especially with the way this kind of genre has ballooned — the threshold is being raised every three months."
Ward's origin story is more accidental. He was thinking about what he calls "a gap in the market" — the fact that he had near-infinite access to play-by-play clips from any NBA season going back years from his freelance work. He started with a single clip, [a missed Cory Joseph floater](https://www.instagram.com/reels/C_dOT5qx8HU/ "(opens in a new window)"). The post read "Forgettable NBA Moment No. 1: Cory Joseph tries to beat the clock but fails." People liked it. As more clips got posted, someone asked for a box score. Then the write-ups got longer. Six months in, Ward was doing full long-form posts, and the responses started coming in within hours of posting.
"I didn't realize there was such an appetite for it," Ward says.
## What is ball knowledge?
Every culture has its own vocabulary, and the ball knowledge community is no exception. Over hours of conversation, a surprisingly nuanced taxonomy emerged.
> [View this post on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DV_iKZ1kXa2/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading "(opens in a new window)")
There is, first, the question of what makes someone a "pull" — a term for a player whose name earns respectable nods from your friends when dropped in conversation, for a relative combination of obscurity and nostalgia. Coutracos, Ward, and Harrell agree that the best pull is what the latter calls "obscure and recognizable at the same time." He considers Chris Copeland a good example: a six-foot-nine forward who had one memorable run with the 2013 Knicks, could get hot from three, and left enough of an imprint that real watchers of the game remember him fondly. Arnett Moultrie, by contrast, was a process-era 76er who was miscast as a PF who couldn't shoot in an evolving NBA. He's a respectable pull for only the most hardened of zealots.
Then there is the question of the baseline — the floor of ball knowledge, the name that separates people who genuinely follow the game from people who are just adjacent to it. Every creator has one, and the differences reveal just how personal and relative that floor really is.
For Coutracos, the marker is Kosta Koufos. "\[He\] is the differentiating factor between ball knowledge and not ball knowledge," he says. "He's the most common ball knowledge player, in my opinion."
Harrell's threshold is a bit more sentimental. He mentions Sundiata Gaines, who hit [a game-winner with the Utah Jazz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yawMyj4zQU "(opens in a new window)") and had a memorable run at Georgia in the SEC tournament. Gaines isn't famous, but he's not buried, either. "If people did recognize him, their eyes are going to light up right away," Harrell says. "That's sort of the fun part of it."
Ward, who spent his teenage years watching G League games out of New Zealand, sets the floor considerably deeper, depending on how you look at it. For him, the baseline is simply anyone with a reason to exist in memory: "Someone who has a reason to be remembered. Someone who played a couple years. That would be my current parameters for someone starting out." What that baseline actually looks like, though, shifts constantly.
There is also a category of "overused pull." These are names that became so widely circulated they've lost their value. All three agree without much deliberation: Shaun Livingston's mid-range jumper. Brandon Bass. J.R. Smith reverses dunks. These names have been laundered through so many posts that knowing them signals that you're chronically online, not that you know basketball.
## The rules, unwritten and otherwise
A few informal laws of ball knowledge have emerged from the community's ongoing self-governance.
Draft position matters. A lottery pick — even a catastrophic bust — carries an asterisk. Anthony Bennett, the infamous 2013 number-one overall pick who never lived up to his draft position, falls in a gray area: Coutracos thinks he should count because the average fan has probably forgotten him, but acknowledges the logic isn't clean. Alex Len, a top-five pick from that same draft, gets an easy veto. "Top five pick within the last 10 or 15 years — no," Harrell says flatly.
Visibility also counts against you. Kirk Hinrich was a solid NBA role player for roughly a decade, which means he showed up on too many screens to qualify as obscure. College prominence doesn't help either, as a player like Trey Burke gets docked by Ward for his Wooden Award–winning career at Michigan, his deep March Madness run, and his my-player-mode appearances in NBA 2K. That's too much cultural footprint. So players like Shabazz Napier, Jimmer Fredette, or Carsen Edwards wouldn't count as ball knowledge on account of their legendary college runs.
But the most interesting rule is the one about relativity. Ball knowledge, all three creators acknowledge, is context-dependent. Coutracos put it simply: "My 11-year-old cousin comes up to me and talks about Ramon Sessions — whoa, that is very impressive. But if you label yourself an all-knowing ball knower and you're 25 years old and you say Ramon Sessions, it's like, OK, that's not that crazy."
"It's relative," he says. "There are levels."
## What's it done for the game
The rise of ball knowledge as a genre has had a measurable effect on how NBA history gets consumed online. Players who spent their careers as footnotes are suddenly the subjects of highlight compilations, long-form write-ups, and spirited comment-section debates.
Ward's ForgettableNBA page is perhaps the clearest expression of this shift. His audience isn't just nodding along. They're asking for box scores. They're pulling up Wikipedia tabs. They're arguing, respectfully, about whether a given player qualifies. A Jason Maxiell compilation went viral within a day of posting. A Rodney Hood write-up got people talking about a player who'd been largely forgotten.
> [View this post on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DWWQLktEo8C/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading "(opens in a new window)")
"I kind of bridge the gap between the totally obscure players and the role players that everybody likes," Ward says. He describes a sort of natural selection at work: The players with "verve," with a distinct shot or move or storyline, age better in the culture than the workhorses without it. A player with a reliable midrange is more memeable than a screen-setter. A player with a compelling backstory — like Royce White, the first-round pick who never played due to an anxiety disorder affecting his ability to fly — edges toward ball knowledge even as his career stats don't demand it.
"There's something \[where\] you go, 'I remember him for a reason,'" Ward says.
Harrell points to what the trend has done for fandom broadly, creating a shared language for the kinds of conversations that used to happen only between lifelong fans at sports bars or on the couch during rain delays. "The general basketball community on TikTok started pushing forward this sports-bar kind of conversation," he says. "Naming role players with your friends almost."
Coutracos has watched it become something even more personal. He gets recognized at pickup gyms. He gets tagged in posts about players he's never covered. His comment sections have become arenas where people prove their knowledge or cheerfully get corrected. "I don't want to give off the vibe of gatekeeping the sport," he says. "My main goal is for them to learn about basketball and laugh a little too."
## Raising the bar
There's one thing all three creators seem quietly anxious about: saturation.
Names that were genuinely obscure six months ago now have compilation videos and Reddit threads. The posts that used to require actual recall are getting gamed by people who've simply been online long enough to absorb the canon.
"The goalposts are going to keep moving," Ward says. He imagines a near future where Gigi Datome — the Italian forward who had a brief cup of coffee with the Detroit Pistons — stops being an elite pull and becomes a baseline. "Unless it reaches a point of saturation where it doesn't quite get there. I hope Austin Daye stays Detroit-specific knowledge."
Harrell frames it as an authenticity problem. "If your single memory of Shaun Livingston is the mid-range and not everything that came before in his career — which is even more interesting — that's a good example of fake ball knowledge versus real ball knowledge."
But here, too, there's consensus: The solution isn't exclusion, it's depth. All three push back on the idea that ball knowledge should become a velvet rope, a way to dismiss people who aren't sufficiently obsessed.
"I don't want people to be discouraged by learning about the sport of basketball," Coutracos says. "Just because you don't know a random player from 2012 who played seven games doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to learn about the sport."
Harrell is even more direct: "I wouldn't want it used as a barrier to entry for certain conversations. I don't want it to become a status symbol, necessarily."
What they want, it turns out, is for more people to go down the rabbit hole. To look up Sundiata Gaines. To find out how Kosta Koufos actually played. To discover that Jamario Moon had a dunk package that holds up, and that he played seventy-something games with the Raptors before losing games for Michael Jordan's Bobcats.
That's the core of it, really. Do you know ball? You could.
Topics [Social Media](https://mashable.com/category/social-media) [Sports](https://mashable.com/category/sports)
Chance Townsend
Assistant Editor, General Assignments
Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and *Mother Jones*.
In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and greatly enjoys Detroit sports. If you have any tips or want to talk shop about the Lions, you can reach out to him on Bluesky [@offbrandchance.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/offbrandchance.bsky.social "(opens in a new window)") or by email at [\[email protected\]](https://mashable.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#23404b424d40460d574c544d50464d4763594a45454e46474a420d404c4e "(opens in a new window)").
***
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Spring break just got way better for the kids (and adults).
04/02/2026
By [Lauren Allain](https://mashable.com/author/lauren-allain)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/april-2-pokemon-guess-who-release)
***
[Prime members can get a free e-book every month with Amazon First Reads: See the April 2026 picks](https://mashable.com/article/amazon-first-reads)
Read new books before they're even released.
04/02/2026
By [Samantha Mangino](https://mashable.com/author/samantha-mangino)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/amazon-first-reads)
***
[Amazon has slashed \$22 off the Lego Star Wars C-3PO buildable droid figure — buy now for under \$120](https://mashable.com/article/april-2-lego-star-wars-c-3po-deal)
It's still at its Big Spring Sale price, so act fast to grab it.
04/02/2026
By [Hannah Hoolihan](https://mashable.com/author/hannah-hoolihan)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/april-2-lego-star-wars-c-3po-deal)
***
[Lego has dropped a World Cup collection featuring Messi and Ronaldo: Here’s where to pre-order now](https://mashable.com/article/lego-world-cup-collection-where-to-buy)
Build the GOATs brick by brick before the 2026 World Cup kicks off.
04/02/2026
By [Joseph Green](https://mashable.com/author/joe92)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/lego-world-cup-collection-where-to-buy)
***
[The Magic: The Gathering Edge of Eternities Play Booster Box is below market price at TCGplayer](https://mashable.com/article/april-2-magic-the-gathering-edge-of-eternities-play-booster-box-deal)
That works out to about \$4.71 per pack.
04/02/2026
By [Ben Williams](https://mashable.com/author/ben-williams)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/april-2-magic-the-gathering-edge-of-eternities-play-booster-box-deal)
***
Trending on Mashable
[NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for April 3, 2026](https://mashable.com/article/nyt-connections-hint-answer-today-april-3-2026)
Everything you need to solve 'Connections' \#1027.
22 hours ago
By [Mashable Team](https://mashable.com/author/mashable-team)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/nyt-connections-hint-answer-today-april-3-2026)
***
[Wordle today: Answer, hints for April 3, 2026](https://mashable.com/article/wordle-today-answer-april-3-2026)
Here are some tips and tricks to help you find the answer to "Wordle" \#1749.
22 hours ago
By [Mashable Team](https://mashable.com/author/mashable-team)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/wordle-today-answer-april-3-2026)
***
[What's new to streaming this week? (April 3, 2026)](https://mashable.com/article/new-to-streaming-april-3-2026)
What’s new on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, and more? We've got you covered.
04/02/2026
By [Belen Edwards](https://mashable.com/author/belen-edwards) and [Kristy Puchko](https://mashable.com/author/kristypuchko)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/new-to-streaming-april-3-2026)
***
[Google launches Gemma 4, a new open-source model: How to try it](https://mashable.com/article/google-releases-gemma-4-open-ai-model-now-open-source-how-to-try-it)
Google's newest Gemma model is now both open-weight and open-source
04/02/2026
By [Matt Binder](https://mashable.com/author/matt-binder)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/google-releases-gemma-4-open-ai-model-now-open-source-how-to-try-it)
***
[AirDrop on Pixel: Every Google smartphone that supports the Apple feature](https://mashable.com/article/google-pixel-quick-share-airdrop-iphone-ios)
Sharing is easy on these Pixel phones.
04/02/2026
By [Alex Perry](https://mashable.com/author/aperry)
[ ](https://mashable.com/article/google-pixel-quick-share-airdrop-iphone-ios)
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| Readable Markdown | YouTube's television strategy relies on creators like Khare to know what audiences want to see.
Credit: Mashable Composite; Michelle Khare / Youtube
[](https://mashable.com/series/small-talk)
Welcome to [Small Talk](https://mashable.com/series/small-talk), a series where we catch up with the internet's favorite Extremely Online individuals offline.
***
At this year's [Made on YouTube](https://mashable.com/article/youtube-ai-creator-tools-veo-communities) event on Sept. 18, creators like Michelle Khare received exciting news: They will soon be able to organize their videos into seasons and episodes, much like traditional television shows.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan invited Khare on stage for a Q\&A to discuss the announcement. Khare is the creator of *Challenge Accepted*, a high-stakes digital series in which the 32-year-old takes on challenges ranging from working as a 911 dispatcher to training as a ballerina. Her videos, known for their premium quality, run between 15 and 24 minutes and consistently attract millions of views. With nearly 5 million subscribers, Khare has built a dedicated audience.
This announcement comes as [YouTube](https://mashable.com/category/youtube) continues to dominate as the most popular streaming service on U.S. televisions, with [150 million people watching YouTube](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/technology/youtube-streaming-tv.html "(opens in a new window)") on TV screens monthly. The platform's success is driven by its hands-off approach, trusting creators like Khare to craft content that resonates with audiences. Earlier this year, [Mohan urged Emmy voters](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/youtube-ceo-emmys-creators-1235893700/ "(opens in a new window)") to recognize YouTube creators, though popular shows like *Hot Ones*, *Chicken Shop Date*, and *Good Mythical Morning* were [overlooked for nominations](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/emmys-2024-nominations-snubs-youtube-creators-hot-ones-rcna162395 "(opens in a new window)"). This latest update solidifies YouTube's growing role in the television landscape.
***
**You May Also Like**
***
***
Following the announcement, Khare spoke with Mashable about the new feature, what it means for *Challenge Accepted*, and how her creative process fuels YouTube's evolving TV strategy.
## Mashable: Have you ever thought about Challenge Accepted in terms of episodes and seasons prior to this announcement?
**Michelle Khare:** Our team always tries our best to think about things in terms of seasons and episodes. We think about, "What's the tone of this show? What's the release cadence? What's our format?" Previously, we organized things by season in playlists. Now through the new structure of the television app, we can formally organize things in terms of genre, episode, season, series. It just elevates our content even further.
## What's your reaction to the update?
As creators, we can only focus on the content we create and we put it on the platform. It's really cool that the platform is evolving so that it positions our content as premium. I imagine it has the same feeling as when someone's in a movie and they see the poster in Times Square. As someone who loves premium television content, seeing our stuff in that limelight was really cool. It affirms what we're already doing with *Challenge Accepted* and it makes me even more excited to lean into that episodic format.
## I imagine it gives you more control of how a viewer interacts with your content.
When you watch your favorite premium show, sometimes you'll watch one episode and realize you have 12 more episodes you can finish right after. I hope that \[the update\] will encourage people to watch more of *Challenge Accepted* when they stumble upon a standalone episode. They may realize, "Oh my gosh, I can watch more of this show, and it's all organized here for me." It takes a lot of the thinking and digging work out of the equation for the viewer.
## Do you think the new format will make it easier to attract new viewers?
Right now to discover new content, you open the home pages to tons of videos, or the sidebar, when you're watching one video, you see a bunch of suggested. Now, you're not only introduced to one episode or a new creator but the world of this creator.
Mashable Trend Report
## When did you start making your videos for television? What was the process like of shifting over to that level of production?
I'm gonna be honest, it wasn't a conscious choice of wanting to be seen on television. Our team is a mixture of people from both traditional and digital backgrounds. We have people who have worked on feature films, Oscar-nominated stuff, and [*Saturday Night Live*](https://mashable.com/category/snl). Our output now feels premium, which is a wonderful thing to hear. But genuinely, it's just been about, "How can we make the best 30 minutes possible out of this story?"
Our team leans into \[television\] because they are from traditional television. But that said, creating for YouTube is a different animal because we're creating with the audience in mind. We're creating with the mindset of respecting the viewers' time, listening to their suggestions, and being aware that their time can be spent anywhere, and that it's on us to make a story that commands and interests their attention for long periods of time.
## How do you choose a challenge?
Many of our initial episodes were born out of a whiteboard brainstorm of "What are Michelle's biggest fears?" and "What are the unique situations to put me in to confront them head-on?" We use that as a building block to use the challenges as a way to overcome fears, because it creates conflict and creates story. For example, I want to be a firefighter, but I'm not brave enough. Or I want to be a pageant queen, but I don't know if I'm graceful. We started using those one sentence formats to kind of inspire the different things we do.
## That's so interesting, I wondered how you created so many challenges with a similar level of intensity.
Conflict creates story. Story creates growth. Watching other people grow are the stories that we're most interested in, whether they're scripted or unscripted. That's really the angle we were coming back from.
## Are there any jobs you tried where you thought, "Maybe I should have pursued this instead of being a creator?"
I love being a creator, and I'm not just saying that because we're at Made on YouTube 2024. I really, really love it. Being a professional jack of all trades is my ideal profession. Behind the scenes, I love running our studio, our production company, and our team and growing into \[being a\] CEO and leader. It's such a privilege to be an entrepreneur in this space. I hope to be doing it for a really, really long time.
## Do you have a golden rule for for content creation?
Because our episodes are intense and in-depth, we have a pretty thorough vetting process before we greenlight an episode. We think about how we feel it will perform. Is it something our audience has been requesting? Are we, as a team, excited by it? That's often the question I find us asking the most. Analytics and getting feedback from the audience is wonderful, but we don't move forward unless our team's heart is in it. That comes from a practical perspective because if we greenlight a project we're going to be working on it for the next several weeks or months, sometimes even up to a year.
*Challenge Accepted* is a show about pursuing novel life experiences, and I once heard that people who have more novel life experiences feel like their lives are longer. I think about that a lot. It's such a privilege to be able to think critically about where our time is spent and how much joy is created in the day-to-day. Ironically, that has led to the passion that our audience sees in each individual episode.
## Is there a challenge you wouldn't accept?
We're really fortunate that we're in this position where we're continuing to push the envelope. We're very inspired by a lot of other creators around us. I'm excited to play in new worlds. What I love is that if you asked me a year ago what the next 20 episodes of *Challenge Accepted* are going to look like, I probably could have told you the next five. But fast forward a year, and there are things that we've released this year that I would have never even conceptualized a year ago.
What I love about the internet is that you can create quickly versus the traditional Hollywood system, where we would have greenlit several episodes a year ago, shoot them whatever, they don't come out for another entire year. A person can grow a lot in a year. So I love being able to create and release as it is relevant, impactful, meaningful, and heartfelt to us in each moment.
## What advice do you have for someone just starting and looking for financial stability as a creator?
There's a reason so many people want to be content creators. I'm not going to lie: It rocks. But it's a very slow process that begins with creating content and learning your voice while you have another job. You're doing it in your free time to the point where you can't wait for the weekend because you get to work on this other thing. From there, you develop your voice and consistency. You can fail in a safe environment. Then, you can grow to the point where that becomes your full-time thing. But you have to feel really solid about your content before it becomes your whole world.
## How do you combat creative burnout? Obviously, you have a team that supports you.
The people I look up to the most are very busy. I love moving at a fast pace. But the best parts of the job are also stepping away from the content and doing things that have nothing to do with making YouTube videos. You have to be a real person to tell real stories. You have to live life to have a story to tell. That time away from filming and producing and the office is so important to know what's really going on.
Elena is a tech reporter and the resident Gen Z expert at Mashable. She covers TikTok and digital trends. She recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in American History. Email her at [\[email protected\]](https://mashable.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#dfbab3bab1bef1bcbea9bab1bbbaad9fb2beacb7bebdb3baf1bcb0b2 "(opens in a new window)") or follow her [@ecaviar\_](https://twitter.com/ecaviar_ "(opens in a new window)").
Three basketball content creators are trying to define the internet's favorite sports flex and keep the market from oversaturating.
Credit: Zain bin Awais / Mashable / Getty Images
There's a moment, familiar to anyone who has spent time in basketball corners of the internet, where someone drops a name into the chat — Kosta Koufos, Sundiata Gaines, Jamario Moon — and the room either goes electric or shakes its head in disappointment. On social media, this is called "ball knowledge."
The term has evolved from casual sports-bar shorthand into something closer to a culture and a game of one-upmanship. However, in the hands of a growing class of basketball content creators, it's become a thriving niche on social media. But ask three of the people who've helped shape that culture what ball knowledge actually means, and you'll get three different answers.
## More than a name drop
The most common misconception about ball knowledge is that it's just trivia, i.e., name a player nobody remembers and look cool in front of your friends for your esoteric wisdom on early 2010s Detroit Pistons benchwarmers.
Nicholas Harrell, a writer who helps run the [basketball media account halfpast\*noon](https://www.instagram.com/halfpast.noon/?hl=en "(opens in a new window)"), pushes back on that immediately. "I wouldn't necessarily limit it to being able to name a specific role player from whatever era," he says. "I think it's got to be a recognition of how the system as a game works in its entirety, and the individual roles that those players play."
So, for example, you're in a circle with a friend, and you name-drop Nik Stauskas as "elite ball knowledge." That's table stakes, the bare minimum. Explaining why Stauskas worked — or why he didn't — is the real test.
Nick Coutracos, who has built a following under the name [Nick Knows Ball,](https://www.instagram.com/nick.knows.ball/?hl=en "(opens in a new window)") takes a similar but slightly more democratic view. For him, ball knowledge is "not only knowing players that the average basketball fan wouldn't know, but it's also just understanding how the game of basketball is played." He's careful to add that "you can't just know a random role player that you saw once and remember his name and say, oh yeah, that's ball knowledge."
The distinction matters to him. Coutracos, who was already running a successful basketball media account, didn't start posting about ball knowledge to gatekeep — he started because he was frustrated watching posts celebrate knowing names like Brandon Jennings and Kirk Hinrich and calling it elite ball knowledge. "I remember scrolling through these comments, reading them like, this is a joke, right?" He started posting ball-knowledge-specific videos, including stories about obscure players and reactions to other pages' "elite pulls," and quickly found that his audience felt the same quiet indignation. Ball knowledge was getting too casual, and people wanted a higher standard.
Ethan Ward, the New Zealand–born, Australia-based creator behind [ForgottableNBA](https://www.instagram.com/forgettablenba/?hl=en "(opens in a new window)"), came at it from a different angle. His page — which he started in September 2024, hitting 10,000 followers within two months — is built around short clips and literary captions about players on the fringes of NBA history. He describes ball knowledge the way a connoisseur might describe wine: There are levels, the bar is always rising, and what counts today might not count tomorrow.
"If they started for a full season, it's probably not ball knowledge," Ward says. "Especially with the way this kind of genre has ballooned — the threshold is being raised every three months."
Ward's origin story is more accidental. He was thinking about what he calls "a gap in the market" — the fact that he had near-infinite access to play-by-play clips from any NBA season going back years from his freelance work. He started with a single clip, [a missed Cory Joseph floater](https://www.instagram.com/reels/C_dOT5qx8HU/ "(opens in a new window)"). The post read "Forgettable NBA Moment No. 1: Cory Joseph tries to beat the clock but fails." People liked it. As more clips got posted, someone asked for a box score. Then the write-ups got longer. Six months in, Ward was doing full long-form posts, and the responses started coming in within hours of posting.
"I didn't realize there was such an appetite for it," Ward says.
## What is ball knowledge?
Every culture has its own vocabulary, and the ball knowledge community is no exception. Over hours of conversation, a surprisingly nuanced taxonomy emerged.
There is, first, the question of what makes someone a "pull" — a term for a player whose name earns respectable nods from your friends when dropped in conversation, for a relative combination of obscurity and nostalgia. Coutracos, Ward, and Harrell agree that the best pull is what the latter calls "obscure and recognizable at the same time." He considers Chris Copeland a good example: a six-foot-nine forward who had one memorable run with the 2013 Knicks, could get hot from three, and left enough of an imprint that real watchers of the game remember him fondly. Arnett Moultrie, by contrast, was a process-era 76er who was miscast as a PF who couldn't shoot in an evolving NBA. He's a respectable pull for only the most hardened of zealots.
Then there is the question of the baseline — the floor of ball knowledge, the name that separates people who genuinely follow the game from people who are just adjacent to it. Every creator has one, and the differences reveal just how personal and relative that floor really is.
For Coutracos, the marker is Kosta Koufos. "\[He\] is the differentiating factor between ball knowledge and not ball knowledge," he says. "He's the most common ball knowledge player, in my opinion."
Harrell's threshold is a bit more sentimental. He mentions Sundiata Gaines, who hit [a game-winner with the Utah Jazz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yawMyj4zQU "(opens in a new window)") and had a memorable run at Georgia in the SEC tournament. Gaines isn't famous, but he's not buried, either. "If people did recognize him, their eyes are going to light up right away," Harrell says. "That's sort of the fun part of it."
Ward, who spent his teenage years watching G League games out of New Zealand, sets the floor considerably deeper, depending on how you look at it. For him, the baseline is simply anyone with a reason to exist in memory: "Someone who has a reason to be remembered. Someone who played a couple years. That would be my current parameters for someone starting out." What that baseline actually looks like, though, shifts constantly.
There is also a category of "overused pull." These are names that became so widely circulated they've lost their value. All three agree without much deliberation: Shaun Livingston's mid-range jumper. Brandon Bass. J.R. Smith reverses dunks. These names have been laundered through so many posts that knowing them signals that you're chronically online, not that you know basketball.
## The rules, unwritten and otherwise
A few informal laws of ball knowledge have emerged from the community's ongoing self-governance.
Draft position matters. A lottery pick — even a catastrophic bust — carries an asterisk. Anthony Bennett, the infamous 2013 number-one overall pick who never lived up to his draft position, falls in a gray area: Coutracos thinks he should count because the average fan has probably forgotten him, but acknowledges the logic isn't clean. Alex Len, a top-five pick from that same draft, gets an easy veto. "Top five pick within the last 10 or 15 years — no," Harrell says flatly.
Visibility also counts against you. Kirk Hinrich was a solid NBA role player for roughly a decade, which means he showed up on too many screens to qualify as obscure. College prominence doesn't help either, as a player like Trey Burke gets docked by Ward for his Wooden Award–winning career at Michigan, his deep March Madness run, and his my-player-mode appearances in NBA 2K. That's too much cultural footprint. So players like Shabazz Napier, Jimmer Fredette, or Carsen Edwards wouldn't count as ball knowledge on account of their legendary college runs.
But the most interesting rule is the one about relativity. Ball knowledge, all three creators acknowledge, is context-dependent. Coutracos put it simply: "My 11-year-old cousin comes up to me and talks about Ramon Sessions — whoa, that is very impressive. But if you label yourself an all-knowing ball knower and you're 25 years old and you say Ramon Sessions, it's like, OK, that's not that crazy."
"It's relative," he says. "There are levels."
## What's it done for the game
The rise of ball knowledge as a genre has had a measurable effect on how NBA history gets consumed online. Players who spent their careers as footnotes are suddenly the subjects of highlight compilations, long-form write-ups, and spirited comment-section debates.
Ward's ForgettableNBA page is perhaps the clearest expression of this shift. His audience isn't just nodding along. They're asking for box scores. They're pulling up Wikipedia tabs. They're arguing, respectfully, about whether a given player qualifies. A Jason Maxiell compilation went viral within a day of posting. A Rodney Hood write-up got people talking about a player who'd been largely forgotten.
"I kind of bridge the gap between the totally obscure players and the role players that everybody likes," Ward says. He describes a sort of natural selection at work: The players with "verve," with a distinct shot or move or storyline, age better in the culture than the workhorses without it. A player with a reliable midrange is more memeable than a screen-setter. A player with a compelling backstory — like Royce White, the first-round pick who never played due to an anxiety disorder affecting his ability to fly — edges toward ball knowledge even as his career stats don't demand it.
"There's something \[where\] you go, 'I remember him for a reason,'" Ward says.
Harrell points to what the trend has done for fandom broadly, creating a shared language for the kinds of conversations that used to happen only between lifelong fans at sports bars or on the couch during rain delays. "The general basketball community on TikTok started pushing forward this sports-bar kind of conversation," he says. "Naming role players with your friends almost."
Coutracos has watched it become something even more personal. He gets recognized at pickup gyms. He gets tagged in posts about players he's never covered. His comment sections have become arenas where people prove their knowledge or cheerfully get corrected. "I don't want to give off the vibe of gatekeeping the sport," he says. "My main goal is for them to learn about basketball and laugh a little too."
## Raising the bar
There's one thing all three creators seem quietly anxious about: saturation.
Names that were genuinely obscure six months ago now have compilation videos and Reddit threads. The posts that used to require actual recall are getting gamed by people who've simply been online long enough to absorb the canon.
"The goalposts are going to keep moving," Ward says. He imagines a near future where Gigi Datome — the Italian forward who had a brief cup of coffee with the Detroit Pistons — stops being an elite pull and becomes a baseline. "Unless it reaches a point of saturation where it doesn't quite get there. I hope Austin Daye stays Detroit-specific knowledge."
Harrell frames it as an authenticity problem. "If your single memory of Shaun Livingston is the mid-range and not everything that came before in his career — which is even more interesting — that's a good example of fake ball knowledge versus real ball knowledge."
But here, too, there's consensus: The solution isn't exclusion, it's depth. All three push back on the idea that ball knowledge should become a velvet rope, a way to dismiss people who aren't sufficiently obsessed.
"I don't want people to be discouraged by learning about the sport of basketball," Coutracos says. "Just because you don't know a random player from 2012 who played seven games doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to learn about the sport."
Harrell is even more direct: "I wouldn't want it used as a barrier to entry for certain conversations. I don't want it to become a status symbol, necessarily."
What they want, it turns out, is for more people to go down the rabbit hole. To look up Sundiata Gaines. To find out how Kosta Koufos actually played. To discover that Jamario Moon had a dunk package that holds up, and that he played seventy-something games with the Raptors before losing games for Michael Jordan's Bobcats.
That's the core of it, really. Do you know ball? You could.
Assistant Editor, General Assignments
Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and *Mother Jones*.
In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and greatly enjoys Detroit sports. If you have any tips or want to talk shop about the Lions, you can reach out to him on Bluesky [@offbrandchance.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/offbrandchance.bsky.social "(opens in a new window)") or by email at [\[email protected\]](https://mashable.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#23404b424d40460d574c544d50464d4763594a45454e46474a420d404c4e "(opens in a new window)").
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