After a season of individual historics, we are finally on the cusp of the playoffs. To preview the post-season, Hoopdarshan's hosts Kaushik Lakhsman and Karan Madhok bring on board Ekam Nagra, the CEO and Founder of popular international media outlet 'Ball Don't Stop'. Nagra speaks to us about the most-intriguing storylines ahead, the impossible MVP race, and being awestruck with Allen Iverson.
Ball Don't Stop is one of the fastest-growing basketball media outlets in the world. They cover NBA, High School, Pro AM basketball, and have a performance training branch too. They have over 300,000 fans worldwide. Nagra is from Vancouver Canada, where he organised the 'Battle at the Border' basketball event in Vancouver featuring Jamal Crawford and India's own Satnam Singh.
Hoopdarshan is the truest voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.
For the last ten years, few basketball players on the planet can claim to have matched the life-changing transformation of 7-1 Indian phenon Satnam Singh. Basketball carried Satnam from a tiny farming village in Punjab to become a top junior star for his state, to America as a recruit on scholarship at the IMG Basketball Academy, and eventually, to become the first Indian to be drafted into the NBA. It's been a miraculous journey, a realisation of a daily grind and the work that Satnam put into the game.
But the grind is not yet over. Over the past year, Satnam wrapped his first season with the NBA D-League squad Texas Legends and continues to work hard to reach the next level and play in an NBA game.
To follow Satnam's story, the producers from basketball media outlet and lifestyle brand Ball Don't Stop are launching a new edition of their "#TheGrind" series on their website balldontstop.com on Monday, August 22. Over the weekend Ball Don't Stop and Satnam both shared a preview of the series on their respective Instagram accounts:
A video posted by www.balldontstop.com (@balldontstop) on
Ball Don't Stop is run by their founder and director Ekam Nagra, the Canadian citizen who decided to highlight his Indian roots with this project.
"The Satnam series is a part of our "#TheGrind" series in which we train pro players from around the world who have a unique and cool story," Nagra told me. "Satnam's series was planned by us for a few months but finally came to life when he attended our Battle At The Border event in Vancouver on August 6th, which featured Jamal Crawford and Nav Bhatia. Satnam got a standing ovation at the game from everyone in the arena, a lot of Indians were there and was honoured with an award from Ball Don't Stop and the Canadian Government. It was a great moment."
"The next day we shot our launcher episode. We put him through a strength and conditioning workout at our facility Vancity Strength. This launch episode is just to catch peoples attention; we will be following Satnam throughout his journey to and in the NBA. This will be a huge project for us and as the episodes go on he will be opening up more. This will be shown to over 200,000 fans throughout Ball Don't Stop. It will be on our YouTube channel and debut on Balldontstop.com."
The series Satnam's journey should give basketball fans worldwide an interesting insight into the sacrifices, challenges, and potential glory of following a hoop dream. Hopefully, the journey - in real life as well as in the Ball Don't Stop series - can one day feature Satnam getting his big breakthrough and playing in the NBA!
