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SALT LAKE CITY — The joy quickly returned to Bojan Bogdanovic.
The familiar smile appeared on his face and he spoke in an excited tone. The Utah Jazz forward was back in his happy place — he was shooting a basketball.
“I mean he was just like a kid, excited to be shooting again,” Landon Southwick said.
Southwick has been able to experience that type of moment quite a bit lately. He’s the public relations manager for Lifetime Products, a company that has become the unofficial NBA hoop of the coronavirus pandemic.
As of Wednesday, the Clearfield company had delivered 70 hoops to professional basketball players to help them keep shooting while still social distancing. The list includes players on 14 NBA teams, including four NBA All-Stars and eight Jazz players.
That list of clients is something founder Barry Mower likely never even considered dreaming of when the company began selling adjustable basketball hoops in 1986. But it is a bit poetic.
Lifetime began with Mower’s desire to have a better basketball hoop at his home. That's the same desire many in the NBA are feeling now.
“He built an adjustable hoop that you could have at your house, and that's really how we got our start,” Southwick said. “And we made it portable, and that really kind of revolutionized the basketball world.”
Joe Ingles has been a brand ambassador for Lifetime since 2018. So when he realized the league was going to be out for a while, he contacted Southwick to get a hoop set up at his place.
He wasn’t the last player they got a hoop to — not by a long shot.
Over the past 34 years, Lifetime has expanded to 115 countries and sells everything from tables to paddleboards to coolers. So, it wasn't too much of a problem to start getting the hoops to players all across the country.
Miami Heat All-Star Jimmy Butler wanted to do something nice for his team to help with the league being shut down. Butler’s agency contacted Lifetime, and soon 21 hoops were being gifted to the Heat players and staff. The hoops will be donated to the community once the league starts back up.
After that, the company realized it could fill a niche.
A lot of NBA players don’t have basketball hoops at their homes. Sure, there are guys like Utah point guard Mike Conley, who has an indoor gym at his residence in Ohio — something that gave him an advantage when he won the NBA’s HORSE Challenge earlier this month — but there are many more like Ingles who, until recently, never felt the need to have their own.
NBA players have access to state-of-the-art facilities, and who really wants to take their work home? For many, a backyard hoop didn’t seem necessary. Now, with the facilities having been closed for nearly two months, that thought has changed.
Lifetime started contacting agency after agency to see if players would be interested in a hoop, and the orders started coming in.
They’ve since sent them to Boston’s Jaylen Brown, Cleveland's Collin Sexton and Larry Nance Jr., Indiana's Domantas Sabonis, New Orleans' Jrue Holiday and Sacramento's Bogdan Bogdanovic, among others.
The company has also sent hoops to players on six WNBA teams (including Sue Bird and Brittney Griner), players on three G-League squads, and a few players who are hopeful to be NBA rookies next season, including Utah State’s Sam Merrill.
“During the process, we thought, Man, we're a Utah-based company, we love the Jazz. We're all guys that think Jordan pushed off. We're Jazz fans through and through, so we wanted to reach out,” Southwick said.
Lifetime got in touch the Jazz and soon hoops were being set to Bogdanovic, Tony Bradley, Jordan Clarkson, Juwan Morgan, Emmanuel Mudiay, Royce O’Neale and Miye Oni.
“Everyone that’s in Utah got one, so we can at least pretend we're shooting,” Ingles said.
Shooting on a portable hoop isn’t the same as what these players are used to, but at least it’s something. As Southwick has helped drop off and build the hoops for the players, he has seen the appreciation.
“Joe said he hadn't touched a basketball since they walked off the court in Oklahoma City. So for him to have a ball in his hand and get up a couple of shots was exciting,” Southwick said.
