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Los Angeles Lakers · In The Paint
Three years at In The Paint, the Lakers’ art event, and a conversation with the organisation about what digital art could mean for it.
Nizzar Ben Chekroune was invited to In The Paint, the Los Angeles Lakers’ art event at the team’s training facility, three years running from 2022 to 2024 as a digital-art and Web3 expert. Working alongside the painter Charly Palmer, who curated the 2022 edition, and Dr. Karida Brown, he was introduced to Lakers leadership and discussed digital art and Web3 with the organisation by email and in person at the UCLA Health Training Center.
- Relationship
- Invited guest · advisory
- Role
- Invited digital-art and Web3 expert; adviser on digital art and Web3
- Period
- 2022 – 2024
- Where
- Los Angeles, United States
- With
- Los Angeles Lakers, In The Paint
- Attribution
- Independent advisory, personal capacity
Through Charly and Karida
I came to the Lakers through Charly Palmer and Dr. Karida Brown, with whom I had been working on digital art since the autumn of 2021. In March 2022 Charly curated In The Paint, the Lakers’ art event at the team’s training facility in Los Angeles, and I went with Karida. The evening before, I was courtside at a Lakers game and met the team.
Nobody at the Lakers found me through a pitch. I arrived through people who had already tested my judgment on their own work and their own collections.
Asked back, three years running
The Lakers invited me to In The Paint again in March 2023, when it fell during NFT LA, and again in 2024. Each time I was there as the digital-art and Web3 expert.
Three consecutive invitations, including after the NFT market had turned, meant the people in that room found the conversation useful enough to want it again. That is the kind of result that does not show up in a sales report.
What the conversation covered
With Charly and Karida, I advised on what digital art and Web3 could mean for In The Paint and for the Lakers: the possibilities, a digital art and NFT strategy, collectors and community, connections across the digital art world, and the story and positioning that would make any of it credible for an NBA organisation.
An NBA organisation does not bring a collector's questions to digital art. A franchise has a brand, a fan base and players whose images carry their own rights. Any digital art initiative touches all three, so the thinking has to start from what the organisation needs to protect, not from what the market is buying that month.
I was introduced to Lakers leadership and discussed digital art with them. The exchange continued by email and in person at the UCLA Health Training Center, where the discussion was filmed and photographed.
The same question, at a different scale
The thinking I brought was the one I brought to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's team: what a digital asset adds to a legacy, and when it spends it. Here it played out over three seasons, at the scale of an NBA organisation.
What I take forward
I can sit with an NBA organisation, a painter and a collector community at the same table and keep the conversation on what the organisation needs to protect, not on what the market is buying that month.
People
- Charly Palmer
- · Artist; worked with me on the Lakers context
- Dr. Karida Brown
- · Worked with me on the Lakers context
Sources
Related work
- Charly Palmer · Dr. Karida Brown · In The PaintCharly Palmer and Dr. Karida Brown were moving into digital art. I guided their collecting, their projects and the architecture of Dope Ass Frens.
- Kareem Abdul-JabbarHired to build a Web3 opportunity around a legend's legacy. I advised the team not to launch.
- TIME · TIMEPiecesA direct message from Keith Grossman became a lasting advisory relationship on TIMEPieces: collections, artists, collectors and community.