How Simply British Basketball Grew to 135K TikTok Followers in a Month

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On this episode of Tea Time, Brian Bosché and Skylar Smith are joined by Behrad Bakhtiari and Denzel Kazembe from SBB (Simply British Ballers). SBB's mission is to help build the British Basketball community. They've grown their TikTok following to more than 135K as they travel to outdoor basketball courts across the UK. They chat about how they are using TikTok to reach a younger audience of hoopers, hoops culture in the UK, and how they think basketball can grow in the UK.

Follow SBB on TikTok and Instagram.

Full Transcript:

Brian Bosche:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to High Tea Hoops. This is Brian Bosche at the Duke of Hoops. And as always, I am joined by Skylar, the Duchess of Hoops. What's up, Skylar?

Skylar Smith:
Hello, coming off of a great Michigan win after-

Brian Bosche:
Feeling good-

Skylar Smith:
last night. Feeling great.

Brian Bosche:
Well by the time-

Skylar Smith:
I was a little nervous. We recorded the pod yesterday, and then I had to watch Michigan and just to see if I was going to get made fun of on Twitter. So I feel great.

Brian Bosche:
So, by the time we release this, if they have lost, are we going to do a little intro segment on Michigan losing?

Skylar Smith:
No.

Brian Bosche:
Okay perfect.

Skylar Smith:
We're leaving it in.

Brian Bosche:
Perfect. But today, Skylar caved once again to my Tiktok interviews. Thank you, Skylar. We have two very special guests, Behrad and Denzel. What's up, guys? Thanks for joining.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Appreciate you, man. We really appreciate you guys having us on.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So I'm bringing you two on because we're pretty big on Tiktok. The British basketball community launched a ton of new Tiktok accounts, a lot of BBL teams, WBBL teams. Tiktok featured British basketball a couple of months ago. It was the highlight of Tiktok. And so I see this Simply British Basketball account pop up, and it is rating pick-up basketball courts around the UK with the goal of seeing every single core-building British basketball community. You guys go to different courts seemingly every single day, and you've gone from zero to 82,000 followers in a month. So it's been pretty incredible to see that growth. Do you guys just want to give a quick background on yourselves, on how you got into hoops and how you got into kind of doing this Tiktok?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
For sure. I mean, I've played a lot later than Denzel. So I started playing here at about 13 years old. So I'm 22 now. So we started playing when we were 13, I started playing when I was 13 years old. I pretty much played every sport that you can imagine, right? And I don't know what it was, but for some reason, this basket was stuck with me. So I played there. We played it competitively, played at national level, like a county level, like a regional level. Every level I played in. Then I came to uni, and that's where I met Denzel. And I'm sure he will say his side of his story and how he started [inaudible 00:02:07].

Denzel Kazembe:
So yeah, I did start a bit earlier than him. I started like year six, which is like about 11-ish.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. Younger, bro.

Denzel Kazembe:
Younger, yeah. Starting year six, I got picked up by a team called [inaudible 00:02:18] in Newnham. We won the national league for under 13s. So, that was kind of my introduction for basketball. And then I was just playing it regional, county, everything, up until I'd say year 11. So I was like 16. I literally stopped playing basketball for that entire year, basically. And I wasn't playing it seriously until I came back to university, and that's where I met Behrad.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
That's where I met Denz, yeah.

Brian Bosche:
So, do you guys play at uni? What's kind of the playing like at uni?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
It is incredible. We play other unis in our area, so around this area of England. So we're the southern-western. So we're the Southwest region. We play all the other unis...

Denzel Kazembe:
Southeast.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Southeast, all the other teams, the university teams. So we're in a university league and we play... We're in our third years now, but because of COVID, it's been cut into two thirds, into half, essentially. We only got half of last season as well.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
So they're looking for new avenues and new ways, because we love basketball, bro, like we love it. If we can't play it at a competitive level, there's something else that needs to fill that void then.

Skylar Smith:
Believe me, Brian knows. He has not played in over a year because we won't let him because it's not safe in the U.S. And he asks us literally every single day-

Brian Bosche:
Every single day.

Skylar Smith:
when he can go play again. If anyone knows your pain, it is Brian.

Brian Bosche:
I'm like, can I just put on like a helmet or like a scuba helmet? Let me go out there, please. But man, I totally get it. And COVID has just been awful for pick-up hoops. Like I can't remember the last time I didn't play it for this long.

Brian Bosche:
But what got you guys into starting Simply British Basketball? I know you guys have built a couple of community counts, like hardwood files. You've done some basketball stuff on your personal accounts. But what was kind of the impetus for starting SBB and kind of taking that Tiktok forward?

Denzel Kazembe:
You should start with your YouTube channel.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Okay. So I had a YouTube channel where I was like [inaudible 00:04:18] playing, okay, you know MB2K?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
The video game? It's a video game. I was playing that and just trying to like... The ultimate goal of it always was there's a disconnect in the British basketball community. There's a disconnect. If you look over in America, you look even in Europe, there's a connect between the community. There's nothing like that over here. So I was looking for ways to try to do something like that, to connect. So I thought going through a channel of video games and basketball video games to get to that point.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
And then Denz came to me like, "Yo, we need to use a platform like Tiktok." So I got to give the credit to him. I've said it before, but we went into the courts and, again, trying to find a platform to make this thing, a dream of ours, right? There's a disconnect. Like, when Denz was younger, I'm sure he had dreams and ambitions of wanting to make it to the NBA, but he took that year out because there was nothing there.

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah. Literally, the year I came from me, just kind of sitting down, and I just realized,

Behrad Bakhtiari:
There's no direction.

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah, there's no direction. I wanted to go to America to potentially get into the NBA. But then I kind of understood that I was way too old, and if I was to go now... Because I have known a lot of guys that went over, like after year 11, where they stayed at an academy for like three years, and then went over just to play JUCO essentially. And in JUCO, you've got hundreds of guys that coaches have known from when they were like five years old. And you're just some random guy coming. Even if you're better than them, it doesn't matter. Even if you get to D1, it's the same thing over again. You've got guys that've known from when they were 10 playing basketball, and they're going to be over you. So I just stopped playing basketball at that point.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Because we didn't have, like I said, there's no direction. There's no pathway as a sense. And then beyond that, there's no connect. So, with Tiktok, we were like "maybe let's use this as a platform". And then that's just taken off to the point where this is going to be our main focus to try and grow and make the connect and bring everyone together.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
And also with that, improving the courts because the courts over here, bro, I'm sure you've seen some of them, right?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. They're not it, you know?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I've seen some good ones.

Brian Bosche:
So, two follow-up questions, one on the community side and then one on Tiktok as the platform. So, on the community side, we just had Ashley Hamilton on from the Plymouth Raiders, who plays for team GB. And he's like, "Yeah, I started playing when I was 16." And I was like, "Are you kidding me? It's so late and you're still so good." And so, for Skylar and us, it's AAU. There's so many media companies covering hoops. If you want to go play pick-up, you can just go anywhere on the court circle.

Brian Bosche:
So, as you guys hooping when you were younger and going into uni, and you said there's not a big community, where do you go to find other hoopers? Is it kind of lacking on social media? Is it just kind of emptiness?

Denzel Kazembe:
That's really another thing that we've only noticed now because we came to uni. But we're both from London, right? So London is basically the major city. There, there is actually a basketball community. But even then you only know each other because you've played against each other in national league or something.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
They have to be good to even remember them.

Denzel Kazembe:
[inaudible 00:07:24] Yeah. It's really funny, but I didn't know anything about Behrad and he was in London playing basketball.

Skylar Smith:
He wasn't good enough. You couldn't remember him.

Denzel Kazembe:
[crosstalk 00:07:28].

Brian Bosche:
Oh, Skylar, yes.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Oh, no, no. I didn't know he was either. But it's all good.

Skylar Smith:
Okay. All right.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We won't touch that.

Brian Bosche:
You got feel the one-on-one Tiktoks. We got to get you two going at each other. Love that.

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah. So we then moved out of... So, in London, you probably find a lot of courts to play, like Finsbury, et cetera. There's a lot.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I played at Finsbury. It's so fun.

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah. You can go there and find a lot of competition, like almost every day. But you go outside of London and suddenly it's just terrible courts, and then there's nobody really playing basketball, even though there's people who want to play basketball. Even the teams out on this side... Like I remember playing, when I was in national league, I remember playing Folkestone Saints. They just joined the league that year. And honestly, they were terrible. But at that time you don't think about why they were terrible. And it's because they don't have any avenues to actually go out and play basketball in competition because there's no way they can play.

Brian Bosche:
Or connect with other people.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Right. That's the thing. If you compare that to even London itself, we'd been raised in London and we still didn't know there was a community there growing up. We didn't know where to look. We didn't know what to do. There was nothing there. I mean, social media wasn't as dominant there as it is now. But even then, there was nowhere. You only knew someone if you... And even then, when I mean know, you just recognize their face by playing against them.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
It's a tool that compared to your scene in America, where you go to AAU scene, you got people coming to regional competitions, everything. Over here, I'll remember you if you drop the bucket on me, and even then I might not recognize your face. So it's much more difficult.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. And that community on Tiktok, were you guys watching Tiktoks and seeing British basketball on Tiktok before you started? Like why did you pick Tiktok? How active were you on it before it? And what kind of inspired you to like, "Hey, let's do the Tiktok account."

Denzel Kazembe:
So we weren't active on Tiktok at all. I mean, I was almost against Tiktok.

Skylar Smith:
I feel you on that.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Denzel Kazembe:
So, I mean, I don't know. Something told me, "Just check it. Just check it." Because we made an account for Tiktok, right? And I just looked at... Because I knew it ran on kind of like hashtags, right? So I just looked at British basketball. And actually, what you just said, a month ago they British basketball had like...

Brian Bosche:
The feature, or whatever they call it. Yeah.

Denzel Kazembe:
That's how I saw it. And I was like, "Oh, wait. So there's actually something-

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Community.

Denzel Kazembe:
for British basketball." And I was looking through it, and it was really just like guys just trying to show themselves hooping, if anything, but it was there. Like the fact that it was there, it was kind of like, "Wow," to me. So, from there, it was like a no brainer to just try and tap into that.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. This, Skylar, proves everything we just talked about with like, it matters to feature British basketball on Tiktok. Like having other people find that other people are doing that matters a lot.

Skylar Smith:
It definitely does. Yes. What is your favorite court that you've visited? And what is your favorite city in the UK to play basketball? And I'm going to just assume it's London at this point.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. I mean, I would say Brighton has the [inaudible 00:10:53]. I know I'm going to... Because I'm a scenery type of guy, and the scenery at that Brighton court...

Brian Bosche:
With the cliffs? That one was incredible.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
For me, the basketball court itself wasn't very good, it was double rim, very poor traction.

Brian Bosche:
Did you get the ball before it went into the ocean?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. Run! But that, for me, in terms of aesthetics, like you said, Skylar, honestly, it's the only thing that could maybe be better than London.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
I know we just went recently and we reviewed a court. And it was.

Denzel Kazembe:
[inaudible 00:12:38]

Behrad Bakhtiari:
It was [inaudible 00:11:32], yeah. They got an 8.5. That is still not in London either, to be fair. But when we went to London, the courts were closed. So we haven't actually been able to go to Finsbury Park. Like you said, Brian, we haven't been able to go to those, the well-respected courts in England, and we haven't been able to go to those yet because of COVID. So, as of right now, best place to hoop in for me, I would say, Brighton. And the best court, I would have to just say that court in Brighton, for me. I can't...

Denzel Kazembe:
I think I'd have to agree with that.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
You'd agree?

Denzel Kazembe:
Because there's always the other court in Brighton as well, which is like packed, which is why they took the rims down there.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I love that Brighton beach court.

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
And then are there any dream courts in the world outside of the UK that you'd like to visit?

Brian Bosche:
That's pick-up courts.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
There's one in Miami, right? What's the one I saw? I remember I saw this one... Again, scenery topic guy. I think it is in Miami.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. South Beach?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
South Beach, right.

Brian Bosche:
I've played at that court. It is so fun. It's ridiculous because the competition is really good too. You'll have multiple courts too. Like there's the one on the beach, and then there's a couple on the other side of the road. It's really fun. That one's a great one.

Denzel Kazembe:
There was like a Kobe's court as well. Where was the Kobe's court? There's a Kobe's court somewhere in America we saw on Instagram. That would be-

Skylar Smith:
I feel like Miami's fun too because if you're playing well, there's sure to be some women on the sidelines watching you.

Brian Bosche:
There's a lot of people watching. The spectators are really good.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah, we might need to book a trip down there.

Brian Bosche:
That's a great pick. And then before we go into the pick-up culture and stuff, you have a rating system. You mentioned it was an 8.5. Love just like the casual reference, "Yeah, it's an 8.5." So, break down your scoring system. How do you rate the courts? What's your approach when you go to each of these pick-up courts?

Denzel Kazembe:
So, our approach is mostly just like... So we literally play on the court a lot more than what we show. But a lot of things that we notice is like if the court is on a hill. The rims are based off like friendliness, how stiff they are. Because I guess, we talk about double rims being like nightmare to play on, but there's a lot of rims in the UK that aren't double but are terrible.

Brian Bosche:
Or triple. I saw you guys do the triple rims, where it has to ring around all three.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
That's something else, bro.

Brian Bosche:
I've never seen that.

Denzel Kazembe:
But the ball usually comes out. Even if it goes in, it can come out.

Brian Bosche:
It doesn't make sense.

Denzel Kazembe:
And then there's backboard. So there's a lot of short backboards. They're either short, like lengthwise or widthwise in the UK. It's quite annoying as well.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Given the backboard, the courts, the lines, traction.

Denzel Kazembe:
A lot of the lines have faded here.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
And the courts here are gravel. They're not actually like... What's a basketball court floor meant to be? Not gravel. It's not meant to be like...

Brian Bosche:
It's almost like a tennis court. Even the tennis court surface is better. Yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Exactly, exactly.

Brian Bosche:
Concrete is tough. You know, I'm getting older, so it gets the knees.

Skylar Smith:
Hard on the joints, yeah.

Brian Bosche:
You only have a certain number of jumps left.

Denzel Kazembe:
I mean, we have to wake up and stretch now when we leave the bed now.

Skylar Smith:
I'm getting into that now too. I wake up and I'm like, "Oh."

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That transition from I can just walk onto the court and immediately start playing, to like, "Hey, I need 15 minutes of mobility here before I get started." It's hard to make that transition. Fun stuff.

Brian Bosche:
Okay. So the rating system, it's all out of 10. So, at the end, you give it like a rating out of 10?

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Has there been any 10 out of 10 yet?

Denzel Kazembe:
No.

Brian Bosche:
You're saving it. You're saving it. I like it.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We still haven't seen it. We still haven't really seen it because our goal is to rate every court in the UK, but why is it we can't rate evert court in the world eventually one day. So we don't want to give it to any here and then we go to like Miami.

Brian Bosche:
Miami, yeah. Miami might be that 10. I love that.

Brian Bosche:
Okay. So I have played a few times pick-up. I played at Finsbury, [inaudible 00:15:42], random courts throughout Haddington. And it's very varied across the different courts. So, how would you describe UK pick-up basketball culture? Like, is it to 11? Are there consistent rules? Is there a consistent way to get into games? Give people a perspective on you show up to a court, what's it like?

Denzel Kazembe:
I think you give him an idea.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. To be honest, yeah. So, one thing I would definitely say is that each court, it seems like, that I played on, different courts I've been to, have different rules. So there's no underlying like, "Okay, it's straight seven, straight 11, straight 21." So when I play, if I play like a three-on-three, we would do 21 straight, ones and twos, everything ones and twos.

Brian Bosche:
Only ones and twos. All right.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
21 straight. I've been at courts where we go straight seven, like everything ones, straight seven. It just depends on who you're playing against and the competition. When I've been at courts, like last summer for instance, you do a three-on-three tournament and this was the way it was. It was straight five, all ones. And so it's just a quick rotation. Get everyone in. Get everyone playing.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Now, that's from the numerical aspect of things. Now, then the compensation aspect of things, again, very varied. The competition, there are some serious hoopers in the UK, for sure. No doubt about it. But-

Brian Bosche:
Finsbury was good. There were good hoopers at Finsbury.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
The Finsbury top court in the UK, you should expect top-tier talent-

Brian Bosche:
I wore a Spur shirt there, by the way, like a...I should not have done that. It was a stupid American move.

Skylar Smith:
The faces they just made when you said that, they were terrified for you.

Brian Bosche:
Luckily I was playing well, but man, that was bad.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. Damn, bro, I would've put up at least five or six bodyguards on you.

Brian Bosche:
Next time, next time.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
But like a top-tier court, like Finsbury, you should expect top-tier talent. But let's say we go to a court that's not top tier, like let's say around the corner from my house. We're not going to exceed top-tier talent, and it's going to be a bunch of people who are playing basketball for the first time or playing basketball for the first year, and they want to get good. It's difficult to navigate around the UK, searching for competition, if you're not at those top-tier courts, from what I've experienced.

Brian Bosche:
Well, that's one of the reasons I love what you guys are doing, because you're right. If you want to go participate, you don't know where to go. You don't know what courts are good, what aren't. Like I was on so many apps. I'm like on Google Maps, satellite view, trying to see what basketball courts there are in London to play pick-up in.

Skylar Smith:
He just ended up following people around who looked like they might be playing basketball.

Brian Bosche:
I saw someone with a basketball.

Skylar Smith:
They had a basketball. He just started following them.

Brian Bosche:
I followed, asking them.

Skylar Smith:
It was tough for him find pick-ups in London.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Think about it. Just literally think about what you just said, Skylar. Imagine you're leaving your house and you want to go on hoops anywhere, right? You go to a local court and the rim is like, what we just saw, triple rim, every time you shoot, it bounces out. You don't want to go there. You want to go somewhere at least a little bit better. You search and you search, and what can you find? Where's the platform that allows you to consistently-

Skylar Smith:
I mean, it's you guys now. That's the coolest thing.

Brian Bosche:
You have an 80,000-follower responsibility now. You're locked in.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
I know. I'm nervous when you put it like that.

Brian Bosche:
We add Jamie Furnace because of his Tiktok prowess. We convinced him to start a podcast. So I'm excited about you guys do after this, as you grow out your platform, because Jamie started that one.

Skylar Smith:
Brian loves to push people into new platforms.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
[inaudible 00:19:09] Skylar and Brian, for sure.

Brian Bosche:
Yes. Anytime you want.

Skylar Smith:
We got you.

Skylar Smith:
So, how many people have you actually had to pay 50 quid after they beat you in pick-up? Anyone?

Denzel Kazembe:
Not yet.

Skylar Smith:
No one yet. Okay.

Brian Bosche:
You guys are good.

Denzel Kazembe:
I won't say any names of why it's gotten close, but it's gotten pretty close for some reason. But we haven't had to give up 50 pound yet.

Skylar Smith:
Okay. I feel like Brian and I could also be the first group that you guys have to pay 50 quid to.

Brian Bosche:
Oh, that's the first two-on-two.

Skylar Smith:
It's got to be the lot of first things here.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I haven't lost in the UK yet. So let's see. I'm the American that shows up and takes over the court. So we'll see what happens. We'll [inaudible 00:19:56].

Skylar Smith:
Everyone loves the American who shows up and takes over, right? People love it. Yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
As long as you just don't put up in [inaudible 00:20:04]. Don't do that. Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
So, how have you guys been able to like reach a British audience through Tiktok? Like what have the comments been like on your Tiktoks? Are you finding that people have been kind of waiting for something like this and they're excited that you guys are here? Are you finding that you're kind of having to build from the ground up, this kind of basketball community? What has kind of been the reaction to your Tiktok?

Denzel Kazembe:
I think a big thing that we've been aware of is that there is a community, but there's just no connection. We keep repeating, but that's literally what it is. So what we find in our comments is a lot of people that play basketball, but just don't know where to play basketball. So people are just going, "Oh yeah, can you come here? Can you come here?" Or like, "Oh, this was my court all my days."

Brian Bosche:
Exactly.

Denzel Kazembe:
And even in that sense I just said, "This is my court. I can't believe you came here." That's literally how it is. You have one court and you don't know any other courts. And that's it. Like when I was growing up, I didn't know Finsbury Park, whatever existed. I only knew that.

Brian Bosche:
Tell me that about it.

Denzel Kazembe:
I knew about two courts, basketball courts, that were outdoor.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Honestly.

Denzel Kazembe:
The rest I just played at UBO, which is UV, which is University of East London, that's the only place indoors and that was it. And that's basically how you grew up. So here, I feel like it's less common to travel to courts, to play basketball, even if you might want to, but because you just don't know, you can't go and Google and search in Boston courts in London, because-

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Imagine going X amount of hours and no one's there.

Brian Bosche:
It's empty, that's the worst.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Right? So that would be, it would be even more, even more than the terrorist to go. The community has shocked us. It's absolutely. I mean like you can tell, like you said four weeks and some ludicrous things, comments, everyone's showing amazing support. It's not like, we said this before, Simply British Ballers is not me and Denz right? That's more Simply British Ballers. It's the entire UK community, the bridge, the Boston community. SBB is not us. It's all of us, bro. We need to come together collectively and push this. Because it's there, like everyone loves hoops in this country, but there's no connecting that. And we want to know why. And we want to hopefully fill that void. Not me and him, all of us together because it's not just two people in it. We can be whatever the face or whatever, but we have to come together.

Brian Bosche:
And for this summer where COVID restrictions are lifting, you know that June 21st, hopefully it stays there. Like I think this summer is going to be huge for British basketball. Because there's this like pent up people wanting to go out and play. What do you guys kind of envision for this summer? Are you going to be like, "Hey, meet us at this court at this time" and see how many people show up trying to bring different pickup games together. What's kind of the vision for the summer because I think it's going to be huge.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We literally have like a few ideas for that. Like to do, just-

Denzel Kazembe:
Give them a sneak peek .

Brian Bosche:
Break news on the pod.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Basically. Exactly. It's something about like having like SBB tournaments at courts we visits, that we know are good ones. And just having that kind of making an event of it. Like just trying to get people to come out and travel to like different courts they haven't seen before and just play basketball, just like interact with, imagine everyone's been locked away like this for so long. They want to get out and they want to be with people again. They want to socialize. What better way to do that was hooping. You know? And it will be sunny because where it is in this country, hopefully you never know. Hopefully it will be nice wherever as well. So that's the goal. I

Brian Bosche:
Love that. Like if you guys can say, cause you can use your platform to say, "Hey, we're going to be at Brighton beach or we're going to be at this court at this time", do it like a week ahead of time. You could even do like a countdown to a live to get people to sign up for that on Tiktok. And then you would get a ton of people to show up and you could make YouTube videos. Like that would be so fun to do this summer. So please do that just for my personal benefit as well.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We've got you Brian.

Brian Bosche:
Okay. So the next one is gen Z. So like you said, Tiktok is a very gen Z platform. We talked about this on a couple of our other Tiktok podcasts as Skylar laughs is like-

Skylar Smith:
I love when Brian talks about gen Z because it makes him sound so old.

Brian Bosche:
I can't help it. Just such an American accent gen Z. How have you found like building this community for gen Z specifically? So do you see that it's a lot of like high school or I don't even know what the secondary school kids do you think it's like a lot of pre uni kids who are like getting interested in it or how have you seen kind of that audience being attracted to your account and being attracted to this community?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Well, we think that's the main audience, even before we started, because if you're trying to do it, a community is best to build it from the ground up. Right? Yeah. So on the ground would be the kids because the kids start growing up.

Denzel Kazembe:
They're the future.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Exactly. The kids start growing up and helping to just build this community. Because obviously if you are over, like what 16, 18, your maybe playing basketball at this point, if you haven't, you haven't experienced where you could have-

Denzel Kazembe:
The same way you did no direction.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah, I've gone for it. So hopefully for the kids we can just build something different.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, well there's a lot of British basketball communities on like Facebook groups and like on all these things that just gen Z is not on. So it's like Tiktok seems to be breaking through. So that's encouraging to hear.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah. I mean Tiktok hopefully... now we know that the community is there, We need to tap into it as much as possible to get everyone to come together. Like Brian, thank you so much for saying Twitter, Twitter is definitely a play we need to make.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Same with Facebook. Same with all of these platforms.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. But I think we've seen, like with you guys with Jamie furnace, you guys started on Tiktok and it didn't take long at all for you guys to just blow up. Like if you're just meeting the audience where they're at, you're going to have a ton of support from the jump. And so it's yeah, it's been really cool to see you guys build this up, it's been amazing.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Thank you so much, honestly. We keep saying it, but we mean it, we can't do it without everyone else. [crosstalk 00:26:20].

Skylar Smith:
Yeah. So we kind of consider you guys Tiktok experts at this point. So-

Brian Bosche:
Better than anyone else. Not a lot of people have experience on it even.

Skylar Smith:
It's true. Like it's such a new platform. There aren't really experts on it yet. So even just people who are getting on it all the time and posting content and seeing how it goes and seeing how people respond. Like you really have insight that a of people could use. So how do you think British basketball teams or even maybe it's simpler to just talk about players, how do you think they could take better advantage of Tiktok and building on that platform?

Denzel Kazembe:
That's a great question.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
I think the best way to do it in my opinion would be to just get involved with the community. Because there's a lot of I think... I've picked out a few of them, a few of their pages. There isn't much on most of them, if there is usually just like highlights of them playing basketball or training or something, which is, I mean, it's cool to see, but you can go on Instagram and see that from like American players. You'd rather see LeBron James training and than for being like serious. Like any anyone would even then probably. But I think just getting involved with the community, like doing so even doing something similar to what we're doing, which would be amazing to see someone like Obi doing that, that would be like...

Brian Bosche:
If Obi shows up to like a pickup run?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah, that's crazy. You're bound to get a massive amount of traction off that. So I think that would be like the best way and original content. Original content is very important on Tiktok like a lot of people using the same...I'm on Tiktok with a professor a doctor. We can just our experiences, right? So if our experiences show that we made original content we use the music that isn't necessarily viral, viral, we use what is fitting to the video.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
And also, I mean the videos they take quite a lot of time to make. It's not like an hour, five minutes. We'll be at a court for hours making a Tiktok a combination of everything. And then just understanding that it's an algorithm and if you can do whatever you can do, the rest isn't in your control. We've had some of our Tiktoks go viral and we were like, we looked back and we're like "bro that's nowhere near some of our best work. We have some incredible clips in that that doesn't go viral. But you do whatever you can do. And like Denz said, get involved in the community, do all of that, the rest isn't in your hands, you just got to do what you can do. And then code it takes all the algorithm helps.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. The algorithm gods are... I'll do a post with 300,000 followers and we'll get like 1500 views. I'm like, what? That was a good video. It's just like totally out of your hands. But like, I think you guys are totally right. The BBL teams, WBBL teams, like everyone, they can do the highlights and it's a good mix, but you're right. They're not creating like uniquely British basketball content. Yeah. So hopefully like this summer or the fall where they can actually go out in the community more, it's like, Hey, we're in London or we're in Bristol or we're in the cities rather than like, Hey, this is a game which you can see like in America or anywhere else. So were you guys fans of the BBL or anything growing up or was it kind of just like out of what your area of interests were?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
I've been to one BBL game and I got it as a birthday present. We don't know much about the BBL.

Brian Bosche:
Interesting but NBA fans?

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah, yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
For sure.

Skylar Smith:
There's a D Wade Jersey behind you, are you real fans? [crosstalk 00:30:04]

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Duck your head real quick. There you go.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Skylar Smith:
Are you D wade fans?

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah, I'm a D wade fan. And it's not to say that the level is nothing to do with anything is literally what we were talking about earlier, right? It's not getting broadcast in an office, it's not being put out enough for us to see what the BBL is. There's no "Did you guys see this guy? Did you see some person go off in the BBL?" That's not communication. No. Did you see makers has dunk over my guy?

Denzel Kazembe:
You don't know any players.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We don't know any players. I don't know what is needed, but I do think that with the upbringing of the community, hopefully... Because we don't even have a team in Europe. We don't even have a Euro team. We are purely the BBL and that's why I think it needs to change. And that's a great question because us personally, we hoop a lot. We don't follow the NBA. We love basketball. Olympics, X, Y, and Z. We both played at a high level. But when it comes to our own countries basketball, we don't know much about it.

Brian Bosche:
It's off the radar, yeah it's crazy.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Why is that? That's the question that we don't have the answer to and we want to find out.

Brian Bosche:
Well, Skylar, maybe we need to make some connections here. Get some BBL players to show up at some of these, a SBB runs the summer, really showcase. Because-

Skylar Smith:
We'll work on BBL players you guys you work on Ovi, that's what we'll task you with.

Brian Bosche:
Skylar wants you to work on Ovi.

Skylar Smith:
If you get Ovi somewhere, I will be there.

Brian Bosche:
When she started her Twitter, it was OVI Soko, Stan account. That was the bio.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
A bunch of people that have, like Denz literally just said, a bunch of people have been recommending to us to try and get in contact with him because I'm sure he wants what's best for the British Basketball community as well.

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, definitely.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Especially coming off that GB run where they were qualifying for Euro basket was amazing. He went off against France, which was amazing to see.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
All right, final question guys. Each of you can answer this one. This is kind of a... we'll clip this for social, so no pressure, but this'll go on the different social media channels. So each of you, what do you think is the best way for basketball to grow in the UK?

Denzel Kazembe:
You go first.

Brian Bosche:
Nice, Denz.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
What's the best way for basketball to grow in the UK? So like we just said, like we've been saying, the community's there, everyone loves to play basketball in this country, but the issue is the disconnect. Like you don't know anyone you've hooped with in the past, unless you've seen them at a respectable level. How do you know someone that you've hooped with when you were younger and you go to the court and you look by them and you don't even recognize them. There's no connect in the community. Everyone loves basketball in this country. Everyone loves playing basketball in this country, if we come together, right, like we said, SBB is not me and Denz, its all of us. All the British ballers lets come together, ;et's change this thing forever, and let's let other countries look at us as a real country when it comes to hoops because we are.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Like we play at a high enough levels to understand that there's some ballers in this country, given the right direction, given the right pathway, coming together as a collective, coming together as a community, pushing as far as we can, the sky's the limit for this country in basketball.

Denzel Kazembe:
And I think I'll just piggyback off what you're saying. I think the best way to do that is to build or focus more on building the community outside of London more so. Because in London there's communities there. I think it will be a lot easier to guide the hoopers in London towards a community. Because you even know each other outside of basketball in a lot of cases, but in places like here in Canterbury, in Kent where every other city's like an hours train ride away you really need to build a community where there isn't the majority of the community, which is here. And I feel like if the connection starts to happen around London, we can really, really build something like huge.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
That's a great point. I didn't even think about that. That's a great point.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. So fostering the community where it's already pretty dense, but then helping like parlay that into each community and knowing where to go play where there's a smaller density. Yeah.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Yeah.

Denzel Kazembe:
Yeah, that's exactly-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
Thank you guys.

Brian Bosche:
I can't wait for pickup this summer. Can't wait till we meet you in person. [crosstalk 00:34:28]

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We need that. We need that running. You said 50 pounds, right Skylar? What was that?

Skylar Smith:
Yeah, 100 on the line, we got it.

Brian Bosche:
No problem. Skylar, we've got to start training immediately.

Skylar Smith:
I have to get back in shape.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
We need to as well.

Brian Bosche:
All right. Thanks guys.

Behrad Bakhtiari:
It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you.