Creating positive and engaging content through basketball storytelling

St. Cloud State University alumnus Nolan Newberg first started creating social media content when he was 13, and never stopped. In fact, Newberg and friend Joe Doerrer turned it into a career.

The pair co-founded and run StrictlyBBall together, which focuses on basketball storytelling. They first got into social media as teenagers in middle school, making videos of trick shots they attempted at parks or layering basketball highlights over popular songs — first on Vine and then YouTube when the former was shut down. Newberg and Doerrer used to walk around the Mall of America handing out business cards to encourage YouTube follows. In high school they came up with the StrictlyBBall name and got into producing longer videos with more editing for Instagram, before getting into TikTok in college. Now, StrictlyBBall has over 457,000 followers on Instagram, 581,000 on YouTube and 2.5 million on TikTok.

“We had a video go pretty viral, and then over time our content has adapted to what it is now. The main thing we post is basketball storytelling videos, so we travel across the country doing a lot of live basketball coverage, and then with the content we put our own creative spin on it with voicing over everything that happened and making it engaging and entertaining for our viewers and audience,” Newberg said. “The first video that really blew us up and just transformed our content into what it is today was when we went to Minnehaha Academy — a high school basketball game — to watch Chet Holmgren, and … yeah — the rest is history.”

While they both enjoy and follow other sports, Newberg said the choice to focus their content solely on basketball was an easy one.

“I think a big part of it is just loving the sport — playing it and not just watching it. That was the sport that both of us played. We played baseball as well, but basketball always just had more of an intrigue from my perspective. I was always better at baseball, but for whatever reason, there’s just something about basketball that I love,” he said. “I think it’s the best sport in the world — I know I’m a little bit biased because that’s the type of content I put out — but you can play basketball with anyone. You can go to a hoop and shoot by yourself, if there’s two people it’s one-on-one, if there’s three people you do one-to-one rollout. I think it’s the perfect sport to play with one to 10 people, and I’ve just always been drawn to it. It’s hard to say, but I’ve just always loved basketball ever since I can remember.”

The pair had been interested in getting into hosting events for some time, eventually putting together a three-on-three event that culminated in thousands of fans visiting Huntington National Bank Rotunda in the Mall of America to witness the event in August 2024. It was important for the minds behind StrictlyBBall that the event take place in their home state.

“There’s a lot of high-level talent that comes through Minnesota high school basketball. You see guys in the NBA like Chet Holmgren, Jalen Suggs. On the women’s side of things you have Paige Bueckers, who’s been killing it at UConn — she’s going to have a massive senior year for the Huskies and go on to be an amazing player in the WNBA. Even at the high school level; recently there’s been Liv McGill, Aaliyah Crump — there’s just so much talent in the state of Minnesota, but those players in the summertime, they’re not playing in Minnesota whatsoever,” Newberg said. “They’re on high-level circuits, they’re traveling the country and just attending basketball sessions in different areas. We saw the lack of basketball in Minnesota during the summertime and we wanted to bring basketball to the Minnesota community.

“Thousands of Minnesotans gathered to watch something that we put on, and it means everything to us.”

In addition to the successful three-on-three event, Newberg said another highlight was taking part in the Minnesota Timberwolves’ media day.

“As a diehard Timberwolves fan, born and raised in Minnesota, that’s an experience you can only dream of. The fact that it happened was incredible, and I’m still all smiles thinking about it,” he said. “Anthony Edwards is definitely my favorite player, and you meet him in-person and he treats you like a normal human being. He doesn’t treat you any differently and he takes the time out of his day to do the media-related stuff. Obviously, these professional athletes get so much of that; it just meant everything that he took the time and was engaged with all of it.”

The StrictlyBBall content creators have become heavily involved in covering the Twin Cities Pro-Am each summer as well. It has connected them with athletes like Luka Garza, and Newberg said getting to see Jalen Suggs suit up for a team coached by Paige Bueckers during the 2023 tournament was “like a fever dream.”

Positivity is key for StrictlyBBall. Newberg and Doerrer are not in the business of critiquing or criticizing the athletes they follow and feature. If the duo travels to see an athlete who happens to have an off night, that content is not published.

“We want to keep everything in a positive light, so one of the main things we want to do with our content is create a lot of positive entertainment in the basketball space. Another thing that’s super meaningful to us is giving kids exposure as well,” Newberg said. “We realize we’ve built such a massive platform and we have the capability to get more eyes on these players, so if we’re at a game or an event where a player really impresses us, the fact that we have an opportunity to help them get more attention, get more exposure, get seen by college coaches, whoever it may be — that means a lot to us.”

While focusing on content creation and social media full time allows for some freedom, Newberg said it also has its challenges. Producing engaging, creative content can be challenging in the offseason, and some videos don’t always perform as well as others. It’s important to remain focused, and to keep ego out of the equation.

“You need to be very self-driven. No one is in your ear telling you what to do or what not to do. It’s me and Joe. I definitely think that partnership that we’ve built over the years — we can just trust each other that we’re going to stay self-committed — has been huge. It definitely can be a challenge at times to stay self-driven,” Newberg said. “I mean, I don’t need to wake up at a specific time; I can wake up whenever. I could just take a vacation literally whenever I want. I have all the free time I could possibly want in the world, but you need to stay super self-driven, because there’s just so much passion about what you’re doing that just keeps you going and makes you not want to quit out on it. We’ve been dreaming to be in this position since we were 13 years old on Vine, and we’re doing everything in our capability to keep that.”

Newberg said he found tools and skills through his education at SCSU that have helped him keep StrictlyBBall moving. He liked that the University — where he earned a bachelor’s in mass communications with a minor in marketing in 2022 — had a strong balance between the college cost of living and the value of the education he received.

“I feel like I understood at a young age what my passion was and the profession I wanted to get into — which was some area of social media, more specifically basketball social media. So I kind of always wanted to take classes that I could really benefit from because I knew what I wanted to get into,” he said. “There’s just so many classes, all the way from graphic design to storytelling, presentation-based things that gave me a lot of benefits for the way I carry myself in conversations and meetings with people who could be a potential sponsor or who we’d like to build a relationship with. On that front a lot of the classes were very beneficial, because it just aligned with the type of work that I do now.”

Newberg and Doerrer plan to keep pushing StrictlyBBall forward, producing content, hosting more events, and continuing to have a positive impact — not only on the basketball community, but Minnesota as a whole.

“We’re born and raised from this state. We love this state, and we want to do everything in our capability to show people that Minnesota has a lot to offer,” Newberg said. “From an outside perspective it may be seen as a hockey state, but if you provide Minnesota with high-level basketball and basketball entertainment, this state is going to take notice and respond very well to it.”