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People and Pop Culture

A Day In The Life With NBA 2K League's Brendan Donohue

The NBA 2K League seasons is heating up, with the playoffs beginning Friday, and as one could imagine, that makes Managing Dir BRENDAN DONOHUE a busy person. Despite the hectic schedule leading up to the league's first-ever Finals next Saturday, Donohue took a moment to speak with THE DAILY about how he spends his daily routine and tell us when he gets a chance to pick up the sticks for himself.

5:15am: I start my day with a run on the treadmill at my house. Usually I’m watching "SPORTSCENTER" while I have music playing on my earphones. After that I grab a quick shower and have breakfast with my 12-year-old son, CARTER, and my wife, PATTY

7:00am: I take the train in from Connecticut to N.Y. -- it’s about an hour-and-15-minute train ride most mornings. I actually find that to be a great time, because while most people are sleeping, I catch up on emails. It’s when I jump on Twitter and I’ll keep track of what’s going on with the league, the players.

9:00am-4:30pm: In terms of the normal day in the office, since we started this, it’s basically been back-to-back meetings non-stop. We have meetings across major areas all the time. A typical day might include a meeting about our broadcast and content and then a meeting about communications and marketing. Then on the other side in player ops and league ops we have consistent meetings. Then another important consistent meeting we have is with Twitch. We’re making adjustments and improvements to the broadcast literally on a week-by-week basis. It pretty hard to catch a break. I’m often times just trying to catch 10 minutes to go out and grab food, but we’ve been going since January extremely heavy. 

Most of Donohue's days are made up of meetings with league ops and partners like TwitchNBA PHOTOS

4:30-6:00pm: On a gameday, I usually head over to the studio around 4:30, and one thing we’ve been doing for the past month is a Friday 5:00pm Periscope to the 2K League community. I do a 10-minute league update, and I try to do it from different spots in the studio just to get people a look behind the scenes. A lot of the time I’ll have a talent from the broadcast jump in, and they’ll mess around a little bit and get involved.

6:00-10:00pm: During the broadcast, a lot of times I’m hanging out with teams. So I’m getting a chance to catch up with players and executives. Often times I’m hosting tours to potential partners, current partners or media when they come in. Honestly, it’s non-stop. We have catering brought in for the production team and staff, so I usually grab something there on the fly. 

7:15pm: On a normal weekday, I’d say I’m optimistic if I can get off at 6. I’ve been buying a lot of non-peak tickets for the ride home. When we’re busy it’s closer to 7:15 or so. I try to get home before my son goes to sleep, and then I’ll grab dinner with my wife. 

10:00-11:30pm: My guilty pleasure is that after my wife goes to bed I do like to get some 2K in. It’s probably not healthy. I don’t sleep very much. I’ll admit I sneak in a little bit of other games, too. I’ll admit to being a “Fortnite” fan as well. I’ve got to keep up with my 12-year-old.

Know someone who should be featured in "A Day in the Life"? Shoot us an email at jcarpenter@sportsbusinessdaily.com.

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