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My guest for Episode #293 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Spencer Jones, a rookie forward with the Denver Nuggets and a Stanford University graduate, where he earned a degree in Management Science and Engineering.
He averaged 11 points per game over five standout years at Stanford, leading the Pac-12 in three-point shooting as a freshman and graduating as Stanford's all-time leader in three-pointers. Before college, Spencer also secured three high school state championships in Kansas.
While his professional basketball career with the Denver Nuggets keeps him on the court, Spencer's ambitions stretch far beyond the game. Passionate about the intersections of sports, health, and technology, he is actively building his brand in the health tech space, leveraging his platform as an athlete to explore innovation and make an impact off the court.
In this episode, Spencer shares his journey from high school state championships to becoming Stanford's all-time leader in three-pointers and his transition to the pros. Spencer opens up about his favorite mistake: hesitating to embrace the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities during his college years due to concerns about balancing individual branding with team dynamics. Reflecting on how this hesitation caused him to miss out on valuable opportunities early in his college career, Spencer explains how he learned to navigate those challenges and is now focused on capitalizing on his NBA platform while staying grounded in his basketball priorities.
Throughout the episode, we discuss Spencer's experiences balancing academics, athletics, and building a brand, including how his Management Science and Engineering degree from Stanford shaped his interest in the intersections of health, technology, and business. Spencer also offers insights into the evolving dynamics of NIL, the challenges of team equity, and the impact of the transfer portal. We explore his presence on LinkedIn as a platform for connecting with alumni and businesses, his passion for investments and startups, and how watching NBA superstar Steph Curry train influenced his own work ethic. Spencer's reflections provide valuable lessons on resilience, legacy building, and preparing for life after sports.
Questions and Topics:
- What’s your favorite mistake?
- Can you explain NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) and the opportunities it offers athletes?
- How did NIL impact team dynamics, and what was it like balancing individual and team priorities?
- Did you consider transferring to another school, especially with the new transfer rules?
- What lessons did you learn about balancing academics and athletics at Stanford?
- Why did you choose Management Science and Engineering as your major?
- What impact did being in Silicon Valley have on your development, connections, and career opportunities?
- How much interest is there among players in investing, startups, and business ventures beyond basketball?
- What kind of resources does the NBA or players' associations provide to help players prepare for their futures?
- How does the G League (formerly D League) fit into player development for someone in your position?
- What factors went into your decision to sign with the Denver Nuggets, especially as a two-way player?
- How do you approach balancing short-term versus long-term decisions in your basketball and business career?
- What led you to build a presence on LinkedIn, and how has that platform benefited you?
- What advice do you have for other athletes about building their brand and preparing for life after sports?
- How do you manage the pressure of potential mistakes in high-visibility situations like an NBA game?
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- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Mark Graban:
Hi, welcome to My Favorite Mistake. I'm your host, Mark Graban. Our guest today is Spencer Jones. He's a rookie with the NBA's Denver Nuggets. He's a Stanford graduate with a degree in Management Science and Engineering.
That turns out to be a degree in a lot of studies, I think very similar to my own as an industrial engineer. So, Spencer, before I tell everyone a little bit more about you, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Spencer Jones:
I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on.
Mark Graban:
It's, it's great to have you here. There's a lot to talk about, you know, about your journey, your studies, and your career and things you want to do. I've got to mention, you know, there's—I love the numbers, right? So, Spencer averaged 11 points per game in his five years at Stanford. That included a COVID season, right?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, a couple of them, it feels like.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. But you get that—that fifth year you led the Pac-12 in three-point shooting. Your freshman year, you graduated to Stanford's all-time leader in threes. And that was after winning three high school state championships in Kansas. And I'm going off memory here from your bio: Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Is that right?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah. Yes, sir.
Mark Graban:
So, when I was in my math/science kids' geek program in high school in suburban Detroit, there was some sort of national nerd competition, I'm going to call it, and it was either Shawnee Mission East or Shawnee Mission West was like our nemesis because they were always like just above us in the rankings.
Spencer Jones:
Sounds like it—sounds like it would have been East. Sounds like that probably would have been East.
Mark Graban:
So, we have connections here other than me having no basketball skills. But Spencer has passions that extend beyond basketball. He's deeply interested in the intersections of sports, health, and technology. And Spencer's actively building his brand in the health tech space. So, I think we'll have a lot to talk about in terms of interests in investing and business and all.
I was going to kind of jokingly—I'm glad that you can come on a show and not require that big arena introduction. You know, “At forward, 6-foot-7, from Stanford!” But again, Spencer Jones. I will stop goofing around there. So, the big question, as we always start off with: Spencer, what's your favorite mistake?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, I'd say my favorite mistake was in college. You know, I had the unique situation of kind of coming into college in 2019, which was pretty much the last—I mean, the last regular time, you know, regular kind of time for college athletics because obviously COVID hit that spring in 2020. So, I had a glimpse of what regular, you know, what college was in the past. And then, you know, you see it evolve through five years to 2023 to what it's been.
And so, having gone through all those years, it's kind of been interesting to navigate that. And part of that was, obviously, a big, big part of that change was the NIL stuff. And, you know, a big reason that was such a huge change is because, you know, the sports that benefited the most—football, you know, volleyball, basketball, stuff like that—they're very team-centric, team-oriented sports. While, you know, this whole idea of Name, Image, and Likeness is very individualized.
And so, my mistake was, you know, along with kind of, you know, figuring out with Stanford, which is also, you know, a very bureaucratic place, it took us a minute to also adjust. But it was just kind of figuring out how to navigate, you know, building my brand while also, you know, feeling like I'm representing myself well and not taking away from the basketball piece.
And I was kind of intimidated by that idea of “Is building my brand and focusing too much on the individual—is that going to be perceived well?” Especially in a place like Stanford, where I want to be perceived well with fans and coaches and everything like that. Is that going to be perceived well? And so, that kind of caused me to falter a little bit and, you know, not evolve with the changes.
And, you know, as a result, you know, like, you only get a couple of years—you know, three—you only get like four or five years of college to really capitalize on that. And I did eventually towards the end. But I'm thinking I lost out on, you know, maybe a year or two and stuff like that.
And so why it's my favorite mistake is that as soon as I kind of, you know, found my footing, or found my footing in the NBA, signed with the Nuggets—I've been since, I've been since building my brand for after because it's kind of the same thing. I mean, people don't realize the average NBA career is, you know, four or five years pretty much as well.
And so, now after learning that mistake, it's, you know, how can I capitalize on, you know, the image of being an NBA player? And obviously, I keep the main thing the main, main thing first. I always get, you know, my basketball, my workouts, and everything done first. But outside of that, I'm not really as fearful of the perception of me building something outside of basketball.
Mark Graban:
That's really interesting. For people who aren't familiar, if you can talk a little bit first about the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities for an athlete. You can sign endorsement deals, you can sign partnerships with companies to get paid directly in a way that wasn't possible before. Could you?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's two parts to the NIL stuff these days. There's—it's really split into collectives and NIL. Collectives are pretty much just university alumni or groups building funds to kind of pay the players to basically play for the school. And then NIL itself is just more of the branding side.
You know, you're advertising company products or, you know, doing camps and stuff like that—just using your image in order to, you know, attract some extra funds to yourself.
Mark Graban:
And so then I'd like to hear more about that dynamic. You're on a team, there's what, 15 players roughly?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, absolutely.
Mark Graban:
And depending on your profile—and imagine after that first season, leading the Pac-12 in threes—you might have had more. Is there a question of equity of opportunities? How are some players going to react if they're not getting opportunities?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, this is where Stanford kind of was a little behind the trend on that in terms—it was just interesting. I remember it starts like 2021, where all that collective stuff started. And what Stanford did the first year actually was they paid everybody the same.
We were kind of the trial run for paying athletes then because basketball's the smallest team pretty much in all the sports. And so, they paid everybody the same. I think it was around, like, $50,000, something like that per person. They paid everybody the same. And, like, that was the first year anybody did. So, we had no idea what was really going on.
Then my second—this was like my junior/senior year—then the next year, which was my last year leading into that, that's when it differed. And, you know, Stanford was a bit more mature about it. And we had great relationships with all the players, and stuff like that, like getting significantly more than, like, some of the other guys.
And, you know, albeit that was also an interesting decision because I could have graduated in four years and been done. I kind of wanted to coast my fifth year, so I just pushed off some classes. But that was after I decided I was staying. I was courted by some other schools—although I never entered my name in the portal.
But I was hit up by some entities who supported me, you know, from other schools and stuff like that. And so, I knew I could make a substantial amount more leaving than staying at Stanford. But I figured the alumni base, the connections, and everything with that, you know, would take me much farther than, you know, a couple extra, you know, five or six figures.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. So, I mean, it sounds pretty clear it wasn't a mistake to stay. But yeah, I was curious. The other change along with NIL and the collectives is the ability to transfer without having to sit out a year. That's changed things in high-profile ways, especially in football, men's basketball, women's basketball.
Did you lose anybody to the portal because someone did leave with their degree already or otherwise?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, no, we would lose a decent amount of people. The typical way was that, you know, they would still see the value in the degree. So, a decent amount of players would, you know, they’d try to graduate early—three and a half years, four years, or whatever. But after they graduated, they would move on because, like, “I got my degree; let’s go, you know, make a little bit extra money.”
So, we definitely lost some people. The hard part was that being Stanford, we have a much smaller pool of people we can grab from the transfer portal to enhance our team. So, we are still kind of old school in that we have to build it from the ground up. We can't really be as reliant on the transfer portal as a lot of schools and everything are. So, it's a little bit different. But it's interesting seeing it that way.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, I think Northwestern, following NU sports as an alum, there's a guideline: the university, if somebody transfers in as an undergraduate, you have to earn at least half of your credits at Northwestern to get a Northwestern degree. So, that really limits things. They can only—football for next year has someone coming in after their freshman year, and then it's either that or basically a graduate transfer. Like that rule, you know, kind of puts Northwestern at a disadvantage. In addition to like, Stanford would have admissions guidelines.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, no, that's an interesting one for sure.
Mark Graban:
So, it's a whole new ball game, if you will. And this is always changing. But I'm curious a little bit more—you shared some concern, Spencer, about the locker room dynamics as things shifted. How did that play out? Do you, you know, is that something to manage that worked out?
Spencer Jones:
I mean, it's definitely something for other schools to manage much more. I mean, like I said, you get a certain type of individual when you go to Stanford. I mean, yes, we had, you know, some guys who were definitely not super excited or, you know, didn't like the idea of earning far less.
But we understood whatever was coming from—we understood kind of how the system worked and everything like that. And so, you know, you see it very plainly. You know, you're able to take kind of most of the emotions out of it. I mean, a lot of my friends at other schools, though, have much deeper problems where, you know, a kid will sign, they'll find out another player is making more, and then you've got arguments with the coach and stuff like that.
Then it kind of stems from that. That's why a lot of these schools, you know, speak about the value of just having—pretty much just making an extra position for like just the GM. Just run this as a professional team and just run it that way because the coach already has on top of a million other responsibilities, like he can't really be, you know, that involved with the business side of this and, you know, try to run his team as well.
So, that's where you see—it’s like, you know, eventually they're going to have to start running these teams like professional sports, especially with private equity, you know, looking to dip its toe into the market. It'll be, you know—it's been a lot of changes in the last, you know, three, five years, and it's just going to keep going.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, because there's been, I think, I’ve seen headlines—I’m sure you know more about this—private equity possibly making investments in, I think, the Big 12 was the…
Spencer Jones:
One, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it was like one of them. Yeah. I mean, they're trying to get the SEC as well, but yeah, I think Big 12 has made the most progress, I feel like, as well.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. So, I'm curious to hear about what it was like being a student-athlete at Stanford and kind of balancing time between those pressures. I knew some athletes at Northwestern who were up at early morning practices, and I thought it was bad going to a 9 a.m. class. They had already done so much more in the day. I'm just curious to hear lessons you learned about balancing things as you're having to do now in the pros.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah. You know, the biggest thing was taking out kind of all the time-wasting activities. Like, as soon as I got to college, I kind of found out pretty quickly I was going to have to let go of the video games if I wanted to.
If I wanted to have a little bit of all three in terms of, you know, a solid academic score, being good at athletics, and then having some semblance of a social life on top of that, I really had to get rid of all the time-wasting activities.
And, you know, it took me a bit. But then also, like, just planning out my day kind of hour by hour, you know, because I'm kind of a guy who likes to not know exactly what my day looks like. I kind of like the spontaneity of it.
But after a while, you realize, you know, how much you can actually get done and how much more you can schedule free time and stuff like that when you actually schedule it hour by hour. That was a big thing.
But you always—either way, you always ran into some issues, especially if you were taking, you know, especially taking a STEM major. There were a lot of times where we were taking flights back from Oregon or Utah or Colorado, where I'm having to stay up late on that flight finishing an assignment.
There were tons and tons of situations where I literally had to choose: Did I want to get a full night's rest leading into the next game, or did I want to sacrifice that to maybe fix a couple of issues on the problem set, even though I might get a passing grade?
So, there were always a couple of times where that conflict came into it, and you just kind of had to decide what was best for you. And it was interesting. I didn't project myself to be an NBA player or NBA caliber until halfway through.
So, the first half was kind of, you know, focusing more on the school stuff. And then the second half was like, well, you know, as long as I keep my GPA above a 3.0 or, you know, make it decent so it actually looks like I was a student… But on top of that, I wanted to focus on basketball because it was going to be right after.
Everybody always talks about how a lot of jobs aren't really going to be that concerned about your GPA as long as it's, you know, a solid one. So, yeah, the last half was a little bit more basketball-focused. That was an interesting pathway.
Mark Graban:
It’s probably a lot more common for athletes coming in to overestimate their chances of making the pros. In sports like basketball or football, the percentages are really small.
Spencer Jones:
For me, it was different. I come from an academic family, so it was always “go to the good school first.” The funny thing about going through the whole recruiting process in high school was that most kids choose a school based on the schools that reach out to them and think, “Alright, these are my pickings.”
My parents did it differently. They knew I had the grades to get into good schools, so they made me apply to schools we were fairly confident I could get into academically. And then out of that pool, we narrowed it down.
My parents were like, “If you're going to go to school for basketball, it has to be on par academically with what you can get into.” So, I still had to go through the whole regular college admissions process as if I was not an athlete.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, and I'm not going to give you grief for this, but… I don't know. Did you ever talk to Northwestern?
Spencer Jones:
Honestly, I thought I was going to go to Northwestern. What happened was—so we won three state championships, but we didn’t win my senior year, so I missed out on the four-peat.
And that game we lost—sometime in that tournament, I forget exactly where, maybe the semifinals or quarterfinals—that was the game Northwestern came to see me and decide whether they were going to offer me.
And we lost that game. They didn’t offer me.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, well, Northwestern’s loss.
Spencer Jones:
I’m happy. I’m happy.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But to your point, when it comes to academics, schools like Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke—they’re competing nationally for recruits. And that’s…
Now you’re talking about the other change. Stanford students now have to travel all the way to the East Coast for ACC games.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
And that travel creates a new burden, right?
Spencer Jones:
Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve been wanting to reach out to the guys who have been doing that. I’ll be up there, I’ll be up around my break during All-Star weekend. So, I’ll be able to see the real effect on that.
But it’s—I mean, the travel, like I said, the travel was already tough where I had to do a lot of my assignments on the plane. So, I couldn’t imagine adding, you know, the two-to-three-hour time difference on top of flights that are two hours longer.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. I'll ask one other question about the Management Science and Engineering piece. I'm just curious—what drew you to that major? There’s a lot of operations research, quantitative stuff in there.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah. So, my dad’s a doctor, and my grandfather was a surgeon. So, I always wanted to do something in health, but I didn’t want to be a doctor. I wanted to look at it from both the business side and the engineering side.
Initially, I thought I was going to do biomedical engineering. But you go through a summer of workouts, and you realize how much time you’ve got to devote to basketball. I wanted to be good at it, so I was like, “Ah, maybe that’s a little hard.”
I ended up picking Management Science and Engineering because it was one that athletes could do, and it was a bit more flexible with the classes you could choose. That flexibility is kind of what brought me to it.
But it was also somewhat similar to a business major. I was learning a lot of business principles and stuff like that. So, I thought, “Alright, I’ll segue this into learning from the business side of health.”
There were also some health-specific classes I could take within the major that kind of sufficed. And then I learned about classic supply chain operations, optimization, and stuff like that. So, it actually covered a lot of my interests, and I liked how wide-ranging it was.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, and one of those classes could probably run an optimization model for the current Stanford ACC conference schedule to minimize travel.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, I’m curious how well they figure that out.
Mark Graban:
Being at Stanford—and I imagine this is especially relevant in the NIL era—part of the draw is proximity to Silicon Valley. Did being in Silicon Valley open up other opportunities for learning about tech companies, investing, or even meeting players like Steph Curry or Kevin Durant, who are so involved in business?
Spencer Jones:
It was big in all of those areas. You touched on Steph—Steph would come in. He lives in Atherton, which is like 10–15 minutes away.
He trains at Stanford in the summer. I actually got to train with his trainer a couple of times and watch Steph train. It was incredible to watch him work. The guy is always running.
I tried to hop in there for a little bit, and I was about to throw up after 15 or 20 minutes—and I was in good shape at the time. It shows you how different he is.
Also, how specific he is—he’s the first person I’ve seen consistently track their heart rate during workouts. There’s a certain amount of time he wants to spend in different heart rate zones. That changed how I worked out after watching him.
On the basketball side, you get that. On the Silicon Valley side, it’s huge for connections. We always had honorary captains for games. I remember the former CEO of Yahoo was one of them. A bunch of people who run VC firms were honorary captains.
At first, you don’t realize the value. In your last two years, when you start thinking, “What am I getting out of this place?” you realize how many people you can reach out to. They won’t do the work for you, but they’re all ears once you reach out.
That built a great connection base for me and made me confident that when the ball stops bouncing, there’s something out there for me.
Mark Graban:
And as you’re getting into the NBA and talking to your teammates, how much interest is there in topics like investing—not just in financial instruments, but in companies and startups? It seems like there’s a new era of players going far beyond shoe contracts and endorsements.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, I mean, there’s big interest in it. It’s just tough for some athletes because they’re so used to being confident in their sport. They’ve always been the best, and they’re not used to feeling less confident.
When they dip their toes into investing, there’s a fear of, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Some are hesitant and will hand it off to someone else, but the willingness to learn is definitely there.
I think in the next 10–15 years, we’ll see a drop in the rates of athletes going bankrupt after retiring. You can make money in college now, and the new NBA media rights deal means contracts are huge.
Players are more willing to invest before their post-career. A lot of guys have management teams and investing groups looking out for them. I have a couple myself.
There’s also more emphasis now on building a legacy and starting that as soon as possible. During the NBA Players Association rookie training program, Jalen Brown talked about legacy building. He encouraged us to dive into it now because you don’t know how long your career will last.
Mark Graban:
That’s good to hear. I was going to ask what kind of resources are made available to players. A couple of years ago, I interviewed my friend Lenny Walls, who played in the NFL. He mentioned rookie financial seminars were only available to drafted players, and he lobbied for undrafted players to get the same guidance.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, absolutely. Especially now, there’s a much bigger focus on development across all routes to the league. The G League is much more prominent, and players are encouraged to develop through it.
Mark Graban:
Real quick, for people who might not know, the G League is the NBA’s developmental league. It used to be called the D League. Gatorade got involved, and now it’s the G League.
It’s a tier below the NBA, but it’s used for player development. If someone isn’t getting minutes on their NBA team, they might get sent to the G League. That’s accurate, right?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, absolutely. Especially on a championship-caliber team like the Denver Nuggets, we have a shorter rotation—only 8 or 9 guys play consistently. If you’re younger or new to the team, they might send you down to develop so you’re ready to fill in eventually.
Mark Graban:
And you know, with college students going into the NBA or the WNBA, NFL, or other leagues, it’s kind of a rare situation where people are thrilled to have that opportunity, but then you’re told where you’re going to go play. Unlike college, where you’re getting to choose. It’s kind of a unique situation.
What’s the pathway or what happens when you’re a free agent coming out of school? Is that a different, more similar dynamic to college recruiting?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ll talk a little about my way into the league because I wouldn’t classify myself as a free agent, but it worked a little like that.
Basically, for the audience: there are 60 draft picks available—two rounds. But those aren’t the full spots available. Every team has what they call two-way contracts. These are for players who bounce back and forth between the main NBA team and the G League team. I’m on one of those two-way contracts, and each team has three of them.
Some teams might have all three spots filled; some might not. So, it’s not just 60 guys in that rookie class. It’s really about 90, including those extra two-way contracts.
For me, I was told my range was either late second round or one of those undrafted two-way spots. After around pick 45 in the draft, most contracts offered are essentially those two-way deals.
So, you’re kind of incentivized to choose your situation. After the draft, it was like college recruiting in that teams reached out, saying, “Hey, we’re willing to give you this contract or a two-way deal.”
I ended up choosing Denver because I thought my skills and what they might need were a good fit.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, I imagine there are all kinds of factors to weigh—playing time, how good the team is. I mean, everyone wants that ring, right?
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, absolutely. But there’s a caveat. With the ring could come less playing time. With more playing time comes more opportunity, and with more opportunity, you can get a bigger contract sooner. So, there’s a lot to consider.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, and for those of us in other careers, there are often questions around choosing a job or switching companies, weighing long-term versus short-term benefits. It sounds like you’ve had a lot of those decisions and seem to be making them with a long-term perspective.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, yeah, that’s been huge for me. Like I said, I’m hopeful to have at least a 10-year career or something like that, but I’m also planning and hedging bets against having a 3-year or 5-year career.
I always want to have some sort of outlet. And I know that’s kind of contradictory to what they tell you in sports, where we praise the guys who came from nothing and had no other options. That grind brings something out of you.
But I’d argue that having other options has made me a better basketball player. When I go to the gym, I don’t have these distractions off the court because I’m not worried about them. I can fully invest myself in the team and the sport.
This is the option I want to work out, but having other outlets helps me focus.
Mark Graban:
That’s great to hear. And speaking of options, LinkedIn seems to have been a valuable platform for you. After we connected, I started reading your posts about the business side of the NBA, your interests, and your brand. It’s a great presence, especially since so many players are more focused on Instagram.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, I’m not a big social media guy. I never really have been. What started the whole LinkedIn thing was, like I said, at Stanford, I began thinking, “What do I get out of this place?”
I knew I wanted to stay in touch with alumni, and LinkedIn felt like a better way to do that at scale. Then I started writing articles about my unique perspective—going through all the changes in college sports over my five years there. That blew up, and I kept posting.
Opportunities came in—companies reaching out, offering jobs. And I was like, “I’m still playing basketball; I’m not looking for work yet.”
I also realized there’s a gap for professional athletes on LinkedIn. A lot of big-name players are on there, but you can tell it’s someone else managing their accounts.
For me, LinkedIn is about substance. It’s not just about followers; it’s about connecting with change-makers and people who can help you grow.
Mark Graban:
And it was fun as a sports fan seeing the video of you and your teammates celebrating when you scored your first NBA points. That must have been a pretty cool moment.
Spencer Jones:
Yeah, that was great. The vets—Russell Westbrook and DeAndre Jordan—they make sure you have your fair share of rookie duties, but they make it fun.
Mark Graban:
Well, Spencer, thank you so much for sharing your story and insights. I’m excited to follow your journey both on and off the court. Best of luck with the Nuggets and everything you’re building for the future.
Spencer Jones:
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. I had a great time today.
Mark Graban:
Thanks again. And for everyone listening, check the show notes for links to follow Spencer on LinkedIn and elsewhere. Thanks, Spencer!
Spencer Jones:
Thank you!
Episode Summary and More
Lessons in Resilience, NIL, and Building a Legacy: NBA Rookie Spencer Jones on My Favorite Mistake
In the latest episode of My Favorite Mistake, host Mark Graban welcomes Spencer Jones, a rookie with the Denver Nuggets and Stanford University's all-time leader in three-pointers. Spencer shares insights from his journey as a student-athlete, navigating the world of college basketball, academics, and now, professional sports. The episode explores Spencer's reflections on his favorite mistake, the opportunities and challenges of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals, and his strategies for building a personal brand that extends far beyond the basketball court.
Spencer's “favorite mistake” occurred during his college years, when he hesitated to fully embrace NIL opportunities due to concerns about perception and balancing individual branding with team dynamics. That hesitation, he admits, cost him valuable time to grow his brand during a pivotal era for college athletes. However, this experience shaped his approach to professional basketball, where he's actively leveraging his platform with the Nuggets to prepare for life beyond the game. Spencer emphasizes the importance of long-term planning, a mindset he attributes to his rigorous academic experience at Stanford and his exposure to the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
Balancing Academics, Athletics, and Opportunities
Throughout the episode, Spencer highlights the lessons he learned balancing a STEM major (Management Science and Engineering) with the grueling demands of NCAA basketball. He reflects on the importance of time management, cutting out distractions, and planning for both short- and long-term goals. These lessons have informed his current approach as he navigates life in the NBA, juggling intense training schedules with opportunities to connect with companies in the health and tech space.
Spencer also sheds light on how the NIL era has transformed college sports, discussing the challenges of equity within teams and the broader impact of transfer portal rules. He speaks candidly about the value of legacy building and the importance of using platforms like LinkedIn to network with business leaders, alumni, and investors. Unlike many athletes who gravitate toward Instagram, Spencer sees LinkedIn as a place to foster meaningful connections and explore investment opportunities, all while sharing his unique perspective as a professional athlete.
Nuggets of Wisdom for Athletes and Entrepreneurs
Spencer’s perspective goes beyond the court, offering insights into resilience, adaptability, and the evolving dynamics of professional sports. From training alongside Steph Curry in the off-season to making strategic career decisions, he highlights the parallels between athletes and entrepreneurs in navigating uncertainty and building confidence. Spencer’s story underscores the importance of preparing for life after basketball, whether through education, networking, or personal branding.
This episode of My Favorite Mistake is packed with actionable takeaways for student-athletes, business professionals, and anyone interested in the intersection of sports, technology, and personal growth. To hear Spencer’s full story, insights on NIL, and how he’s positioning himself for success beyond the game, listen to the full episode and follow him on LinkedIn for updates on his journey.