On March 12, 2020, the NCAA cancelled the Division III Tournament because of COVID-19. D’Vontay Friga, a guard at the University of Mount Union, was preparing for what should have been the final chapter of his college career. Instead, he went home to Florida, found a park, and started recording himself playing.
That sounds small. It wasn’t.
Jim Jeffers Park to 1.5M Followers
What Friga started at Jim Jeffers Park — mic’d up during games, posting 1v1s, letting the camera witness what the tournament never got to see — grew into something basketball gatekeepers never authorized. Friga, Scotty Weaver, and Grayson White built The Next Chapter not because they couldn’t get into traditional basketball, but because they understood something traditional basketball had forgotten: the game is content. Watching it is content. Playing it, at a level most people have actually experienced, is more watchable than anyone in a boardroom assumed.
The format is deceptively simple. Two players. One ball. Elimination. No team politics, no system to hide in, no minutes debate. Under the lights TNC built, with production quality that has surprised every league that dismissed them.
TNC 02: $100K, Beasley Wins 31-21
Season 1: seven players, compensated by content performance. Season 2: 20 episodes, coaching elements, structured competition. The TNC 02 finale in June 2025 featured NBA legends and a $100,000 prize — Malik Beasley took it 31-21. A Wemby clip posted the same era hit 3.6 million plays. A question — “What happens when a 7ft former NBA player goes up against your everyday pickup hooper?” — hit 2.3 million. Kosta Koufos 30v1 footage hit 1.5 million.
CashNasty. Robert Colon. J Lew. Moon, whose crossover NBA 2K captured for the game. NAS. These aren’t footnotes. These are the main characters of a league that made its own stars rather than borrowing the NBA’s. The audience returns for the people. The players keep returning because the stage respects them.
A Whole New Story
TNC now claims over 1.5 million followers across platforms and a YouTube channel past 1.3 million subscribers. The talent pipeline is as striking as the events — players who were never seen by organized basketball’s filters are now recognizable faces to hundreds of thousands of fans.
Friga didn’t get his final season. He built something better — and gave every hooper who ever felt the real game lived outside the lines a stage worth playing on. The Next Chapter is exactly what its name promises. Not a sequel. A whole new story.
