Meet the NBA’s No. 1 LinkedIn Poster
From Fernando Mendoza to Lewis Hamilton, athletes are increasingly using LinkedIn like it's their job.
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we’re talking about networking.
Spencer Jones has 22 skills listed on LinkedIn—not including his proven 40% three-point shooting form or the ability to defend all five positions on an NBA floor.
The Denver Nuggets forward tries to post twice a week, even if that means working from the plane or getting thoughts up after upsetting the 76ers on the road.
Increasingly, he’s not the only athlete sharing updates on the world’s largest professional networking site. Lewis Hamilton has 7-time F1 champ listed among his honors and awards. Steph Curry posts about his non-profit work (though he needs to update his status at Under Armour). Before he becomes the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, Fernando Mendoza was invited to be a Linkedin Top Voice. Outfielder Stone Garrett even used the site to get a big league call-up. The company says the number of pro athletes using its platform has grown 31% since 2021.
“They are not just great athletes, they are really people who are thinking critically about their performance, about what it means to get ahead, and people love hearing that,” LinkedIn senior director and executive editor for global editorial Laura Lorenzetti said. “That helps everybody think about their own performance, and it’s really a place for [athletes] to thrive and build a community.”
Jones started posting after his time at Stanford, when a career in the NBA seemed like a toss-up. Even if he made it, he knew his time there would only last so long.
“I realized this could be a good tool to—more than just keeping up with and maintaining my network—really pushing the boundaries of it,” he said.
He went undrafted in 2024 but landed a G League spot with the Nuggets. At Summer League in ‘25, he got another chance to prove himself, though his day job meant he couldn’t attend as many of the NBA tech events in Las Vegas as he would’ve liked to.
He did manage to squeeze in a few coffee meet-ups, including one that led to a shoe deal with Andiem, a startup that he now has equity in too.
It turns out that LinkedIn is only the public tip of Jones’s networking spear. He keeps a separate database of his connections and when the team travels, the 24-year-old often finds time to meet with local founders or investors. In Washington this week, he took an intro chat with defense tech company Shield AI before handling his own defense-first duties in a 107-97 win over the Wizards Thursday. “Typically the travel day … I kind of have that whole afternoon to go see a company,” Jones said.
In Boston, he stopped by the Harvard Club the morning of Denver’s game against the Celtics. A previous visit in town afforded the opportunity to tour robotics company Boston Dynamics’ headquarters.
This year, his on-court role has developed too. A litany of Denver injuries thrust Jones into a starting spot for 28 games. He’s still on a two-way contract, but has the potential to secure a more permanent NBA deal. And yet, he keeps posting.
At Stanford, Jones heard about past players dumbing themselves down in pre-draft interviews, worried about looking too smart or curious about things outside of basketball for talent evaluators. But he said he no longer feels pressure to do the same. Heck, NBA GMs are often just as nerdy these days. The team let him miss a couple days of summer workouts to attend a Harvard business training event, no sweat.
Plus, Jones told himself, a lot of the products he was investing in, especially early on, were human performance tech that could help with his career.
“Even my teammates have been fairly supportive,” Jones said. “Everybody will still throw in their jabs at me because it is pretty funny, but overall, great support.”
He’s gotten a few to join him on his investment scouting trips. Others talk finances during downtime. None have adopted LinkedIn quite like he has.
Some NBA players have a list of stars they’d love to one day dunk on. Jones keeps mental tallies on the business leaders he wants to reach. Some are ex-pros who excelled in business, like Dwyane Wade and Larry Fitzgerald, but there are companies on his list too: Anduril and Tempus AI and Eight Sleep. Maybe one day Neuralink founder Elon Musk too.
On LinkedIn, they’re just a tap away.
Check your notifications. Spencer Jones might like to connect.
Eben’s ⚡Take: When Ndamukong Suh was a senior at Nebraska back in 2009, Warren Buffett was the “honorary captain” for a game in Lincoln. Suh met Buffett briefly in the locker room that day, then pushed for a more substantial one-on-one. Buffett accepted. That grew into a broader friendship that Suh says “changed my life forever.”
Pro careers don’t last forever—some athletes get one year, others get 15—but that’s typically when your social capital is the highest. Too few athletes actually use it. Suh did. And so is Jones. The LinkedIn stuff is cute, but what he’s doing on the road during off days will change his life forever. Where can I invest in Jones?
On the most recent Sporticast episode, Jacob and Mike McCann discussed the latest legal rulings around NCAA eligibility. Surprise, surprise, it’s all a giant mess! 👇
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.
Wow, the part about Stone Garrett using LinkedIn to get call-up really stood out to me. Do you think this will become standard path for young athletes? Such a smart observation!
A unique read!