How an Elite Group of eSport Ballers Got to Play in NBA 2K
*By Mike Teich*
Top video game players finally have a path to becoming pro-gamers and a shot at $1 million in prizes, said Brendan Donohue, the managing director of the NBA 2K League.
The league is a video game competition organized by the makers of the NBA 2K game and the National Basketball Association. As esports have risen in popularity, competitions like this one give gamers a chance to cash in on their talents. First-round picks in the inaugural draft can earn $35,000 for six months of play.
The pay may not stack up against actual NBA salaries, but NBA 2K League players are excited about their earnings and the progress esports have made over the past 14 months, said Donohue.
More than half of the pro hoops teams are participating in the first season of the NBA 2K League as partners. The teams built their e-rosters through a draft on April 4. A total of 72,000 video game players qualified for the league, with 102 making the final cut.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inaugural-season-for-nba-2k-league).
Umbilical cord blood banking platform Anja Health raised $4.5 million dollars in a seed round led by Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Anja Health offers a personalized, doctor-backed cord blood bank, which lets new parents freeze stem cells from their child's umbilical cord so they can be used to treat diseases in the future. It's a process Anja has called 'Hollywood's best-kept secret,' as celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Serena Williams, and more have all banked their umbilical cord blood. Kathryn Cross, the founder of Anja Health, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Catching you up on what you missed in today's news. Elon Musk has increased his commitment to purchase Twitter to $33.5 billion, Apple is raising its hourly wages for retail stores to compete for talent, and Roblox has announced that it will be partnering with the medically prescribed video game ‘Endeavor’ to help treat patients with ADHD.
After learning that the suspect in the Uvalde school shooting posted about his intentions on Facebook, activists are urging social networks to make changes. Lena Derhally, a licensed psychotherapist and author of "The Facebook Narcissist," joined Cheddar News to discuss the role social media plays in school shootings. "They're not really invested in taking down hateful content," she said about social platforms."In regards to the shooting, it was 15 minutes before that actual threat. It would be pretty hard for a social media company to trace that threat that quickly. But what they can do better is take down threats and hateful content much faster and more than they're doing now."
Esper Bionics CEO Dima Gazda breaks down how they're creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it, and what this innovation means for the future of the prosthetics industry.
On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: Brightseed Co-Founder breaks down what plant bioactives are, and how they're using the latest technology to study human's biological connections with plants; Esper Bionics CEO breaks down how they re creating a mind-controlled bionic hand that guest smarter the more you use it; Cheddar gets a look at Curiosity Stream's 'Capturing A Black Hole In Our Milky Way.'
