The Portal

At the end of 2020, I was approached to pitch “an irreverent NBA themed animated comedy” to Bleacher Report. Their popular series “Game of Zones” had reached end of life and they were looking for something fresh.

I was working at DreamView at the time and hired a longtime friend and collaborator, Keith James, to help write a treatment. (Treatment Below)

This treatment was seen as being too risky due to the parody of Michael Jordan (he is a tad litigious). So we worked with the creative leadership at Bleacher Report to develop a new show called “The Portal”. Getting the show approved through Turner was a bit tough, as we wanted to do the show using CG animation, and not 2D puppets like “Game of Zones”, so we took it upon ourselves to create a pilot from scratch. Keith wrote the script and I hired my award-winning friend Mark Kudsi to direct.

This Pilot was all that was needed to get the show off the ground.

Below you will find all 8 final episodes developed and released for the 2021-2022 NBA season. All 8 episodes combined garnered over 50M views across all social media channels, and the numbers are still growing. We also earned a Sports Emmy for “Best Graphic Design” in 2022.