Sundays are gospel music days inside the Golden State Warriors’ locker room. While the rest of the week will see a variety of music and changes over the control of the aux, gospel Sundays have been a constant this season for the NBA’s best team.

It’s what the players listen to as they greet each other and catch up, get dressed for the court (and back) and go through various treatments. Only when they make it onto the practice court does the team switch it up to more aggressive songs, in order to get pumped up to compete.

“D. Lee also carries the gospel day,” Warriors starting shooting guard Jordan Poole said, referencing his teammate Damion Lee, following a practice recently before the team’s game with the Philadelphia 76ers. “We run a pretty unique ship over here in terms of the music.”

It’s not a secret that sports and music are intrinsically intertwined, especially in a league like the NBA, where you can expect to find a music star in the seats watching other stars on a court. But it’s such an important part of the game that Chase Center management actively considers which songs can affect either team and plan accordingly. Not only is music a big part of the entertainment that comes with watching a game, but it affects the athletes on the court.

“There’s a lot that goes into it. We start by trying to curate the experience from beginning to end; trying to tell a story,” said Shawn Bennett, who oversees in-game entertainment at Chase. “We follow the game, and a lot of what we’re doing and calling during the game is dictated by the play. If you’re talking about a hot timeout or a team that goes on a 10-0 run, we’ve got three or four choices up and ready to roll that are going to enhance that. Our strategy involves being the gasoline to the fire, not the spark. The players are the spark.”

The players

Jordan Poole is the Warriors’ de-facto player music ambassador. He’s taken it upon himself to communicate the musical needs of his teammates to management. If someone wants to hear a certain song, he tells Poole, who passes it up the chain to Bennett.

Poole also claims the honor of most diverse—and best—tastes in music on his team. He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through playlist after playlist to provide examples.

“Ah, man, I like it all. I’m trying to expand my country a little bit, but I listen to a lot of rap, lot of R&B, alternative, indie, indie alternative, pop, rock,” he said. “I listen to Still Woozy. I listen to a lot of Tems. She’s more of a tropical R&B rap type. FKJ, Bakar, Khalid, Weston Estate—we could be here all day because I make playlists, so I get a lot of different songs, a lot of one-time artists. It’ll vary.”

Hip-hop and soul music are the predominant favorites for other players. The playlist for shootaround on this day included the likes of Polo G’s “Bad Man (Smooth Criminal);” “Rich off Pain,” by Lil Baby, Lil Durk and Rod Wave; and “Never Recover,” by Gunna and Lil Baby.

But there’s generally a divide between what the older and younger players listen to, Poole explained. Draymond Green, James Wiseman and Andre Iguodala are into different types of music; playlists curated for them would be different. Klay Thompson prefers old-school R&B and pop, like Michael Jackson. Lee’s a Young Thug fan, Poole added as guard Gary Payton II popped into the room.

Payton: “I just told the whole world that you can’t score. I just want to let you to know before the whole world does.”

Poole quickly asked him for his tastes in music.

“Ooh, yeah. JP put me on Babyface Ray,” Payton said, with Poole adding that he found out about the rapper while going to school at the University of Michigan.

“He’s a Detroit rapper. … Normally what I like to do is, whenever we go to a specific city, I’ll kind of play the artists that are from the area that kind of blew up. I kind of want to be a part of the area culture.”

The divide isn’t unique to the Warriors. Three days later, the team hosted the Portland Trail Blazers and Oakland native Damian Lillard, who’s built a successful second career as a hip-hop-artist. Before the game, Lillard said that despite his own vast knowledge of hip-hop—as an artist—his younger teammates listen to artists with whom he’s unfamiliar. That also created problems pleasing everyone when it comes to pressing play.

“The music that our younger players listen to; I’ve never even heard half of it,” Lillard said. “I listen to a lot of young artists, but they literally find artists I’ve never even heard of. … That’s what they want to hear. Me? I’ll always go back to the 2Pacs and Biggie and Nas and stuff like that. It’s a certain respect level I have for that music and that time of my life. They don’t have that same love for it.”

The Warriors are still trying to figure out who’s in charge of the aux, but it often falls to Poole. It’s a job he said he solidified when he came to the team while it was still in Oakland. The first guy in the gym gets his way, and he’s usually first.

“You got to be real selective because you’ve got a lot of guys who want to come here and be all hoo-rah-rah, and run around and be geeked up,” Poole said. “They want to listen to rap music all the time, but sometimes we chill ‘em out and play some radio hits, do some KISS FM music.”

The playlist on the morning of the game against the Blazers included Future (“Ain’t Coming Back”), Young Thug(“Droppin Jewels”), Drake (“Love All”) and 50 Cent’s “Many Men (Wish Death).” The players who have control most of the time include Poole, Damion Lee, Juan Toscano-Anderson and Kevon Looney. Andre Iguodala makes some unique picks when he’s in charge, Poole said.

“He got the most comments on it for sure,” he said.

Lillard said that the Blazers also take turns.

“Pregame, the people who run our arena; they’ll reach out to the players,” he said. “Each game is a different guy’s choice of what we goin’ to run out to for warmups. But day to day, at our practices and stuff like that, whoever grabs the aux is going to play their music. … If I come in and I feel like I was vibing with something, and was listening to it in the car on the way in, I might just go and plug my phone into the speakers in the gym and play my music.”

The music follows the players from the court to post-practice therapy, the weight room and back to the locker room.

The Game

Listening to the same songs gets boring for Warriors fans and players alike. For Bennett, keeping the entertainment selections fresh is a significant challenge, especially when it comes to season ticketholders who come to Chase all the time. He said the team is constantly adding new songs to its digital library

“We have to make sure we’re on the cutting edge of all the music trends,” he said.

The sentiment is shared by Poole, who decided to take it upon himself to poll his teammates for song choices and go to Bennett himself with requests. Poole was getting a bit tired of hearing too many of the same songs, even if they were classic songs like 2Pac’s “California Love.” The first couple of seasons at Chase Center, there were more important things to worry about to make sure games ran smoothly.

“No one would really go up and talk about that,” he said. “But I feel like the music has such a big impact on the energy in the arena, which you hear during the games, before the games, timeouts, halftime performances.”

After collecting one to two songs from most of his teammates, he went to Bennett, who made sure those songs were incorporated into the in-game entertainment.

“I sent [Bennett] a playlist. I ain’t gonna say that’s the reason, but look: we’re 15 and 2 [now 19 and 4],” he said, laughing.

From the moment doors open at Chase Center, the music and other entertainment program runs on schedule to the half-minute. The video screen messages are all timed with informational messages about safety to who the Warriors are playing next and the latest promotion. A fan shootout competition is tied to a specific two-minute, 45-second TV timeout, for example. There’s a 12-page schedule that read much like a program.

There are two short performances by bucket drummer Peter Rabbit, a trivia competition, halftime entertainment from a youth basketball game, the Bay Blue Notes brass band performing in the concourse, dance cam, performances by the Warriors Dance Team (to MIMS’ “This is Why I’m Hot”) and Jr. Jam Team (to Black Eyed Peas’ and J Balvin’s “Rit Mo”) and the ritual “Star-Spangled Banner,” performed on this night by Destani Wolf. As with a typical soundcheck, Wolf soundchecked her performance at center court a couple of hours prior to the game.

“We’re always trying to tell a story and always trying to create the right mood for whatever piece it is,” Bennett said. “If it’s a dramatic piece or a highlight video, something that we want to cause a little more drama in the room, we pick our tracks accordingly. If it’s something lighthearted or funny with the players, the music will reflect that.”

Other popular features included a T-shirt and mini-ball launch. Bennett said the team is also in the process of introducing a phone-controlled fan-cam, which will allow fans to scan a QR code and then take a picture, which, after being screened, may be shone on the arena’s video screen.

Then there was “The Masked Baller,” in which a fan had to guess which Warriors player performed a shaky rendition of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” while wearing a furry fox mask. The pre-recorded performance drew a few boos before it was revealed it was Iguodala.

Poole said that these short in-game bits, which are all recorded during training camp or on media day, are a favorite among the players. Everyone is in good spirits when they’re filmed.

“No matter how locked in you are [during a game], you’ll catch a lot of the players looking up or saying, ‘How do you not know the song?’ or ‘You let him beat you?’ … I used to watch it at the games when I was super young, like a child, looking up at the Jumbotron.”

The DJ

The players next return to the court about three hours before game time for another shootaround. This time, the Warriors prepare to the likes of Bino Rideaux’s “Stucc in the Grind,” Peezy’s “Build a Bear” and “Powerglide (From SR3MM)” by Rae Sremmurd, Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee.

By the time doors open, Oakland DJ D Sharp has the aux, spinning tracks from the court. Bennett said he’s “armed with hot party tracks, things that keep the RPMs high.” It’s a fun, albeit not very easy job for Sharp, who besides being the team’s official DJ is involved in numerous other projects, such as Eastshore Highway, which included Oakland rapper Brookfield Duece (Lillard’s cousin) and Richmond’s Mani Draper.

The in-game music has to be recognizable and energize all of the fans in the arena.

“You got 12-year-olds, you got 70-year-olds; you got all types of people: Black, white, Hispanic, Asian. It’s a full spectrum,” D Sharp said. “You have to cater to all those people at the same time.”

D Sharp and Bennett call this “wedding music,” and it includes the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Pitbull.

“In the clubs, everything right now is kind of trap-y and, like, 70bpm. You’re kind of just trying to feel yourself and feel the 808; you know what I mean?” D Sharp said. “With in-game stuff, I try to keep it uptempo, keep it familiar… the hits. You will rarely hear me play something in-game that you ain’t never heard before.”

Oh, and the songs have to be clean; no cursing. But at the same time, Poole and his teammates want some fresh blood in the mix.

Playing the songs the players want to hear is a priority, especially during the final warmups leading to tip-off.

“We’re also trying to create a homecourt advantage,” Bennett said. “If it even motivates them a little bit, we’re happy to give them that extra spark.”

While the in-game music is picked specifically for fans, D Sharp’s pre-game mix includes newer artists as well as the Warriors’ favorites. For someone like Stephen Curry, that means artists like Andy Mineo, Lecrae, Bizzle and Lupe Fiasco. Poole added that Curry, a regular visitor at BottleRock Napa, also listens to some indie and alternative music.

The songs have to be clean. For the more successful artists, that’s typically not an issue. They record clean versions themselves.

But for newer or more underground artists, D Sharpe often takes it upon himself to clean it up for a family audience.

“A lot of the ones JP [Poole] wants are really underground, new, like, the kid just came out yesterday,” D Sharp said.

The DJ said he’s downloading new music every day in an effort to keep it current. And of course, the music playing at practices is uncensored.

Besides the clean rule, the only other thing that’ll keep a song from being played is if it has a connection to the opposing team that day. For example, Bennett said fans will never hear AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” while the Oklahoma City Thunder is in town. Neither will the team play a song that might fire up the competition by teasing another team.

And a third caveat: one that may become more prominent around the league:

“Dame [Lillard] is here tonight. I have his music, but there’s no way I’m playing it,” D Sharp said, laughing.

Lillard is the best rapper in the NBA, having released several albums. He was even sampled, speaking about basketball, on the latest album by J. Cole. But he’s not the only hip-hop artist on his team, and it seems other teams have their own artists. Poole wouldn’t name names but said the Warriors have a couple guys, too.

“I just think that I jumped out there so strong or so passionate with mine [music] that it’s been taken note of. People like it. People see that it’s quality music,” Lillard said. “I think a lot of people around the league do music, but everybody doesn’t broadcast it. … I know Nas [Nassir Little] does music. We actually did a song together in the Bubble [in Orlando in 2020]. I know Ben McLemore does music. Greg Brown produces beats.”

Lillard and D Sharp both grew up in the Brookfield neighborhood in Oakland. D Sharp’s auntie is Lillard’s godmother, while Lillard’s mother used to babysit D Sharp when he was young. Both have collaborated with fellow local rapper Brookfield Duece. While their careers didn’t follow an identical path, both have kept music close to them.

“Music is a happy place for me,” Lillard said. “Music affects your mood—for everybody—it puts you in a certain space and takes you to a certain place.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter. Follow photographer Steve Carlson at Instagram.com/SteveCarlsonSF and Twitter.com/SteveCarlsonSF.