Cassy Athena is your favorite NBA player’s favorite photographer

Cassy Athena is your favorite NBA player’s favorite photographer. After her own junior college basketball career was cut short because of a brain tumor, Athena began becoming serious about photography. Now she’s more than just a photographer to some of the world’s biggest basketball stars. She’s their friend, too.

Athena sat down with SB Nation to talk about how she carved out her own career, how she forms such strong relationships with athletes, the story behind the Nick Young meme and what it’s like shooting LeBron and Bronny James.

What was your first love: basketball or photography?

Photography was my first love. My dad would take pictures. It’s always just been around. I liked capturing moments and stuff. I didn’t really get into sports until more into my late years of middle school and going into high school. Even then I was a volleyball player, that was my favorite sport. I didn’t watch basketball all that much. And then towards the end of my high school career, I ended up started to watch basketball a little more. When I went into college, that’s when basketball and my photography all kind of lined up.

I read that your first big break came while photographing the Drew League. What was it that made the Drew League a special place and the perfect place to start your career?

It kind of fell into my lap. It was not planned. It was the perfect place because of the lockout and the players needing a place to play other high level players. It was perfect for me because there was no media coverage during the lockout. I feel like up until that point, aside from summer league and the draft, there was really no coverage of players, either them working out or their personal lives. That wasn’t a thing. At the time, Instagram was just barely starting. Social media wasn’t nearly as influential as it is now. There was no need for people to go take pictures of these guys in their free time. Because it wasn’t a job for me, it was just something I was fascinated in and I was a fan of these guys. It piqued my interest and I began shooting them, not getting paid for it, but just building my network and my relationships.

The Drew League at that time had no photographer. I was the first one to ever shoot the Drew League. They wanted me to be there too, and we all kind of grew together. The players were interested in my photos to post to Twitter. It wasn’t just the Drew League that summer, it was also other basketball runs that the players would put on themselves. I would drive down to Long Beach State and it would be like DeMar DeRozan, James Harden. And then you drive over to Cal State Northridge, which is where I went, and it would be Paul George, Nick Young, Reggie Jackson, Brandon Jennings.

There was a lot of stuff going on during the lockout. The Drew League is just the first thing that threw me in that world. I took it from there.

What are those private summer runs like? How’s the atmosphere?

I will say that when you walk into the gym, it’s very comfortable. You can tell the players are very comfortable because it’s not pressured. There’s no TV, no cameras, they can just be themselves. When it comes to playing, it’s actually really competitive. Some of them might be going through the motions, but for the most part they’re there to get better. The only way to get better is to really play at full capacity. You get an opportunity to get with guys you might normally not get to play with or play against.

I went to the one with LeBron James in New York with Chris Brickley and his run. That was a little smaller. The UCLA gym has three basketball courts, so there’s constantly players, there was like 30+ players and they’re constantly rotating in and out. Every run is a little bit different. The one common ground is they all want to get better. It’s also the setting where you can have a conservation with these guys, and they’re not like, “I’m at work, I can’t talk,”. It’s just like “Hey, what’s going on, let’s talk, let’s have a conversation.” For me, it’s a great place to get to know someone.

Who was the first player you really became tight with?

During the lockout, one of the first players I became close with was Brandon Jennings. He had flag football games and parties and bowling. He always invited me. I feel like he was the first one to bring me around as more than just a photographer. He was my friend as well. His group of friends accepted me. From there, Dorell Wright and his wife were really accepting of me. Hanging around Nick Young. It was a lot of the LA guys. Paul George was another really big one.

It seems like you’re with friends many of the players you shoot now. What’s your secret to building these relationships?

I don’t know if I have a secret. It started off just talking to them and capturing some cool moments. The biggest part of being around anyone in that world is being trustworthy and consistent. Those are my two things. Every time I’ll be around a player, I never repeat anything. Not that it’s bad stuff going on. I just never talk about it. Nowadays with social media, a lot of people want to broadcast every step that they take. I don’t do that. I’ll hang out with players. I’ll just enjoy it, have fun, take a few pictures when it’s the right time to take pictures. I kind of learn the balance of what to share, what not to share.

Another huge part was starting to work with high school players in 2013. They’re a little more open. By the time you make it to the NBA, those guys are a little more closed off. Which, rightfully so. It definitely starts off with building trust at such a young age and kind of like growing with them throughout their careers.

It’s really just a lot of time. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much I invest in just making friends. I’ve sacrificed a lot of stuff in my personal life, because my work is my personal life. I went to go shoot Aaron Gordon’s birthday party in Orlando. I’m really good friends with his whole family. To me, that’s my family. I get really into their lives, but it’s fun for me. It’s like my personal life and my work life is one.

You were also just at Disney World with Aaron Gordon which made my coworker Whitney really jealous. When did you realize this could be a niche as a NBA lifestyle photographer?

I definitely never thought this could happen. At the same time, I really just created my own job position. I don’t know anyone else who does what I do. There are photographers who work with basketball players, but not on the level that I do, with so many of them. When the lockout summer ended, no one wanted to hire me because I wasn’t a professional photographer, I wasn’t trained, I didn’t go to school for it. So nobody really cared that I followed these guys over the summer. So I just waited until the next summer and shot them again, got some really cool pictures.

The one website that would post my stuff was Dime Magazine. I saw how much people liked to see these guys not in their normal setting. A few more blogs warmed up to this. I thought maybe I should have a website where I can post the stuff I’m doing. I had built a WordPress blog where I would post pictures. This was before Instagram. When Instagram started, I thought I could begin a page and post pictures.

I’m one of these people, I don’t want to take pictures and hold onto them forever. I want to share them. If I take your picture, I’m going to post it. When I started doing that, I noticed a lot of players were reposting it. Everybody had my picture as their icon. But still no one would still hire me and it forced me to start my own outlet. I was just posting what I was doing in my every day life. I just think as certain players started to bring me around their personal lives more, like when I filmed Nick Young and then he went viral, a lot of people saw that and were like, Cassy could help me get more publicity, and when they bring me around they saw I was cool, too.

The majority of this is no one wanted to hire me because no one was interested in offseason basketball. It’s a whole thing now. I never went through agents or publicists, or whoever. All I had was the players. No one took me seriously but the players.

So you really did create the Nick Young meme. How did that come into existence?

It was actually a video. The first time I wanted a pro on my webseries, I felt the most comfortable with Nick. He had just finished a season with the Sixers and had a lot of free time in LA. I was like, can I come film a day in your life, I don’t really know what I’m doing but I want to try it. He was totally cool about it. He planned out a whole day full of stuff. One of the things we did is we went to his mom’s house. His mom is so funny, she’s 10x funnier than Nick. She was talking about something with Nick, and said “oh, but he was a clown back then,”. Then he made that look for the camera. It was just a really fast video clip. You would have never noticed it. When I was editing it, I wanted to put some funny graphics on the video. For some reason, I really wanted to pause it right there and put question marks. I don’t know what came over me, but it took me hours figure out how to get the timing right. It wasn’t until six months later that somebody screenshotted it and wrote something funny. Then it just started going VIRAL. That was in 2013. It’s 2018 now. It’s kind of crazy how viral this continues to be.

To this day when someone is like, she made the Nick Young meme, I’m like I’ve taken so many amazing photos, but my biggest thing is a screenshot of a video. But it’s cool.

My favorite picture you’ve taken is the one of LeBron and Dwyane Wade with their kids. How did that come about?

One thing about being around those level players is you can’t just walk around taking pictures of them. That’s a no. I was actually in Vegas because I enjoy shooting all the high school tournaments, and Team USA was out there. So I was all over the place. I got to know Dwyane Wade’s son in the summer, Zaire, and I met Dwyane last summer. I like shooting Zaire’s team because there’s a lot of other top ranked players as well, Scottie Barnes, Vernon Carey Jr. That team was really fun to watch.

I heard LeBron was coming and security got real serious. I didn’t really know LeBron that well at the time so I couldn’t push it. After the game ended, I wanted to get more candid pictures of Zaire talking to Bronny or whatever. Security was kind of pushing everyone back when Zaire was like, “Cassy, take this picture of me and Bronny and LeBron,” I took a picture and then LeBron started talking to D-Wade. And D-Wade was like “Cassy, get a picture of all of us,”. Dwyane actually asked me to take it. I sent it to Zaire and Dwyane and it went viral from there.

It goes back to having a relationship with the players and their families. They knew that if they asked me to take that picture, they were going to get that picture. It wasn’t like, maybe I’ll see this one day. Cassy will send me this picture. That’s the being consistent part. So when there’s moments like that, you’re the one who gets to take the picture. They’re like, she’ll take it and she’ll send it. It was just right place, right time. I definitely didn’t initiate that.

I’ve seen you take some other pretty cool photos of Bronny as well after that. Are you going to be Bronny’s photographer now? Could be a lucrative gig.

I have no idea, that would be cool! Jordan Brand had a middle school All-Star game a couple weeks ago and they asked me to come shoot. I got to meet Bronny and Bryce (James) and another kid Mikey Williams. There’s a lot of other kids out there too that I wanted to shoot. In Vegas, a lot of people want to just shoot Bronny’s games. But I didn’t know him and I like to shoot people I know. So I didn’t really shoot him all summer, I was looking at other high school players. But now, I will definitely be at a few games. He was the most down to Earth, coolest kid. Savanah was there, she’s great. The whole family just seems totally awesome. I’m excited they’re in LA. Who knows what I’ll end up shooting, we’ll see.

What’s the secret to getting perfect candid?

I think part of it comes from getting to know them as people and knowing what kind of pictures they want. I know a lot of times there will be NBA players who come to the Drew League, for example, and everyone just wants to shoot that person because they’re an NBA player. I know for example one year, Dorell Wright and Delon Wright were both in the NBA, a lot of people just wanted to shoot Dorell, but I knew Dorell would want a picture with his brother. So I try to capture them interacting.

This summer I got a lot of cool shots of Zaire talking to his dad after the game. It’s more of just capturing the moment. I guess I just take whatever I would want it to be. Because I’m also a fan of them. I’ve been a fan of most of these NBA players for a long time. The older guys like Chris Paul and D-Wade and LeBron all of them. This summer I think one of the best things I shot was Melo and his son. Chris Brickley had me come shoot Carmelo and I didn’t know his son was going to be there, and then the two of them were working out. Just seeing the interaction between the two of them, how his son was just trying to soak up everything he was learning from Carmelo. That’s the kind of stuff that as a fan, I would want to see this.

With social media, things have changed. Candids didn’t really used to be a thing because back in the day when you were printing stuff, it had to be a certain type of pose and a certain type of picture. That’s just how it was. Now with social media, it’s given people the freedom to explore other avenues of taking a picture. People don’t always have to be posing. You can take different stuff. And digital cameras … you can take millions of pictures and it doesn’t cost you anything. Just a mixture of technology and social media and has really just allowed us to be more creative as photographers in different ways.