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Inside the 'Tinderization' of today's NBA

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Analytics Issue. Subscribe today!

The gatekeeper of America's most popular nightclub is a 33-year-old man known to NBA players simply as "Purple." And tonight he's busy. A former high school dropout who rose to become the go-to guy for nightlife in Miami, on this night Purple gets a text, makes some arrangements, and now he's meeting his "friends" through a secret side door of the famous LIV nightclub, the portal to an underground network beneath the famed Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach.

"Ever seen the movie 'Goodfellas,' when he takes his girl underground?