UCLA’s Myles Johnson quenches thirst for NIL deal with beverage company

Myles Johnson was scrolling through Instagram recently when he came across promoted content from Hint Water. The San Francisco-based beverage company was seeking college students to hawk its brand as an alternative to soda and other sugary drinks.

It was an easy sell.

“I was like, �Oh, I actually drink their stuff,’” Johnson, the UCLA graduate transfer center from Rutgers, recalled, “so I was like, yeah, I’ll do that.”

And so was born one of the latest name, image and likeness deals involving Bruins basketball players. Junior guard Johnny Juzang is hosting a skills clinic for youth basketball players — at $100 a pop — Sunday in Hacienda Heights, and junior guard Jake Kyman is promoting Fitted Laundry on his website, offering the code “KYMAN10” at checkout for a 10% discount on the pickup laundry service.

UCLA Sports

How UCLA coach Cori Close navigated a championship run and loss of her father

While UCLA basketball coach Cori Close guided the U19 women’s national team to the world title, her father died at home. How she handled the grief.

Aug. 30, 2021

Johnson is a natural ambassador for Hint Water as someone who already enjoys their watermelon and peach flavors. As part of his agreement with the company that starts in September, he will promote its brand on social media while receiving free water and roughly $16 an hour. Johnson said a member of UCLA’s spirit squad has also agreed to promote the brand.

“You do an Instagram post a month and stuff on your [social media] story and they send you water and everyone [on the team] can have some,” Johnson said. “So hopefully everyone will get a little bit of benefit from it.”

Johnson said he liked the taste of Hint Water, which alleviated his struggles to stay hydrated.

“For me, water’s really bland and I’ll try to drink less Gatorade because it has a lot of sugar that you don’t really need,” Johnson said, “and [Hint Water is] lower in sugar and it gives your water a little bit of taste too, so that’s what I like about it.”

Sports

College football party crashers: Who’ll shake up the gridiron status quo?

The 2021 college football season will see plenty of the same dominant programs at the top of the rankings, but here are five teams set to play spoiler.

Aug. 30, 2021

How much time did Johnson anticipate devoting to his new endeavor on top of his studies in the graduate school of engineering and the basketball team?

“Probably not that much,” he said. “It’s just posting a picture, taking it and then meeting with them and setting things up, so I don’t see it as something that’s going to take any time, really.”