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1.Court Inspection – Introduction to the Edited Collection -- Section 1: The Name of the Game – Rules, Strategies, and Regulations -- 2. Rules, Referees and Recruiting Violations -- 3. Born into Failure – A Recontextualization of the WNBA by an Investigation of the ABL -- 4. Rule Changes and Racism in the NBA -- 5. "BANG!": Language and the Policing of Sexuality in the NBA -- Section 2: For the Love of the Game – Basketball and its Wider Cultural Relations -- 6. On the Development of Kobe Bryant's Persona -- 7. You Either Got a Wicked Jumpshot or Selling Crack Rocks – On Basketball's and Hip Hop's Shared Foundation -- 8. Double-Dribbles, Dunks, and Dice: The History and Cultural Significance of Basketball Board Games -- 9. "What is He, Your Coach?": Uncut Gems as a Basketball Movie -- 10. Basketball in Young Adult Literature (Liliana Santos) -- Section 3: Basketball in the Age of (Global) Expansion -- 11. The Basketball Show in The North of France - When the NBA Globalized Culture meets The Local Carnival Culture (David Sudre) -- 12. The influence of NBA overseas pre and post pandemic: The case of Mexico (Luis Barroso) -- 13. A geopolitical firestorm between the NBA and China over a tweet (Michelle Tran) -- 14. Marketing the League – A Discourse Analysis of the NBA's Social Media Handles (Niklas Thomas).

The National Basketball Association is first and foremost a company which tries to generate revenue. As such, the NBA is embedded into a system of mass media and thereby influenced by cultural, social, and political events. Simultaneously, the NBA can also (partly) cause such events. Lastly, the NBA (and professional basketball at large) has always featured a racial component. Thereby, the NBA features three key American concepts and/or conflicts (corporate interest, meritocracy, race) and, through critical as well as historically-oriented analysis, allows to grasp the interplay of these concepts, at least in a temporally and spatially defined context. This article discusses three individual cases in which the NBA had to react as a race-related image crisis doomed or, in other words: a representative of corporate America had to react to fractures appearing on its otherwise coherent and shiny outside caused by (implicitly or explicitly) racialized aspects. As such, the NBA can be read as a larger extension of American culture and life. In order to understand these three cases as well as the corporate responses in their specific context, the paper will start by providing an overview of professional basketball's history with special consideration of racial aspects. This is followed by the illustration and critical discussion of the three cases and results in a short summary. The overarching focus of the paper is the question of what keeps the NBA – as a company plagued by racial fractures – together at heart. It is assumed that the NBA, as a proto-American sports league, is held together by the same unifying moments which keep America (at least partially) intact and running.

In light of current social justice dynamics, this article examines marketing strategies employed by the NBA (and associated companies) to sell predominantly Black athletes to a chiefly White audience. Through historical contextualization and critical analysis, the NBA's development from a non-profitable and scorned circus to a multi-faceted and multi-billion-dollar global attraction is explored. From the earliest league structures until the 1980s, a dichotomy between Black and White players (and the values/stigma they embodied) dominated the sport of Basketball. This however changed with the rise of Michael Jordan to fame. Jordan became the first basketball player who transcended these racial lines in terms of associated values and/or stigmas. Simultaneously, His Airness' rise to global fame let the NBA's popularity soared into astronomical spheres. A shiny Black Superhero was born, yet his public image is predominantly inspired by corporate considerations – a case of corporate colonization of Black bodies. Black players' transgressions and the NBA's reactions to those – as happened in the Malice in the Palace (2005) incident – highlight the conflicting lines along which the NBA constructs and presents its players with a clear tendency towards corporate colonization, a concept which will be outlined in the paper. Through critical historical reading of past corporate efforts, this article re- and deconstructs the strategic illustration of Black athletes.