The number of NBA (National Basketball Association) players from African nations has continued to grow in recent years, leading up to the NBA's 2021 launch of the BAL (Basketball Africa League), an NBA-associated endeavor designed to create more professional basketball opportunities for African peoples. However, the NBA has been clear that its involvement in African countries is primarily driven by the goals of bringing more African players to the NBA and creating NBA markets (and revenue) in African nations. In this thesis, I use online ethnography, namely analysis of American NBA fan perspectives and media coverage, to investigate the relationship between the NBA and BAL. I argue that predominant fan beliefs reflecting generalization, unfamiliarity, and contempt enable the NBA's unequal dynamic with African contexts, and this dynamic in turn contributes to the fan beliefs that it relies upon. But there is reason for hope: through promoting education about diversity, specificity, and success in African nations, and by leaning into the advice of advocates like Masai Ujiri, we can continue to "dream bigger" when it comes to the future of the BAL and basketball for African peoples at large.
Michael Doulas (Thu,) studied this question.