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 TheLocal 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).

This edited collection conceptualizes professional basketball not just as a sport but as an historically, culturally, and economically embedded entity. The chapters analyse the fact that the sport of basketball contains alternative logics that can easily clash, and by treating professional basketball as the negotiation place of these multiple demands, ideas, and logics, the editors have identified three areas in which these clashes manifest: the realization of the game; the cultural impact of professional basketball and the global outreach of professional basketball. The book is explanatory and qualitative, offering new perspectives and touching on topics including gender, diversity, racism, and minority experiences within professional basketball. As such it will be of interest to sport sociologists, as well as those researching the history of sport, sports marketing and cultural studies. Till Neuhaus is a Researcher at the Faculty of Education, Bielefeld University, Germany. He has also played professional basketball in Europe. Niklas Thomas is a student of English and Sport Science at the University of Münster, Germany. He has published articles on the sport-society-nexus in international peer-reviewed journals.