I was a freshman at California University of Pennsylvania in 2005-2006. I was an honors program student, so for my Composition II project, I decided to focus on the image of the NBA. I titled the paper after NBA Jam, the video game that got me involved with hoops in the first place.
From the abstract:
This paper will analyze the National Basketball Association and its recent urgency to pay attention to its public image. It will examine the way the media, especially the print media, helps portray the NBA and its progression in recent years. There are many interesting aspects to sports media as far as professional men’s basketball is concerned, and it is important to look at the fine lines of the situation, using statistics, opinions from the professionals and the target audiences, and various case studies. I concluded that the NBA wants the public to know that the NBA knows about its public image. However, getting deeper, I found that the NBA is more concerned about the acknowledgement of its public image than actually doing something constructive about it.
With the image of the NFL and NBA under a blazing inferno this week in terms of public relations, I felt like this was an interesting time to re-introduce my paper from my freshman year of college. I wrote about Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson this week, while the Atlanta Hawks (a team whose fanbase I’ve criticized multiple times in the past, as recently as April) are embroiled in a scandal that has left them without an owner and possibly without GM Danny Ferry. Sports is popular culture, and the way we associate with it can unite a group of people as well as divide. It is cool when sports can be our escape, our recreation and leisure. But we often use sports to reflect on life, and it becomes a channel of social commentary. For better or worse, these are one of those times.
In this 2006 piece, I discussed the popularity of the NBA, the challenges presented by the 1998 NBA lockout, Michael Jordan’s retirements, high school players and the NBA Draft, the 2004 “Malice at the Palace”, the disconnect with NBA communities, the dress code, and more. A lot has changed in the eight years that I originally wrote this, but the conversation of what we should expect from prominent sports leagues is one that has been re-ignited this week.
Check out the full text here: