NBA- National Basketball Association Research Paper

NBA- National Basketball Association - Research Paper Example Not only is the NBA among the four main North American professional sports leagues but its players are also the world’s most lucratively paid sportsmen, going by the average annual salary per player. Many attribute the success of the NBA to its culture and the manner in which it has managed to integrate its culture to its operations and goals, as will be seen in the discussion which ensues forthwith. First, it is important to consider the fact that the NBA has a wide culture, with this wideness taking on both formal and informal aspects. The formal culture of the NBA has mainly been consistent with the organizational policies, while the informal one has mainly been subject to socio-cultural preferences. According to Maymin, Maymin, and Shen (2011), to show for the similarity between NBA and business culture, NBA has also used creations and mergers to extend itself. Having been founded in 1946, the Basketball Association of America merged with NBL on August 3rd, 1949. This deve lopment culminated into the creation of the National Basketball Association. To extend its interests further, NBA has used franchising as its business culture. NBA in 1949 had 17 franchises that at the time were located in large and small cities, and large and small arenas. Through the 1950s, NBA consolidated its 11 franchises. In a closely related wavelength, it is important to note that NBA has also used contraction to move its franchises that had been located in smaller cities to get to larger cities. For instance, it is against this backdrop that the Hawks moved from Quad Cities to Milwaukee, then to Missouri, St. Louis, while the Royals moved from Rochester, New York, to Cincinnati. In the same respect, Pistons moved from Indiana (Fort Wayne) to Detroit in 1957. The culture of merging, franchising and contraction started from the need to expand. The growth of NBA into national and regional importance and the global recognition of NBA as the principal basketball league in the Un ited States underscore the success of these management cultures- franchising, merging and contracting. One of the informal cultures of NBA is its identification with the African American and hip hop culture. The fact that rappers such as Sean Carter and Cornell Iral Hayness Jr. are major stakeholders in NBA teams (namely, Charlotte Bobcats and Brooklyn Nets respectively), underscore this. In like manner, a number of artists have managed to wear NBA throwback jerseys in their music videos. Likewise, NBA plays hip hop and rap music in basketball arenas during games. As if this is not enough, NBA video games NBA Live, ABC-ESPN and NBA 2K use hip hop music in their soundtracks and coverage. Some of the players in NBA have rapped or tried to rap, with Shaquille O’Neal, Tony parker, Kobe Bryant, Chris Webber, Allen Iverson and Metta World Peace serving as examples of these basketball-players-cum-rappers. It is also not at all uncommon to find several NBA players who act or dress in ways that are consistent with rap and hip hop culture. It is for this same reason that many NBA players and members wear jewelry and spot tattoos, both inside and outside basketball courts. A. Maymin, P. Maymin, and Shen (2011) contend that the close affiliation between the NBA and hip hop culture dates back to the late 1970s. This development follows the fact that the 1970s fall within the Cold