When I worked for Simmons at the now defunct sports and pop-culture website Grantland, we published a lot of basketball analytics writing. Part of our project was also “celebrating” the NBA through an obsessive coverage of “silly” players like JaVale McGee, Nick Young, and J.R. Smith, who became lovable antiheroes. Every lascivious Instagram post, every tweet that read as “street,” every boneheaded play in a game was converted into smirking content. Everyone in the editorial office, save me, was white. I don’t think we acted out of malice, but the intent, at least subconsciously, was to create two points of access for ourselves, and, by extension, our audience of mostly white, mostly educated sports enthusiasts. First, we wanted to be the best analytics site on the Internet. Second, we wanted to “humanize” the league through a meme parade. We were desperately trying to wring our work through the hope, however misguided, that we could justify our own place in a Black sport. What Jackson understands is that the entire structure of professional basketball—whether ownership, marketing from the shoe companies, or self-conscious coverage of an overwhelmingly white sports media—is just a variation on that same ungainly attempt.