NBA Talking Points: Hip-Hop, The NBA, And Why?

At this point it’s become cliche to say that the worlds of hip-hop and basketball are intertwined. Partly because it’s just self-evident, and partly because people like Stuart Scott and Stephen A. Smith have built careers exploiting the overlap in the most obnoxious way possible.

But even acknowledging the cliche, it’s still amazing to look at the intersection up close. Just this week, we had a story on Tuesday about a player skipping a rap concert that the rest of his teammates were attending, because the rapper in question had previously written a diss record about him. Then on Wednesday, the night after the concert, the same rapper (Jay-Z) was courtside to watch to the Mavericks-Lakers game with his famous pop star wife (Beyonce). And then after the Mavericks won, you had Dirk Nowitzki, a seven-foot German dude, talking about “Jiggaman” sitting courtside.