David Stern's NBA may have panicked a few years ago just as the Dream Team generation was leaving the game, and the great sports czar's biggest failing is now being exposed. In its haste to keep a firm grip on its fading Dream Team popularity, Stern's marketing team decided to present pro basketball as an extension of the hip-hop culture - even if most of his marketing suits and ties didn't know the difference between Snoop Dogg and Deputy Dog.
...But while selling their sport's edginess, they were playing with a loaded gun. They embraced hip-hop and hip-hop is now embarrassing them, because they had no idea what they were messing with.
They thought they were getting Will Smith and LL Cool J. But now they're discovering the dark side of hip-hop also has infiltrated their game, with its "bling-bling" ostentatiousness, its unrepentant "I-gotta-get-paid" ruthlessness, its unregulated culture of posses and Muppies (men of unspecified purpose) and that constant underlying thread of violence, too.
Read more at The NBA is hip-hopping its way out of the mainstream
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