Dunks bring wider audience to hoops

If you've been living in the Philadelphia Metro Area the last month or so and haven't been tuning into the Sixers, you're probably one out of six million -- literally.

Sixersmania has swept through the City of Brotherly Love, and has picked up everyone, basketball and non-basketball fans alike.

Wharton professor Kenneth Shropshire isn't surprised that basketball has been gaining popularity. He's been tracking how the sport has gained mass appeal over the past 20 years.

Shropshire, a professor of Legal Studies and Real Estate, is the co-author of Basketball Jones: America Above the Rim (New York University Press, 2000). The book is a collection of essays that discusses various aspects of basketball, including its business side and its impact on popular culture.

"The original plan was to write a book that was titled, `How Basketball Replaced Baseball as our National Pastime,'" Shropshire said. "We thought that might be overstating it a little bit. But we did want to look at the role that it plays -- how the style and the game of basketball impacts society and how it works both ways."

The book also looks at a variety of recent factors that have allowed the NBA Finals to surpass the World Series in television ratings, such as the baseball strike.

But most significantly, Shropshire points to the dunk.

"Basketball came up and is made for TV and ESPN, and is made for the snapshot moment of the dunk," Shropshire said. "Baseball came up with radio and it's kind of a slower-paced game that isn't made for the media that's in place today."

Shropshire believes that all of that culminated this year.

"The popularity of the game is going back up again," Shropshire said. "The TV ratings are four percent higher than last year. Nothing too fantastic, but I think a lot of people thought the game was going away."

And in looking at the outcome of this year's NBA Finals, with the Lakers defeating the Sixers, 4-1, in the best-of-seven series, Shropshire has mixed emotions.

"I grew up in L.A., with [Wilt] Chamberlain, [Jerry] West and [Elgin] Baylor, and I was in L.A. during the Magic [Johnson], Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] and [James] Worthy era," said Shropshire, a 15-year resident of Philadelphia. "It was good to see what the Sixers did, and I wish they had done better."

Shropshire's own written contribution to the book, entitled, `Deconstructing the NBA,' examines racism in professional basketball. The essay examines the movement from direct and blatant racism to aversive racism -- a "subtle" and "unintentional form of bias."

In the conclusion of his piece, Shropshire discusses his view of what is necessary for greater progress in society to occur -- "more of those who have not directly felt or seen racism need to believe it still exists even in the most meritorious of settings."

Shropshire's interest in hoops began early in his life, but waned after eighth grade when his friends caught up to him in height.

His interest turned to football, especially during his years at Stanford. But he never let go completely of basketball.

In his senior year at Stanford, he was president of a basketball team featuring non-basketball players, which included future NFL Hall of Famer James Lofton.

"Of all the major team sports, basketball is the one you're likely to pick up somewhere along the way, if you didn't as a kid," Shropshire said. "In Philadelphia, you know the kind of popularity the game can end up having and draw people in that normally did not pay attention to it."

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