NBYAY!

"Yeah, the point I said, before the game, you know, we can't just fuck around, and, uh— Oh, shit. My bad."

This video is for all the fans of the Beam Team! The NBA season has started and we here at the Sacramento History Museum are, of course, rooting for the home team! In honor of the season underway, Jared letterpress printed something for the Sacramento Kings.

In this video, Jared printed cards in purple rubber base ink using a 3x5 Kelsey Excelsior tabletop press. This electrotype of a basketball clearly shows its age because basketballs stopped having laces in the late 1930s. The text “GO KINGS” and “Light the beam!” was set in 30 point Caslon font.

These were articulated dolls who could "really shoot & pass" by means of a button on her back that would make her throw the ball. The box also contained info about current (at the time of release) WNBA players.

Well, I say "players", but every box I've seen just has Rebecca Lobo, so I am not sure if there were others. Perhaps every girl who had these dolls just learned about Rebecca Lobo's taste in movies. However, if it was just Rebecca Lobo - she's a good pick! She was one of the original WNBA players, and the youngest member of the gold medal winning women's Olympic team.

The WNBA was not the only place Barbie played basketball - there was also a series of tie-in Barbies for various NBA teams.

These were released across 1998 and 1999 and there were multiple tie-ins for each team. I know very little about NBA teams, but I can't help but notice that on the secondary market some of these dolls are going for multiple hundreds of dollars, while others are significantly cheaper.

So NBA Jam popularized the concept of 'being on fire', but there was an influential study in a 1985 edition of Cognitive Psychology that said that 'hot hand theory' or streak shooting is a myth. As the NBA all-time leading three-point shooter what's your take on that whole thing, like does being on fire feel real to you?