Basketball RPF
| RPF Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name(s): | Basketball RPF, Men's Basketball RPF |
| Scope/Focus: | primarily NBA players |
| Date(s): | |
| See also: | Sports RPF |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Basketball RPF is a real-person fiction fandom that focuses on professional basketball players. Most of the fandom works focus on players in the National Basketball Association (NBA), but there are some fans of international basketball (mainly about members of the Spanish national team) and women basketball players.
Fandom
Basketball RPF has a presence on sites like LiveJournal and later Archive of Our Own, where some works are member-locked (though not to the extent of Hockey RPF). Wattpad is also a prominent host site for works.
Basketball RPF, like other Sports RPF fandoms, tends to focus on teams and players that are successful at the time, as well as prominently featured players. Teammates and rivals are commonly shipped together for their interactions.
A notable amount of fanworks on the AO3 tag are in Mandarin, likely due to the NBA's popularity in China.
Key Teams, Players, and Pairings
Teams
Popular teams in Basketball RPF include the Golden State Warriors, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Toronto Raptors, though much of the teams' popularity is dependent on their success. Earlier works on AO3 focus on players on the Spanish national team, some of which have played in the NBA.
Due to many prominent NBA players changing teams, teams written about are subject to change depending on where these players go.
Players
The players most commonly written about are Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant, all of whom have been part of teams mentioned above.
Teams with two stars are subject to fanworks, especially when there is a clear dynamic between them. Examples of this include the 76ers' Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, the Jazz's Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, and the Nuggets' Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. Only one of these three duos continues to play together.
Historical Teams & Players
In the 2000s and early 2010s, the San Antonio Spurs and Phoenix Suns were the subject of many works. Players in this era written about include Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, Manu Ginobili, Tim Duncan, and the 76ers' Allen Iverson.
Pairings
| People Involved | Primary Pairing Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen Curry/Klay Thompson | Klephen, the Splash Bros | The two were both drafted by the Golden State Warriors and have been a strong shooting backcourt since the 2010s, making five NBA Finals and winning three championships in 2015, 2017, and 2018. This is by far the most prominent Basketball RPF pairing on Archive of Our Own, boasting 119 fanworks as of May 2021. |
| Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook | Both players were drafted by the Seattle Supersonics, who became the Oklahoma City Thunder soon after. The Thunder had success in the early 2010s, making the NBA Finals in 2012. However, Kevin Durant left the team in 2016 to join the Golden State Warriors, leaving Westbrook behind. This led to many fanworks focusing on Durant's "betrayal" and Westbrook's emotions following the event. | |
| Stephen Curry/LeBron James | StephBron | LeBron James was on the Cleveland Cavaliers for much of the 2010s, where he appeared in four consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 to 2018. In all of those NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers were against the Golden State Warriors, led by Stephen Curry. This has caused people to see them as rivals. |
| DeMar DeRozan/Kyle Lowry | DeLowry | Both players spent the majority of their careers together on the Toronto Raptors. They enjoyed regular season success in the 2010s, though often fizzling out in the playoffs. In 2018, DeRozan was traded to the San Antonio Spurs, and the following season the Raptors had their first NBA championship. |
| Anthony Davis/LeBron James | After multiple Finals appearances with the Cavaliers, LeBron James joined the Los Angeles Lakers in hopes of winning a championship. The year after missing the playoffs, the Lakers traded for Anthony Davis, the disgruntled star for the New Orleans Pelicans. They won the 2020 NBA Championship in their first season together. | |
| Steve Nash/Amare Stoudemire | These two 2000s Suns players had obvious chemistry on the court, which inspired writers to take that fantasy off-court. | |
| Joel Embiid/Ben Simmons | Benjo | Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid played together on the 76ers from 2017 to 2021. They had a falling out in the summer of 2021 following on-and-off tension throughout their time playing together. Ben was traded to the Brooklyn Nets in early 2022. |
Culture
RPF is not commonly accepted in mainstream NBA fandom, as the mainstream fandom is still very hypermasculine and heteronormative. Writing fanfiction is seen as 'feminine,' 'gay,' or just flat-out outside the status quo of being a sports fan. Many fans, the majority female and queer, have created their own fandom spaces on places like Twitter and Tumblr. This fandom-within-a-fandom on the outskirts is niche but beloved.
"Indeed, the range of fanfics you’ll find on platforms like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own speaks to how vast NBA fan communities extend beyond the expected. I’m hardly the only fan with some very visceral fantasies about these players. Plenty of fanfics portray torrid gay romances (LeBron James and Kyrie Irving, former Cleveland Cavaliers teammates, are a popular “ship,” as are Golden State Warriors All-Stars Steph Curry and Klay Thompson). One pretty NSFW, nearly 9,000-word Archive of Our Own story is dedicated to Warriors teammates “comforting” each other after a loss to the Mavericks. Meanwhile, some stories on Wattpad are interactive fanfics that invite you to imagine yourself as Celtics power forward Jayson Tatum’s girlfriend; others are lengthy, 43-chapter sagas about Booker falling in love with the girl next door (I, unfortunately, cannot take credit for this one). There are actually a lot of stories about Booker and his fictional girlfriends, some of them more, ahem, mature than others. Of course, if you’re in the Simmons camp, you can indulge in a 10-chapter story that allows you to envision yourself as his childhood-best-friend-turned-lover." -- Kylie Cheung, Jezebel, August 2022
The NBA has inspired a lot of fictional media surrounding real players and teams, including video games, movies, and projects like the Trade Machine. Fans have claimed these aspects of fandom as RPF:
"the NBA 2k games are an example of real-person fanfiction. the players are characters placed in fictional scenarios. MyGM and MyPlayer involve your self-insert character interacting with fictional versions of these players (they do not exist in real life). in MyGM, the players even tell you their (fictional) favorite foods and their (fictional) habits! there’s even a fake injury report. traditional fanfic is the same thing! explicitly fictional versions of real people in explicitly fictional scenarios. does that explain why I have no problem with it?" -- Liah Argiropoulos, Lisco_2000, July 2022
Example Fanworks
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |
Links
- The NBA Is Horny. No Wonder the Fanfic Is So Good. from Jezebel
- Men's Basketball RPF works at AO3
- Epic Manlove: NBA Fanfiction on Blogger