The White Mamba

Although Brian Scalabrine has spent his entire career as a backup power forward, with career averages of 13 minutes and 3 points per game, he has become a fan favourite across the NBA. Known to basketball fans as "The White Mamba," a play on Kobe Bryant's nickname of "The Black Mamba.", Scalabrine's popularity due to his distinct 'whiteness' and his lack of playing time, has become the subject of an abundance of meme creations throughout the internet.

Whilst these memes are light hearted in nature, they also represent the diverse and yet at times complex ways fans relate to sports in that memes can be used to convey more serious socio-political issues, such as the common perception of inferiority of Caucasian athletes compared to their African-American counterparts. Fans who generate memes negotiate and appropriate their object of fandom become textually productive in that they create new objects of fandom for others. For instance, memes allow for different connotations of a star's image to develop, thus establishing new fan bases in ways traditional media can not. Basketball fans will understand the satirical tone in the Scalabrine memes but non-basketball fans who read the memes may mistake him to be one of the NBA's marquee stars, which is a contradiction to his role in basketball and his overall image.