BALL IS AFTERLIFE
a thesis project and upcoming book by Lev Francesca (lisco_2000)
Have something to say about death, grief, afterlife, mythmaking, and memory in basketball?Speak into the spiritbox.
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ABOUT BALL IS AFTERLIFE
When I was 21, my cat Iverson died just after I got home from a month of studying art history in Venice. For months, I saw everything through a lens of grief -- including basketball, my main interest. While watching a YouTube simulation of the entire history of the NBA one night, I came up with the basis for Ball Is Afterlife -- sports fandom is all about grief, memory, mythmaking, storytelling, and afterlife. Fans love to remember -- naming random NBA role players or recounting an oral history of Wilt's 100 or Kareem's UCLA days. Basketball fans also grieve a lot -- over real deaths (like Dražen Petrović and Reggie Lewis in 1993 or Kobe Bryant in 2020), career deaths (like Derrick Rose or Jordan Poole), or almost-wins and tragic injuries (the 2021 Suns or Tyrese Haliburton's ACL tear in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals). Ball Is Afterlife explores how sports fans grieve, whether they realize it or not.Ball Is Afterlife started as my thesis project at NYU's Media, Culture, and Communication M.A. program, but has since evolved into a much larger project. I will be pitching Ball Is Afterlife to literary agents soon, so check out the rest of this website to stay tuned!
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