To celebrate 75 years of the NBA, Bleacher invited Hank, among four other artists, to create works of art inspired by the league. Each artist created original works along with a set of artist editions (each limited to 75) and apparel inspired by their artworks. The original artworks were presented in a New York exhibition curated by artist Sue Tsai. That’s Game, is an artwork and printed blanket edition by Hank Willis Thomas inspired by the 75th anniversary of the NBA, honoring the historical legacy, while also interrogating the sports world. The quilt based work is connected to recurring motifs throughout his practice: sports’ symbiotic relationship with globalization and nationalism, and the historic and contemporary commodification of a homogeneous Black male identity. The individuals that populate the sport industry in the United States are the descendants of slaves. Some historians believe that quilt patterns were used by Abolitionists to send coded messages to slaves escaping north to freedom. The multi billion dollar industry is run by white overseers, yet the athletes are not paid and scholarships are conditional based on physical condition, academic eligibility, personal conduct. The piece is an extension of the idea buying and selling of bodies in slavery with the trading of bodies in sports.

“I was in graduate school, and I was reading a book called Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (1999)” says Thomas. “It talked about how Nike went from being a $10 million company when he signed, to being a $10 billion company 20 years later… I was thinking about black bodies. Bodies like his would have been traded on a market at a different period in time. Now when these bodies are traded today, I was thinking about how much money is made from them. So we go from slaves being branded as a sign of ownership, to black bodies today being branded as a way to make money.”

The quilt reminds us that combative team sports are proxies for armed conflict. Thomas also draws attention to the role modern gladiators can play as voices for social justice: "[athletes] are not supposed to be political. They're supposed to do their job. They don't get paid for speaking. If [Muhammad] Ali, if Jim Brown, if Paul Robeson hadn't spoken, what would the world look like?"