Merry Christmas. I’ll be watching some basketball today. The NBA has long tried to be to Christmas what the NFL is to Thanksgiving, and this year the league is even launching the season on Christmas. (If you don’t know, don’t ask. There was a work stoppage and it was ugly.) You may not realize it, but there’s a smidgeon of crossover between comics and the NBA. Bill Jemas was fairly high up in the league offices YEARS before he joined Marvel. Remember the NBA Hoops trading cards that the league owned? That was Bill. Which led to Fleer. Which led to Marvel. Current Marvel EIC Axel Alonso has been speaking of basketball in his interviews of late. Marvel also did a neat cross-promotion with the NBA, ESPN and Wired last year, making up mock comic book covers merging Marvel characters with the various teams. Comics Alliance has an archive of it.