The NBA is committed to build India's basketball culture at the grass roots level through its youth programs.

Through a beautiful photographic journey across India, we recreated 4 of the NBA’s most famous player’s dunks, in an authentic Indian way. The famous Jordan dunk was set against the stunning backdrop of the Taj Mahal. Shaq’s slamdunk was captured in the deserts of Rajasthan. Kobe’s superdunk was photographed in the holy city of Benares and Lebron’s iconic dunk was snapped in Mumbai’s Gate Way of India.

Turning these dunks into a nationwide campaign to find India's next basketball star.

With a population in the billions, India is melting pot of a billion cultural nuances. Across the country, language, taste, and clothing all differ. But the one unifier is cricket. From the poorest villages to the most metropolitan cities, Indians live and breathe it. Cricket is not just the unofficial national sport, but a religion.

In a country that’s this obsessed with cricket, it’s no wonder that other sports like basketball are branded as ‘foreign’. Viewed as unrelated and irrelevant to the Indian experience. Especially when basketball courts are few and far between, predominantly only found in cities. So, when NBA entered India, the first task was to convince an entire nation to view basketball as quintessentially Indian.

That meant starting at the grassroots and injecting basketball into the very heart of Indian culture. With thousands of dialects, language wasn’t a viable option. But body language is universal. And so, we searched for everyday portraits of unapologetically Indian moments from hidden nooks and crannies across the country. Moments that seamlessly intertwined both culture and basketball, leading to us finding 23 in a billion.

Situation: India is a country that lives and breathes cricket, revering it as a religion. Other sports, including basketball, are branded as ‘foreign’ and irrelevant to them.

Brief: How does NBA build a genuine connection between basketball and Indians in a country that’s obsessed with cricket?

Objectives: To reach the farthest depths of the Indian subcontinent through the NBA Academy and inspire India’s youth to believe the next 23 in a billion could be found and nurtured amongst them.

With a career spanning about 30 years, our photographer has worked with almost every top agency in India and has seen his work win over 250 metals at award shows like Cannes Lions, D&AD, One Show, the New York Festival, Asia-Pac Awards and other local awards like Adclub Mumbai and Cag.

He is passionate about 'street photography' and lives to capture life as it unfolds in a moment on film. He says, " Street photography is like holding up a mirror to society, a reflection of life, capturing the life of a moment on film or should I say, chip, making room for instinct, documenting, telling a story, making you smile. It tends to be ironic and often surprises you. And in today’s global village, photography is the only thing that crosses barriers of language and happily transports viewers to different cultures.