Balling Benjamin Franklin

Submission 3,201

Part of a series on He Will Never Be Ballin'. [View Related Entries]

About

Balling Benjamin Franklin is a sports logo depicting United States Founding Father Benjamin Franklin dribbling a basketball, versions of which are used by the NBA team the Philadelphia 76ers and by the Franklin High School basketball team in Washington. In January 2024, the logo went viral as a Pic That Goes Hard after a former student complained about the team logo on X / Twitter.

Origin

The original version of the logo (shown below) was designed for the canceled 1998/99 NBA All-Star Game and uses the blue, red and white color scheme used by the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team. The logo was notably brought back for the 2002 All-Star Game, which took place in Philadelphia.^[1]

A version of the logo recolored green has been used by Franklin Quakers, the basketball team of Franklin High School in Seattle, at least since 2013 (shown below, left).^[2] In 2016, the school switched to an updated version of the logo (shown below, right).^[3]

In 2015, the Philadelphia 76ers adopted another version of the image as their alternate logo.^[4]

On January 27th, 2024, X^[5] / Twitter user @REVIVERAJA posted the Franklin Quakers version of the logo, commenting, "my high school had the worst mascot ever 🤦🏼‍♀️." The post (shown below) garnered over 2,000 reposts and 10,000 likes in three days.

Spread

On January 28th, 2024, X^[6] user @humphreezius quoted the post, writing, "this might be the best high school logo ever no joke." The quote post garnered over 8,800 reposts and 166,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Also on January 28th, the image achieved virality on X^[7] / Twitter as users praised the design and made memes using it. For example, on that day, X user @sigmatic_ made a post that received over 750 reposts and 5,700 likes in two days (shown below, left). Later that day, X user @sock_dem posted a He Will Never Be Ballin' meme based on the image that gained over 8,400 reposts and 152,000 likes on X^[8] in two days (shown below, right).