When the announcer introduced the international players at the N.B.A. All-Star Game over the weekend, a giant video screen showed maps of their home countries.
There was Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece; Luka Doncic of Slovenia; Jamal Murray of Canada; Pascal Siakam of Cameroon; and Victor Wembanyama … of the Capetian realm?
Eagle-eyed Francophiles quickly noticed that the map behind Mr. Wembanyama, the French basketball star, was not actually a map of France but more closely resembled the boundaries of the Capetian dynasty, which ruled the French region from 987 to 1328, long before the invention of the slam dunk.
This France’s domain appeared to extend over Belgium and excluded the Alsace region of northern France.
“Yes, I think you could call that the Capetian realm at the height of their power from circa 1250 into the 14th century,” Justine Firnhaber-Baker, a historian of late medieval France at the University of St. Andrews (itself founded in 1413), wrote in an email, after studying the map. “Provence and most of what is now eastern France was then in the hands of the Holy Roman Empire.”
Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, a historian of medieval France at New York University, traced the map to a slightly earlier period: “France in the mid 12th-century.”
“Half of France was then under the suzerainty of the king of England; the county of Toulouse barely recognized the authority of the king of France; and Provence, Alsace and Lorraine were part of the Germanic empire,” she wrote in an email. “On the other hand, the French kingdom extended far into Flemish lands, including the territory now known as Belgium.”
Katie Jarvis, a historian of early and late modern France at the University of Notre Dame, did not exactly agree.
“No, France never had these exact borders,” she wrote in an email. “If I had to pick one moment in time,” she wrote, the Wembanyama map might correspond to the Kingdom of France in 1461, when Louis XI took the throne.
On social media, the map set off intense speculation about its possible meaning.
“Why does the NBA reject French annexation of Burgundy?” one X user wrote in a widely circulated post. “Are they disputing the outcome of the Battle of Nancy? Will the NBA pledge loyalty to the Valois dukes?”
Professor Bedos-Rezak proffered her own theories.
“Does the map lament the restricted influence of France, its diminished status on the map of players, its occupancy by unwelcome migrants (I doubt the latter)?” she wrote. “Does it suggest that it is on the eve of a new, successful administration that would return the country to its past and (in the eyes of the French) legitimate glory?”
Most seemed to agree on one thing: It was an embarrassing error. Some said it reflected Americans’ woeful knowledge of geography.
The N.BA. did not immediately respond on Tuesday to emails asking about the map so it’s not clear how it was chosen or why fans at the Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, were treated to a lesson in French history of the Middle Ages.
Professor Firnhaber-Baker blamed a conspicuous innovation of the digital age. “I bet they A.I.’d it and the A.I. got confused,” she said. So did Professor Jarvis, who guessed that the map was an A.I.-generated graphic gone “awry.”
For his part, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, was quick to disavow any responsibility. “I want to reassure our neighbors, we did not provide the map,” he wrote on X. “On the other hand, Wemby is indeed our French pride!”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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