What is Buzzer Beater, Takehiko Inoue's web manga?

Between Slam Dunk and Real, Inoue made a third basketball manga that almost nobody read in print first. Buzzer Beater launched in 1997 as a web comic on a Japanese sports site, making it one of the pioneering works of online manga, years before webtoons were an industry.

The setting inverts Slam Dunk completely: a future Earth team of street players enters an intergalactic league against alien athletes, closer to space opera than to the Kanagawa gyms. It was later collected in print and adapted into anime series in 2005 and 2007, which remain its widest exposure outside Japan.

This entry is documented more lightly than the rest of this batch, from general reference knowledge rather than a dedicated source pass, and is flagged in the build report for re-verification at integration. It earns its place because Inoue's basketball shelf has three titles, not two, and the middle one is the one the internet nearly forgot.