I don’t think you’re reading too much into things. The shape of the head is also suggestive of a hairstyle, one that not everyone’s hair really supports. I think it’s abundantly clear the robot is intended to suggest a black person.
The most serious, high-profile basketball in the world happens in the NBA and WNBA, and most of those players really are black; would making this robot look distinctly-human-but-not-black be better? Wouldn’t a robot with no racial cues at all read as “white” or “Japanese” to white people or Japanese people who saw it?
Maybe the reason it seems a little unsettling isn’t so much that the robot is black, it’s that of course the only black “person” in the room is an object that performs entertaining tricks on demand.
One could perhaps paint this design choice as enlightened and inclusive (I’m not trying to do that), but it’s true that the stories we hear about Japanese culture and Japanese racism don’t make me hopeful. Maybe this particular bizarre situation - Japanese engineers building a robot that “plays” a sport dominated by black Americans - is culturally and racially tricky. If I were in charge, I think I’d make a hash of it.
