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This is a sentence from a manga (the first chapter of Slam Dunk on page 9)

["バスケット部がなんでいバスケット部が!"] seems like it translates to something like "basketball team... why the basketball team!?"...

There is a line break between the なんでい/なんだい and the repetition of the subject (バスケット部が)

...but I'm not sure why なんで is being spelled with い at the end. does that change the sentence structure as a whole to make it mean something else?

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    Does this whole thing belong to the same balloon? Isn't there something after い (ellipsis, small-tsu, or at least line break...)? Please paste the page as an image if you're unsure.
    – naruto
    May 16, 2021 at 3:36
  • This sentence baffles even native Japanese speakers since it may be grammatically incorrect and definitely cannot stand alone by itself without a context. If なんでい means なんで(why), I believe い in なんでい kind of works to emphasize なんで.
    – user48754
    May 16, 2021 at 5:05
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    I think the sentence ends with なんでい and the following part is just a repetition of its subject. That なんでい could be a variation of なんだい.
    – aguijonazo
    May 16, 2021 at 5:13
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    @aguijonazo Ah, that sounds plausible if the speaker is a masculine Edo dialect speaker!
    – naruto
    May 16, 2021 at 6:17

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["バスケット部がなんでいバスケット部が!"]

なんでい is the masculine form of なんだい,なんなの,なにさ, etc as explained in the comment. It seems to be a variant of the Edo dialect べらんめえ口調.

Without the context, the meaning is hard to figure out. Probably the phrase is used in a condescending manner.

The speaker probably does not like the basketball club, so they uttered the sentence in that way. Is it a situation where they are recruiting someone to the club?

I'd assume the speaker's saying it is just a "Tamaire".

Basketball club? So what? It's just a basketball club！

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