Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?

[BPIAnalytics]

Quick question: if you using a parantheses around a keyword, do search bots still recognize the keyword?  Fox ex:

Welcome to a website about the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Will the bots recognize that I'm trying to optimize to NBA and not (NBA)?  Is this different for tags vs. actual body copy?

[ufmedia]

Assuming this is on-page copy and not a title tag, then I'd say you're fine.

[BPIAnalytics]

Thanks Ryan, that's what I thought.

[LinkoPlus]

I have the same question about inserting parentheses for a keyword like this: (Cannabidiol)

I do believe Google bot can crawl and index correctly the word "Cannabidiol" even if it's inside parentheses and even if it's a meta tag (title or description). Is there anybody who could test this by optimizing a page with a focus keyword used in parentheses and had good ranking for that keyword (without parentheses)?

Thanks