Ad Nauseum: 2013 Basketball Sneaker Commercials for Your Viewing Pleasure

Having not posted anything new in weeks, naturally my 1st update would be some nonsensical ramblings about TV commercials…naturally. But in the last few weeks, with the NBA season revving up, it was hard to ignore ads for basketball sneakers. Over the last twenty years, you could argue that there aren’t many consumer goods that have ruled the world more so than basketball high tops…and being a semi-reformed sneaker-head, I admit I have been part of the problem, not the solution. Traditionally, we are used to seeing very smart, clever, and eye-popping TV spots run by Nike and their Jordan brand, but Adidas and Reebok (which I think is owned by Adidas now) have recently ramped up some of their ads to try to compete. The results have been mixed. 1st of all, Nike still rules the world of sneakers like the Evil Empire over a galaxy far, far away. 2nd, I would put Nike’s advertizing and marketing departments on the highest level of genius for anyone in those fields for any company in the world.

One reason for this success is partly luck. When there is a choice, Nike always seem to pick the right guys to back or vice versa. Maybe it’s part shrewdness too, but outside of possessing super-human powers of fortune-telling, no one could have predicted Derrick Rose would suffer 2 major knee injuries in a year and a half. I think it would be pretty dumb to assume any shoe pusher would not want D-Rose in their stable of athletes, but the fact that Adidas’ numero uno is an again-injured Rose while Nike rolls out more fresh LeBrons and KDs doesn’t hurt their appearance in the least bit. The series of Rose ads that have basically been playing since he got hurt 2 springs ago are actually really, really good on their own…which just serves to highlight how sad Rose’s latest injury is. For the record, I was picking last in the 1st round of my fantasy basketball league, and took Rose thinking that he was going to have a monster bounce-back year. Sigh.

While the Adidas ad is just depressing, Reebok’s new “Game Recognize Game” commercial is…head-scratching? Honestly, I don’t even know what other adjectives would be appropriate to describe it. This commercial would be fine if it was just a bunch of no-name streetballers, or maybe even if the only recognizable – get it? – guy was Nerlens Noel, a young buck who was the most hyped kid in college basketball last year before blowing out his knee. Plus, it kind of goes with the recent trend of guys coming off injuries making commercial appearances…but we have recent history to prove (the aforementioned D-Rose as well as RG3) that that ad campaign style might spawn some kind of bad shoe company karma. Plus, isn’t Noel out for the season rehabbing? He’s yamming down an off-the-backboard ‘oop in this ad…wait, actually shouldn’t we be making a bigger deal out of this? And I haven’t even gotten to Isaiah Thomas (the one not in the Hall of Fame) and Jason Terry. I actually had to look up who the 3rd guy in the commercial was because I didn’t recognize Thomas without his headband at all. But what makes anyone think Jason Terry is good enough to headline a commercial for anything, much less basketball shoes? And the worst part is he doesn’t even do anything in the commercial! Outlet pass to Thomas and then mean-mug your way back down the court high-fiving the tweens watching from the sidelines. Yeesh…maybe leave the TV commercials to Nike for now, you guys.