When I was writing my thoughts on the opening week of the NBA season, I inadvertently left out one of my favorite things. Have you seen the new Adidas adds? In case you didn’t notice from the trademark 3 stripes on every piece of NBA apparel, Adidas has the new deal to provide NBA teams with its gear. And to follow up that coup, they have also launched a new add campaign using its stars to try to get you to buy shoes.
The new slogan is “It takes 5.” You know, as in, it’s not about the individual, but rather the whole team. One guy can’t do it by himself, but needs to have 4 other guys on the same page. They are pretty boring commercials which include such gripping scenes as players dressed in those motion capture suits they use for video games. What that has to do with team play in basketball, I will never know.
But two things makes this a fun add campaign.
First, in spite of the “It Takes 5” slogan Adidas thankfully kept the worst slogan in sports advertising – “Impossible is Nothing.” There is nothing Madison Ave likes better than these silly twists of words and phrases and sometimes they are clever and work well. None come to mind, but I’m sure some of them are good. This one, though, is not. I get that “Nothing is Impossible,” isn’t very catchy, but reversing the words is just dumb. I guess it is supposed to mean that a true athlete scoffs at the idea that something would be impossible, as if to say not only is nothing impossible, but I don’t even consider “impossible” a significant obstacle. So what does that mean for us and for sports?....ummmm…..I have no idea. From their adds last year it appears to mean that even if Tracy McGrady was attacked by an entire miniature Lilliputianesque army while trying to dunk, he could still dunk. Ok, great, I get it now. If only I wear Addidas, I will still be able to dunk even if tiny thread like cables are wrapped around my feet by teeny-tiny little soldiers. Very helpful.
Of course, for me, when it comes to dunking impossible is definitely something.
Second, and most importantly, an add campaign based on a slogan about teamwork features one of the Generation Y me-first all-stars T-Mac himself and Mr. 40 point point guard Gilbert Arenas. I love this. The other guys featured in this add are KG, Duncan, and Billups and are all perfect for the campaign. All those guys are unselfish (to a fault with KG) and historically play on teams that win or lose around a team concept. Then there’s Arenas. He is everyone’s favorite underdog at the moment (though he’s becoming a spotlight addict – I’m worried that he’s going to go Dennis Rodman in a dress on us at any moment), and everyone talks about him as the most underrated guy in the NBA.
If you play fantasy basketball, you might agree. He puts up incredible stats, I mean, incredible. He fills up a stat sheet with the very best in the league but doesn’t have anything like the national fame that Kobe or Lebron have. But a team guy? No way. He is a shoot first point guard in the mold of a bigger, better shooting Alan Iverson. He puts up those gaudy numbers because he makes sure he gets his first and then everyone else can have the crumbs. The more I watch hoops, the more clearly I see that the difference between a good player and a great player is the ability to make teammates better. Kobe showed this in his Jekyll and Hyde performance in the playoffs last year. In the early games he got his teammates involved, saw his own numbers decrease and the team rolled Phoenix and it wasn’t really even close. Then Kobe went back to shooting 3 out of every 4 possessions and the Suns came back and won the series.
Arenas is a great scorer and very skilled player, but he does not make his teammates better and is not a team guy. That said, you could at least make an argument for Arenas. His assist numbers (misleading as that stat is) are good and his team does win despite marginal talent.
T-Mac however, is another story altogether. He is as selfish and me first as they come in this league. He has to be the star. He has to win on his terms or he sulks and pouts and sits out with phantom injuries. He shoots waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much and takes terrible shots. He doesn’t get his teammates involved ever. Take all the bad characteristics of Iverson, VC and Kobe and put them in one player and you have T-Mac.
So these it takes 5 adds then show all the players doing flashy individual things like dunking and fancy dribbling moves and has the players speaking saying things like “every time I dunked you were fooled”, the idea being that all this time, we just thought McGrady was a selfish player because he shot 30 shots a game and sulked when he didn’t get his way, but really, in spite of him tearing the heart out of his last two franchises to chase money or hide from a bad situation he created, he’s really all about the team and we were all fooled. I guess we’re just supposed to ignore his entire career and start believing that everything we know about team basketball is wrong and that guys like T-Mac and Arenas are really all about the team.
But you’re not a fool….are you?
The new slogan is “It takes 5.” You know, as in, it’s not about the individual, but rather the whole team. One guy can’t do it by himself, but needs to have 4 other guys on the same page. They are pretty boring commercials which include such gripping scenes as players dressed in those motion capture suits they use for video games. What that has to do with team play in basketball, I will never know.
But two things makes this a fun add campaign.
First, in spite of the “It Takes 5” slogan Adidas thankfully kept the worst slogan in sports advertising – “Impossible is Nothing.” There is nothing Madison Ave likes better than these silly twists of words and phrases and sometimes they are clever and work well. None come to mind, but I’m sure some of them are good. This one, though, is not. I get that “Nothing is Impossible,” isn’t very catchy, but reversing the words is just dumb. I guess it is supposed to mean that a true athlete scoffs at the idea that something would be impossible, as if to say not only is nothing impossible, but I don’t even consider “impossible” a significant obstacle. So what does that mean for us and for sports?....ummmm…..I have no idea. From their adds last year it appears to mean that even if Tracy McGrady was attacked by an entire miniature Lilliputianesque army while trying to dunk, he could still dunk. Ok, great, I get it now. If only I wear Addidas, I will still be able to dunk even if tiny thread like cables are wrapped around my feet by teeny-tiny little soldiers. Very helpful.
Of course, for me, when it comes to dunking impossible is definitely something.
Second, and most importantly, an add campaign based on a slogan about teamwork features one of the Generation Y me-first all-stars T-Mac himself and Mr. 40 point point guard Gilbert Arenas. I love this. The other guys featured in this add are KG, Duncan, and Billups and are all perfect for the campaign. All those guys are unselfish (to a fault with KG) and historically play on teams that win or lose around a team concept. Then there’s Arenas. He is everyone’s favorite underdog at the moment (though he’s becoming a spotlight addict – I’m worried that he’s going to go Dennis Rodman in a dress on us at any moment), and everyone talks about him as the most underrated guy in the NBA.
If you play fantasy basketball, you might agree. He puts up incredible stats, I mean, incredible. He fills up a stat sheet with the very best in the league but doesn’t have anything like the national fame that Kobe or Lebron have. But a team guy? No way. He is a shoot first point guard in the mold of a bigger, better shooting Alan Iverson. He puts up those gaudy numbers because he makes sure he gets his first and then everyone else can have the crumbs. The more I watch hoops, the more clearly I see that the difference between a good player and a great player is the ability to make teammates better. Kobe showed this in his Jekyll and Hyde performance in the playoffs last year. In the early games he got his teammates involved, saw his own numbers decrease and the team rolled Phoenix and it wasn’t really even close. Then Kobe went back to shooting 3 out of every 4 possessions and the Suns came back and won the series.
Arenas is a great scorer and very skilled player, but he does not make his teammates better and is not a team guy. That said, you could at least make an argument for Arenas. His assist numbers (misleading as that stat is) are good and his team does win despite marginal talent.
T-Mac however, is another story altogether. He is as selfish and me first as they come in this league. He has to be the star. He has to win on his terms or he sulks and pouts and sits out with phantom injuries. He shoots waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much and takes terrible shots. He doesn’t get his teammates involved ever. Take all the bad characteristics of Iverson, VC and Kobe and put them in one player and you have T-Mac.
So these it takes 5 adds then show all the players doing flashy individual things like dunking and fancy dribbling moves and has the players speaking saying things like “every time I dunked you were fooled”, the idea being that all this time, we just thought McGrady was a selfish player because he shot 30 shots a game and sulked when he didn’t get his way, but really, in spite of him tearing the heart out of his last two franchises to chase money or hide from a bad situation he created, he’s really all about the team and we were all fooled. I guess we’re just supposed to ignore his entire career and start believing that everything we know about team basketball is wrong and that guys like T-Mac and Arenas are really all about the team.
But you’re not a fool….are you?
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