Nike Basketball Commercial: Watch Nike Ad Remind Us How Much We Miss the NBA
Nike wants David Stern’s head.
The company’s latest ad will have basketball fans craving the NBA. The lockout may eventually end the NBA season as players and owners each refuse to budge, but in Nike’s world, basketball never stops. Nike reigniting the globe’s passion for basketball will only result in fans being even hungrier for the NBA.
Straight from Nike Basketball’s video description of the ad:
"From Harlem to China, Lebron to Coach K., high schoolers to H.O.R.S.E players... "Basketball Never Stops" celebrates all athletes' unrelenting passion and dedication to the game of basketball.
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In the beginning of the video, the arena lights are shut off symbolizing the lockout. That darkness doesn’t last long, though. Spotlight switches are flipped on throughout the planet highlighting the fact that basketball is a global game not held prison to an NBA court.
The ad shows Dirk Nowitzki training in an indoor gym while a man in a barber shop is spinning a ball on a hair pick. Fans have heard all summer about Pro-Am leagues and high-profile games at street ball courts like Rucker Park, but the clip also features games being played on all levels including in a back alley, cul-de-sac and in an arcade.
The reason Nike is hurting Stern and the owners with this ad: it puts the players on the same level as basketball fans. After the lockout was nearly ended this past weekend, fans are getting impatient. Nike’s ad didn’t feature Mark Cuban or Jerry Buss playing one-on-one.
What it did show is basketball being played by NBA players with those professionals being embraced by their fans. Nearly every single part of an ad released by a marketing machine like Nike has meaning. This latest commercial unites player with fan.
David Daniels is a featured columnist at Bleacher Report and a syndicated writer. Follow him on Twitter.
