Execute order 66! Or something like that. This one is straight from the "couldn't make it up" files: According to Gary Parrish of CBS Sports, Nike is supposedly blocking any and all taped footage of Xavier's Jordan Crawford posterizing LeBron James, which happened at the LeBron James Skills Academy earlier this week.

Turns out, there were at least two cameras rolling Monday night when Crawford dunked on James during a pick-up game here at the LeBron James Skills Academy. It was a two-handed jam, the kind that would've circulated quickly on YouTube. But Nike officials eliminated that possibility shortly after the dunk happened by allegedly confiscating tapes from various cameramen.

Freelance photographer Ryan Miller was one of the cameramen shooting the game.

He told CBSSports.com that Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynn Merritt took his tape.

"He just said, 'We have to take your tape,'" Miller said. "They took it from other guys, too."

Worth noting is that there is no policy against filming at the LeBron James Skills Academy, and Miller said he had been filming all day without incident. Nobody ever told him to stop. Nobody ever said there was a problem...until after Crawford dunked on James.

"LeBron called Lynn over and told him something," Miller said. "That's how I knew his name was Lynn. LeBron said, 'Hey, Lynn. Come here.'"

Minutes later, Miller said Merritt demanded his tape.

"There's nothing I can think of besides LeBron just not wanting it online," Miller said. "It's a good story to tell people, I guess. But then again, I'm kind of pissed. I lost my tape."

Wait, what? Mr. Check My $tats, Mr. Look-At-Me-I'm-The-MVP doesn't want video circulating on YouTube of him being jammed on by some college kid?! I can't tell you how NOT shocked I am. Let's just say that sound you just heard certainly wasn't my jaw hitting the floor. Between this situation, the egomania t-shirts and that whole "I'm a winner and winners don't have to shake hands" thing, LeBron sure is coming off as kind of a douche lately.

[Hat Tip: Brandon Hoffman of BallerBlogger.]

Labels: gratuitous Star Wars references, Lebron James, Nike

The Redeem Team, besides that whole "restoring American basketball dominance" thing, proved to be excellent ambassadors during their stay in Beijing. I bet David Stern couldn't have been happier unless there were two of him. (Not an implausible notion, and it would explain a lot, but I digress.) Still, the overwhelmingly positive Olympic experience reminded me that there have been other not-so-great moments in NBA international relations. To wit:

On February 28, 2001, the Sacramento Kings visited the Golden State Warriors and ran way with a 122-101 victory. But what they won on the court was soon lost in the ensuing public relations nightmare: Sacramento point guard Jason Williams had gotten into a shouting match with some fans during the game. A particularly nasty shouting match.

The fracas started when a man named Michael Ching, who was sitting behind the Kings' bench, told Williams to "Get used to sitting on the bench." White Chocolate, known far and wide for his clever eloquence, responded with: "Are you gay? Are you a fag?"

Since it was entirely possible that Ching did not, in fact, prefer penis over vagina, Williams moved on to the next best thing -- racial epithets! -- calling Ching a "slant-eyed [bleep-bleeper]" and and saying that "I will shoot all you Asian [bleep-bleepers]. Do you remember the Vietnam War? I'll kill y'all just like that. Just like Pearl Harbor, do you remember that?" Then, to underscore his rather statement (which was rather dubious, historically speaking), Williams pantomimed shooting a machine gun at Ching and even made machine gun sounds with his silly mouth.

Unbelievably, the immediate followup to this confrontation was a visit from an arena security guard, who threatened to remove Ching and his friends from the game, claiming complaints had been made against Ching for the incident. Understandably outraged, Ching demanded to speak with someone from the Warriors' front office. He had to wait until the end of the game, but he finally got to speak with Robert Rowell, the Warriors' vice-president of Business Operations. Rowell promised that "something would be done."

Unsatisfied with that rather vague resolution, Ching wrote a letter about the incident and mailed it to Warriors owner Chris Cohan, general manager Garry St. Jean and Rowell; Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof; and NBA commission David Stern and deputy commissioner Russ Granik.

More than a week passed before Rowell got back to Ching. I bet Ching was expecting some sort of heartfelt apology. What he got instead was a stern reprimand for sending out the letter. According to Ching: "[Rowell] said, 'You know I don't appreciate you doing this, going to all this stuff."

Meanwhile, the story had hit the press...and Williams was completely unrepentant. "People say all types of things to me, curse words, talk about weed, everything. They can get personal with me, but I can't get personal with them, I guess. Hopefully, I'll learn my lesson one of these times."

Sounds like he learned a lot, huh?

And still no action was taken by the NBA front office. I know it seems hard to believe, since we live in an era in which players are punished for standing up off of the bench and Kobe Bryant has been suspended twice for accidentally smacking people in the face during jump shots, but it's true. Another week passed before the league finally took action, fining Williams $15,000. In response to the fine, Williams issued a written statement with a canned apology that was dripping with sincerity: "I did not intend any disrespect to the Asian community or any other community. I was wrong and I apologize."

Somewhat ironically, this incident caused Nike to cancel a Williams-centric advertising campaign which would have digitally altered the color of Williams' skin from white to black. (Said Nike spokesman Scott Reames: "The premise is that there's no black basketball and no white basketball. Jason's point is, 'I play basketball; it doesn't matter what color my skin is.'") Nike, of course, claimed that the decision was made before the Ching controversy. That's Nike for you.

It's unknown whether the league forced Williams to attend a diversity training workshop, but rumor has it that Shaq left a message with his agent that said: "Tell Jason, 'ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh.'"

Labels: Classic quotology, David Stern, international relations, Jason Williams, Nike

I had initially not paid much attention to the pulled Nike Hyperdunk advertisements on which Basketbawful gave his opinion last week, but I noticed a lot of people were commenting, so I reread his post to refresh my memory.

I agree with everything Basketbawful said. It’s not difficult to find a lot of people who agree, because we are the vast majority. Most of us believe it’s a shame how easily people are offended, but an even bigger shame that those few – very few – thin-skinned individuals can actually effect the world at large.

I decided to perform an online search to see if I could view the entire ad campaign. I wanted to have a better sense of its full scope, and perhaps write a post about how “offended” I am at the racial make-up of the dunkERs vs. the dunkEEs (the only picture I’d seen was of a black player dunking over a white player – excuse me, an African-American player over a Caucasian player). The intent of my post, of course, would be to illustrate by way of satire the foolishness of those who were so offended.

Anyway, when I googled “Nike Hyperdunk ads,” I couldn’t find the ad campaign. I imagine most evidence of it has been burned, buried, or shot into space to ensure nobody else is offended by it. What I did find however, was a July 29th, 2008 item on Advocate.com (a national gay and lesbian online publication) entitled “Nike to Drop Offensive Hyperdunk Ads.”


After a quick glance, I was about to exit this page when I noticed the “(AP)” at the end of the text followed by the Associated Press copyright notice: “© 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.”

From everything I’ve ever known about AP releases, news distributors (when given permission to use these items) are meant not only to attribute the items to the Associated Press, but also report said items without altering even one word of it, which is covered in the copyright notice: “may not be…rewritten...”

So the Advocate properly footnoted the source of the piece – the respected, unbiased Associated Press. But I’m looking at the title of this article, and I’m thinking it looks curiously biased to me. “Nike to Drop Offensive Hyperdunk Ads”? Wouldn’t the Associated Press – the true standard-bearer of “fair and balanced” reporting - realize that these ads were only offensive to a very few, and that calling them “offensive” in the title implies that everyone on the planet regards them as offensive just as certainly as we regard the White House as white?

Well, the writer of the Associated Press did know this, it appears. I looked further, checking with the Associated Press site itself, which has a search mechanism allowing visitors to view random local news websites that reprint AP material. In article after article, I found the original title of the Nike news piece:
“Nike to drop Hyperdunk ads some see as homophobic.”
Big difference.

Here are screenshots from the many publications I found that reprinted this news the correct way:

Indianapolis Star
York Dispatch
Mississippi's Clarion Ledger
Astoria, Oregon
Detroit News
Bennington Banner, Bennington, VT
East Valley Tribune, Phoenix
Hawaii
Ventura County, California
The Daily Journal, NJ
St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Bay, FL.
Ft. Myers, Florida
San Diego, California

Some of you may be asking yourselves if there were there even slight variations on this title. Well, I did my research, and yes, I found one variation:

“After earlier defense, Nike says it will drop Hyperdunk ads some see as homophobic.”

I found this alternate wording in three locations. It was exactly the same in all of them, indicating to me this is some authorized AP variant of the title. More importantly, the variant does not alter the bias, meaning, or context of the original title:

FW Daily News, Indiana / Ohio
Los Angeles KFWB News
West Texas News

Now, the Associated Press has a very strict code of values and principles. Their press release on this subject includes phrases such as “we abhor inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions” and “Quotations must be accurate, and precise.” One assumes, then, that they demand the same from those agencies that reprint their material.

The AP also requires written permission for use of its material. One must also assume, then, that the AP would never have authorized the Advocate’s modified title, since it so clearly changes the title’s context and meaning. If they did, shame on them. If they didn’t, shame on Advocate.com.

I consider this a significant breach of journalistic integrity. The Advocate is supposedly the preeminent publication, both in print and online, for homosexual men and women, and it appears on the surface to be altering pieces of Associated Press news to fit in line with its own agendas. This is an AP news piece, not an editorial piece – and yet someone at the Advocate appears to have decided to editorialize, essentially informing readers that the Nike ads are offensive. That, friends, would be more offensive than the Nike ads themselves ever were.

The Advocate was at least wise enough not to alter the body text of the piece, which appears to remain in tact. There is, however, one thing at the end of the second paragraph (and this is hilarious because it shows that the editors of the Advocate are fully aware of journalistic guidelines) where they write “the [Portland] Oregonian reported.” For those who don’t know, square brackets signify missing material; in other words, the original AP article didn’t have the word “Portland” in it, but the Advocate folks wanted to make sure you knew the town from which the Oregonian originates. That’s nice of them, isn’t it? And yet they aren’t at all concerned that you know they altered the title of the article to suit their political views.

Allegedly.

There's one bright spot here. A majority of the comments by readers of the Advocate (which I have saved in a lengthy screen shot for posterity) state that they don’t find the ads offensive either. What does this suggest? It suggests the Advocate is not in sync with the gay and lesbian community and shouldn’t bother to claim it speaks for anyone but its own collective editorial staff.

To those who would complain to Advocate.com, don’t bother. If the Advocate catches wind of this, they’ll fix that online title faster than the Nike ads disappeared. All I want you to do, loyal Basketbawful readers, is follow this link, see that I speak the truth, and add a comment to this post that you saw the Advocate title is exactly as I’ve said. Your comments are far better proof even than my screenshot, since we all know that nowadays it’s as easy to alter a picture as it is to alter an Associated Press news piece.

I don't know if AP news titles are altered by news outlets with regularity. I have made an inquiry about this issue to the AP, and have received no response as of the time of this post, but I'll update you with anything I learn. Regardless of who is the responsible party here – the AP for authorizing such a blatant bastardization of their material, or the Advocate for bastardizing it – somebody in this food chain has spit in the face of proper journalism.

I can just see this item as reported by the Associated Press on Advocate.com:
“Mean Jerky Sports Website picks on Pure Innocent Gay Advocacy Publication.”

It’s all about the spin.

Labels: Advocate, Associated Press, Hyperdunk ads, Nike

Originally, I was going to leave this subject alone. After all, it's already been covered by Deadspin, TrueHoop, the Sporting News, the Wall Street Journal, et al. However, my approach of non-responsiveness changed this morning when I read about the feminist uproar brewing over the upcoming Sony video game Fat Princess. The game's premise is to force-feed a previously dainty princess a high-calorie diet -- probably rich in candy, butter and delicious gravy -- in order to make it more difficult to capture her (or rescue her, depending on which team you're on). Upon rescue, princess fatty magically becomes thin again...restoring order to a video game universe in which "fat" is only okay for Italian plumbers.

One writer at the political/feminist blog Shakesville immediately freaked out over the game, sarcastically congratulating Sony with the following vitriol: "I'm positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative assholes. It's not often I have the opportunity to congratulate a cutting-edge tech company on such splendiferous retrofuck jackholery. Way to go! The Fat Princess of Shakes Manor salutes you." This well-reasoned argument is then underscored by a photo of the author giving Sony the one-fingered salute. And this is probably going to shock the hell out of you, but the author is -- are you ready for your socks to go flying off? -- an obese woman.

The one thing her witty repartee failed to do is, you know, describe the catastrophic damage that this video game will wreak on fat princesses worldwide. I hate to break this to her, but video games -- even the really good ones -- aren't some sort of all-powerful cultural force. According to Wikipedia, the Grand Theft Auto series has produced nine stand-alone games and sold over 70 million copies worldwide. If something as lame as Fat Princess might create "a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative assholes," then the GTA games should have already transformed most of us into solitary gangsters who play by our own rules while car-jacking and killing just for kicks. In which case -- BLAM!! -- we should all be dead right now.

But these knee-jerk reactions aren't about making the Earth a better place. Not really. It's about getting offended as quickly and completely as possible. People seem to genuinely enjoy the process of becoming angry and lashing out at any and every slight, whether real or imagined. This is the world we live in, folks. It has become literally impossible to create anything without pissing somebody off. I can't publish The Worsties or let a fan joke about the size of Kobe's laptop without receiving angry emails full of "screw you" this or "you're an assface" that. And all I do is clown on silly stuff that happens within the realm of professional basketball. It's a good thing I don't create video games or shoe ads.

Society spends way too much time telling us what we should and shouldn't do. Do not use in the shower. Do not use while sleeping or unconscious. Do not use near fire. Do not iron clothes while on body. Do not attempt to stop the blade with your hand. Do not drive cars in ocean. This is not underwear; do not attempt to put in pants. And not only have we been given Life's Little Instruction Booklet, we've been given a green light to become filled with unreasonable rage any time the rules are broken.

At what point in human evolution did we lose the ability to make our own decisions? When did it become impossible to differentiate between playful, harmless fantasy and reality?

Which brings me to the subject of Nike's Hyperdunk ad campaign. As you probably already know, this campaign previously included a series of billboards that illustrate two of mankind’s most primal emotions: The fear of being defeated in fierce athletic competition, and the horror of having someone's dangling genitals forcibly rammed into our face. But Nike has pulled the ads because of their obvious homophobic undertones.

Eh...what?!

No, seriously. People think these ads are homophobic. You should read some of the comments at that Hyperdunk campaign link I posted above. Several people claimed that, in response to the perceived offensiveness of the ads, they will never buy a Nike product again. (Although, honestly, I'm willing to bet they weren't buying Nike to begin with.) One commenter said: "This toothless, comfy, hate-mongering would not have survived a relatively conscious basic design class...twenty years ago. Shame!"

You might be tempted to ask, "Are these people serious?" The answer is: Yes, they most certainly are. But the bigger question, for my money, is, "Do they even understand what they're so upset about?" I tend to believe that any person of average intelligence would be able to interpret these ads correctly and realize that they harm no one. You could argue about whether or not they're funny, sure, but whether they're offensive? How? Because a heterosexual male doesn't want to be dunked on and get teabagged at the same time? This presupposes...what exactly? That gay men actively desire for this to happen to them, and therefore portraying it as a negative thing is somehow hurtful to their pro-dunking/teabagging stance? That seems like a stretch to me.

But then again, my perceptions are colored by the fact that I'm a heterosexual male in a hetero-centric world. So I decided to poll a friend of mine who is both gay and plays basketball. My question was simple and to the point: Do you find Nike's Hyperdunk ads to be homophobic? Here is his unedited response: "They don't seem homophobic to me. I could be naïve, but all I see is the guys getting dunked on. I guess they could have included the basket in the pictures and not just the groin to the face."

I know that one gay male basketball player is a relatively small sample population, but you see my point. I have yet to read or hear of one rational argument that has made me think, "You know, these ads could be kind of homophobic if you look at it like this...."

This isn't a new thing, by the way. Back in 2000, Nike pulled an ad that showed Olympic runner Suzy Hamilton escaping a chainsaw-wielding killer. It was an obvious parody of horror movies like Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but some feminist groups actually believed that the ad was a gross display of violence against women. So then, like now, Nike gave in.

I don't believe that Nike -- or anyone else -- should blindly give in or be forced to give in to the masses of people who see it as their solemn duty to fight ignorance and injustice with ignorance and injustice. The Hyperdunk ads are not harming gay people. They are not making gay people feel badly about themselves, nor are they making heterosexual people hate gay people any more (or less) than they already did. Watching a man dunk on another man, even if that man is me, will not make me gay. And although I might resent the man who did it, it won't be because of his sexual orientation, but because I don't like getting dunked on and I don't like people I am not currently having sex with ramming their crotch in my face. And that's pretty much where this entire story should have ended.

You know what would help reduce the world's vast supply of homophobia? If people stopped looking for it so hard.

Labels: homophobia, Nike, righteous indignation, video games

I always got a kick out of this 2003 Nike commercial starring Paul Pierce and Jermaine "The Drain" O'Neal. On opposite sides during a pickup game, the two men step up to the challenge by ignorning the absolute living hell out of their teammates and going one-on-one until everybody else just stops playing. Not sure what kind of message Nike was trying to get across, other than "Just Do It (Be A Selfish Bastard)!"

Also, this would be a lot funnier to me if I hadn't been in so many pickup games that devolved into something like this...

Labels: ball hoggery, Jermaine O'Neal, Nike, Paul Pierce, pickup basketball, shoe commercials

If you had just released a revolutionary new shoe product and were looking for a celebrity to endorse it, you'd probably choose a dominant sports figure who epitomizes the power and majesty of raw athletic ability. That's what Nike did, and we all know how that turned out.

In 1989, Reebok unveiled The Reebok Pump, but they used a somewhat different marketing approach. Instead of signing one of world's premier athletic talents (ala Michael Jordan), Reebok chose a broken-down, retired basketball player that nobody really liked anymore. They chose Bill Walton.


Walton was an especially ironic selection, since by the time this commerical aired his feet were composed entirely of chicken wire and tissue paper. Big Bill even drew attention to that fact by saying, "Pump, where were you when I needed you?!" Walton followed up that mournful rebuke with "If I could play today, I'd pump up for support, protection, and a custom fit." It's as if Bill wants us to believe that some air and a little extra rubber would have prevented his brittle feet from breaking into thousands of tiny pieces.

Sadly, this Utopian world in which foot injuries were completely eradicated by the Reebok Pump never came to be. Maybe that's because the Pump was so damn expensive: $180 on its initial release. And that was in 1989 dollars. In today's marketplace, that would be, like, a $10,000 shoe. Believe me, nobody's going to buy a $10,000 shoe endorsed by an injury-prone has-been. After all, how many pairs of Shaq's Dunkman game shoes do you own? Yeah, that's what I thought.

So if you're ever wondering why Reebok failed to overtake Nike in the Great Shoe Wars of the 1990s, it's because they tried to sell what was, at the time, the most expensive athletic shoe ever based on the recommendation of a man who could barely walk. It also didn't help that their tagline -- Pump Up and Air Out -- sounded like the flatulent result of a late-night Taco Bell run.

Labels: Bill Walton, celebrity endorsements, Nike, Reeboke, Shaq, shoe commercials

I learned 97 percent of what I know from the feral wolves that raised me. The other three percent I learned from Internet porn and the Nike Fun Police commercials. Despite the fact that they starred a group of professional basketball players with a combined contractual worth of over $200 million, the Fun Police taught me that life isn't about fame, fortune, or gaudy statistics. It's about living life the right way. It's about the team over ego. And, most importantly, it's about cuddling.

Fortunately, some of the Fun Police commercials have made to YouTube. Unfortunately, the best of the group has not (so far). It's the one where the Fun Police interrogate a fat white kid who won't pass to his teammates. Someone (I believe Damon Stoudemire) inspects the kid's ball with infrared goggles and determines that "There's only one set of prints on this ball" while Gary Payton just keeps saying, "C'mon, dawg...pass the ball...pass the ball!" Then someone else (Jason Kidd?) cries "Look!" and opens a closet door to reveal hundreds of basketballs. Great stuff.

These are the Fun Police commercials I was able to find. In this one, Kevin Garnett, Tim Hardaway, and Alonzo Mourning force a rich white couple to sit in the nosebleed section so a group of black teens can have their courtside seats. But don't get the wrong impression. This isn't about race relations. This is about fun. (And apparently getting one up on Whitey is how NBA players have their fun.)


Here, Damon Stoudemire, Gary Payton, and Jason Kidd discuss what is and isn't fun at a laundromat. No look passes? Fun. You get the idea. Kidd's final suggestion draws a little hairy eyeball from Stoudemire and Payton, but honestly, what did they expect? They're a group of grown men wearing matching black turtlenecks and slacks, and they're hanging out at a local laundromat in the middle of the night. Cuddling is the least I would have expected in that situation.


This last one shows Kevin Garnett menacing former teammate Cherokee Parks about the length of his shorts (two-and-a-half inches above the kneecaps, I believe). The video doesn't have any sound, but that makes it funnier somehow, especially at the end when Parks points an accusing finger at Tom Gugliotta and Googs almost kills him. In the closing shot, Parks looks like a guy who just got put in jail for tax fraud and has to share a cell with a couple guys nicknamed "Velvet Anvil" and "Bluto the Ass Blaster."

Labels: Alonzo Mourning, Cherokee Parks, commercials, Damon Stoudemire, Fun Police, Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, Kevin Garnett, Nike, Tim Hardaway, Tom Gugliotta