Nike's failed LeBron James and Kobe Bryant puppet ads sent me down memory lane for the most ill-advised, puzzling, or flat-out bizarre sports commercial campaigns ever. Here is what I came up with, in countdown format.4) Tiger Woods/Roger Federer/Thierry Henry - Gillette - 2008
It's standard for a company to get recognizable athletes to promote their product. But when you can only recognize one of the three faces - and the recognizable one arguably does not even play an athletic sport - well, as Steve Spurrier once said, "Not too good!" I consdier myself a pretty knowledgeable sports fan, but truthfully, when I saw these commercials I thought Roger Federer was Jeff Gordon until my brother corrected me...and I had to enlist the help of Google just minutes ago to figure out the third guy, Henry.
3) Larry Johnson as "Grandmama" - Converse - mid 1990s
Yep, as we all know, the only thing better than drag, is elderly drag. Perhaps it worked in the mid 1990s, but nowadays a strong, large man in drag performing great hoops feats just seems weird.
2) LeBron James/Kobe Bryant Puppets - Nike - 2009
Even if LeBron and Kobe both made it to the NBA Finals, as Nike had assumed they would, these ads would be considered mediocre at best. The puppets don't look or sound like their human subjects at all, and the dialogue simply isn't that funny. But consider that everything Nike was building up to - a LeBron/Kobe finals - was not delivered, no doubt Nike has egg all over their face for this one. If only they'd done a Dwight Howard puppet (or even a J.J. Reddick) instead of LeBron James. Nike's mistake was not the all-time undelivered matchup-gaffe however; that brings me to #1...
1) Dan and Dave - Reebok - 1992
Dave Johnson and Dan O'Brien were destined to collide in the 1992 Olympic decathlon event, but Dave placed third and Dan failed to qualify for the games. It was a lesson in "jumping the gun" that, until this year (see above), was well-learned. (As a side note, I see by the Youtube posts that Jim Rome talked about this campaign a few days ago - which means he beat it to death for two hours with repetitive and shallow analysis, and played the same sound effect 185 times.)
So, those are some curious ones. But what is the best sports commercial of all-time? Easy. This.
