Alright, I don’t care if you like basketball or not, this trailer just makes you smile. I have to be the first to admit that basketball movies often fail miserably at the basketball part. The best basketball movie and possibly one of the best films of all time is Finding Forrester. The runner up as far as basketball films are concerned is Cornbread, Earl and Me and that’s only because that film is the original Boyz N the Hood with the death of an athlete setting in motion the entire film. When it comes to cheesy hoops films I can’t even put Space Jam at the top of my list… that goes to Like Mike with Bow Wow… yep, Bow Wow. When I saw this trailer earlier I watched it twice. I then watched it again and realize that I kind of predicted this would happen:
The final element of why Kyrie is on trend has as much to do with his Uncle Drew persona created by Pepsi, as it has to do with Nike’s storytelling integration with Foot Locker and their early consistent pop-up and viral videos for the Kyrie. Think about this, the LeBron hasn’t had a campaign in store or elsewhere for years. Even on this past Christmas the only player to have a feature spot was Kyrie.
If the marketing hits the kids where they are, the “trend” shifts.
With Nike now controlling the NBA, licensing for this film is a breeze. The main character, Lil Rel, works at Foot Locker. The Rucker actually celebrated it’s 50th Anniversary a few years back so the film will resonate with basketball heads. The trailer features Pee Wee Kirkland (who works for Nike Grassroots) and I’m sure the Swoosh will be all over this film in the same way that it was all over Creed with Jordan Brand. Enough of that though, here is the trailer. I think it’s going to be great and could inspire people who are not interested in basketball to cheer on a specific players. With this film and Kyrie’s signature doing well, it’s no wonder he wanted a team that he could lead. This doesn’t happen in the same way as a sidekick.
Oh, honorable mention for best basketball film? Forget Paris
