And many of them starred basketball players.Īthlete commercials changed forever because of Michael Jordan’s rare star power. Robinson’s Neighborhood, the Charles Barkley Show, Spike & Mike, the Jordan Show, Bugs Bunny, the Bulls show.”Įverywhere you looked on TV, there was a funny, well-made Nike ad. “I looked at it as a network, the Nike Network,” he said in a recent phone conversation. In the heyday of Nike’s commercial dominance, Jim Riswold, of Portland’s famous advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, preferred to think of himself as a Brandon Tartikoff type.

Because by 1986, while Michael Jordan was already a star, he was about to leave everyone else on the ground. This commercial is resonant of how hair-band rock was quickly made obsolete by alternative music in the early 1990s. Aguirre was easily the best, to no surprise. But they rapped! And not well, even by 1986 standards. Kids should want to wear the shoes they wear. That’s fine, of course, they were all great players. And before Nike was Nike, there was Converse.Īfter the 1985-86 season, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Bernard King, Mark Aguirre and Kevin McHale all shoehorned into one commercial to advertise Converse high-tops, a brand that was the official shoe of the NBA and was on its way out. Of course, the explosion in sports commercials was centered around shoes. Miller Lite commercials were like a gateway drug to the athlete commercial excess of the 1990s. There aren’t enough men named Mendy these days, and there are also aren’t enough commercials where people argue about the merits of light beer. In 1976, Tommy Heinsohn did a classic Miller Lite commercial with retired NBA referee Mendy Rudolph.

Imagine buying a pair of low-top Jordache shoes - that’s Jordache, not Jordan - to play basketball in? Yes, in 1980, Earl Monroe was trying to hawk them on TV. But really, the true way is: Do you remember it? And how does it make you feel?įor instance, two decades after it aired, whenever I see Grant Hill, I think to myself, “Grant Hill drinks Sprite.” It’s because of this commercial, one in a long history of athletes drinking carbonated sugar water before or after playing sports.īefore the commercialization revolution of the 1980s and ’90s, before every soft drink, fast-food restaurant and shoe company was employing athletes, before Jim Riswold, Spike Lee, Wieden + Kennedy and Nike turned Michael Jordan into a marketing dream, NBA commercials were mostly tame fare.

There are many ways to judge the best: on the art, the music, the theme, the humor.

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