- 20 hours ago
The Sneaker Boom - Season 1 Episode 4
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00:00Yo! This is Mars Blackman, and this is my main man, Michael Jordan, and this is a pair of tights, Ed Jordan, from Nike. This is something you can buy.
00:14Spike and Mike was like from another planet.
00:16I'd find 360 slam dunk. This is something you cannot do.
00:20Spike and Mike blew my mind when it came on TV and seemed to reinvent what advertising could be.
00:25I remember watching an NBA game and seeing it come on for the first time on traditional linear television
00:33and feeling like the world shifted a bit.
00:36That's a campaign that Jim Rizwold and Bill Davenport went out and saw a Spike Lee movie called She's Gotta Have It
00:42and were just so captivated by that movie and Spike's performance and character of Mars Blackman
00:48that Jim had the idea of, well, maybe Mars Blackman could become Michael Jordan's greatest champion.
00:55That marketing component really felt like art and cool and modern in a way that advertising-wise not at that point.
01:04Do you know how I get up for my game? Do you know? Do you know? Do you know? That's right. Ed Jordan, Ed Jordan, Ed Jordan.
01:11I was always kind of fascinated with advertising. Never really considered it as a job or as a career until I got to college.
01:19I knew about Wieden & Kennedy, but it was like a dream job.
01:23Wieden & Kennedy has been the agency for Nike since about 84, 85, maybe even earlier.
01:31Founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy.
01:34I distinctly remember going out to Nike for my first meeting to present something and I was completely freaked out and I couldn't believe it.
01:40And I was having an out-of-body experience.
01:44At the time I was working on a football campaign with Dennis Hopper as this crazy ex-NFL ref.
01:50When I was a boy, I dreamed of playing football.
02:09But I was allergic to milk and the soybean juice substitute to my mother.
02:13You know, I didn't sit in the room and thought kids would connect with Dennis Hopper.
02:16I sat in the room and said, I would like that.
02:19I love football!
02:21Football!
02:22I was so fortunate to be at Wieden & Kennedy.
02:25To be working alongside people that I had read their names in the award show books and, you know, legendary Nike campaigns.
02:31I am not a role model.
02:33And it was kind of, at that time, kind of a small group.
02:35I'm not paid to be a role model.
02:37We were all sort of operating out of how do we make Nike basketball the coolest brand.
02:44We're reminded of Barkley on that set off camera.
02:50And we're reminded of what it was like to hang out with him in his trailer.
02:53And we're reminded of how he just kept the conversation flowing.
02:57And as a basketball fan, you're like sitting there listening to him, have private conversations and hilarious conversations with other basketball players.
03:05So we tried to think of a context in which these conversations could happen and we could watch them.
03:11And that's when we came up with Nike Barbershop.
03:15Yeah, didn't you see Chris duck on Charles Barkley?
03:18I didn't see that.
03:19It went something like this.
03:20Put the cape on though, because I was like Superman.
03:22Oh yeah, you were.
03:23Let me just put that on.
03:24Let me just put that on.
03:25Let me see.
03:26Catch it like this, around the back.
03:30So he was Barkley trying to block it.
03:33Wait, he's too high.
03:34He's too high.
03:35And then what did Barkley say?
03:37He said, I don't believe in role models, but you mind.
03:40We had like Webber, Sprewell, Tim Hardaway, Rodman, all the current Nike guys just hanging out talking.
03:51They don't put my name on this shit, man.
03:53They got Michael Jordan, he gonna put Dennis Rodman on it, see?
03:56They gleaned so many good conversations and spots that had this kind of cinema verite, fly on the wall kind of thing.
04:03The money don't mean anything to me.
04:05You know, I can go out there and play for free.
04:07The thing is, he got the two rings.
04:09That's what it is.
04:10That's what it is.
04:11That's what it is.
04:12If he didn't have the two rings, it'd be...
04:14They can't do nothing to him now.
04:15Right, right.
04:16Boy, he had the rings.
04:17He was like...
04:20No, those rings don't mean anything really.
04:22No, those rings don't mean nothing.
04:23No, they're just party history.
04:25Can I have one?
04:26Yeah.
04:27Growing up in North Carolina, one of the posters I had on my wall was the Iceman, George Gervin.
04:35And man, the most popular commercial of all of them was George Gervin's One Thing I Could Do Is Finger Roll.
04:41George Gervin, tell us about that finger roll from the freezer.
04:44Oh man, that was my patented shot.
04:47One thing I could do was finger roll.
04:50Everything you do at an agency, and for a client like Nike, gives you a little more voice in the room for your next thing.
04:58I had people sort of feeling like, well, I wonder what Stacy's going to come up with.
05:04I wanted to make marionettes of all the basketball players and do these kind of lifestyle commercials with puppets.
05:10Nike thought, well, this could be cool, but it could also be really weird. Stacy, why don't you go shoot a test?
05:15We had shot one test, Jordan and Penny Hardaway, playing one-on-one on a street court.
05:23And we did it with marionettes, so we made a little miniature court.
05:26That campaign is met with crickets. They hated it.
05:31And it's one of the forgotten, weird commercials. It never aired.
05:35The Jordan puppet, you know, he's a hard guy to capture.
05:38I don't think his puppet really ever captured how cool, you know, Michael Jordan is.
05:43But Penny's puppet was really cool.
05:56I don't think so, but I don't think so.
05:57I don't think so, you know.
05:58I don't think so.
05:59And probably so I don't think so that you can keep it and get a little, you know, thinking so.
06:01And eventually, I think so, you know, that there's no impact on that.
06:02How do I try to pick up his game very quiet and the series against the Celtics?
06:26When Michael first came back, you know, we beat them in the playoffs, any time you beat
06:36a team that was the dynasty, we could talk about everything we wanted to talk about,
06:41but they were still the Bulls.
06:43That series definitely defined me in my career to push me to a level that I hadn't been before
06:48we played that series.
06:50There were a lot of veterans around the league vouching for me as being the next up, and I
06:55was just kind of waiting in the wings, I was just betting on myself to be a guy that was
06:58going to be one of the premier athletes in the company.
07:02And Nike didn't take long after that to come to me and offer me a signature sneaker.
07:10I was in Portland, Oregon, on campus.
07:13They showed me around, saw how everything was ran, all the different opportunities I
07:19had with my line, with my signature shoe.
07:22And I was just sitting there in amazement, man, like, man, wow, I'm about to have my own
07:27brand inside of Nike.
07:29We did talk strategically, and the decision was we need to do something serious about
07:36basketball and Penny's love for basketball.
07:39Now's not the time for comedy.
07:41In my head I'm like, yes it is.
07:43I'm going to go get that puppet.
07:45Now the puppet ended up on my client's shelf at Nike.
07:49So I stole the puppet out of my client's office, put it in a box, had it beside me in the meeting.
07:56We presented three campaigns in that meeting, two of which were not mine.
08:01And they were good campaigns.
08:02They were serious about basketball.
08:04I open up, it's time for his Mars Blackman.
08:08I got this puppet pulling out of the box.
08:11What if I did the puppet, kind of like a comedy version of his alter ego, but his alter ego's a puppet.
08:19And he'll say things that Penny could never say, and we'll call him Little Penny.
08:25And the room just cracked up.
08:28Nike loved it.
08:30In the conference room at the table, just talking about what do you think of an alter ego?
08:34A guy that's going to talk trash for you, and then you go back it up, and I loved it right away,
08:39because I knew it would be a hit.
08:41That's when everything started to take off.
08:44In the marionette commercial, he was quite traditionally a marionette with strings.
08:48So we re-engineered him and clipped his strings.
08:52He was alive and quite complicated.
08:55It wasn't post, it wasn't what you'd probably do today, which is make him CGI.
09:00As a team, we had never built an animatronic puppet before.
09:04Because I was actually a trained puppeteer, I got the cheery job of operating Little Penny's head and eyes.
09:11We didn't really know what was going to be required of us until we got on set.
09:17Five puppeteers operating one puppet, you really need to be one mind.
09:23And I think that first commercial was just trying to figure out, like, how does this even work?
09:29I was just focusing on making him look in the right direction with the eyes and not make his head look, you know,
09:36like it's about to jerk right off his shoulders.
09:39We were just sweating. I mean, you know how much it costs to shoot a commercial like that.
09:44We didn't really have a flow yet.
09:48We had a script that was temporary.
09:52We didn't have the actual audio.
09:55And Stacy would stand, you know, over behind the camera and just say stuff.
10:01I thought, well, what if Little Penny had the voice and the confidence and the comedy of Eddie Murphy's character in Coming to America, the older man, during the barbershop?
10:11Joe Lewis always lied about his age. He lied about his age all the time.
10:14One time, Frank Sinatra comes out here and sat down in this chair.
10:16And I said, Frank, you hang out with Joe Lewis just between me and you.
10:19How old is Joe Lewis? You know what Frank told me? He said, hey, Joe Lewis, 137 years old.
10:23137 years old.
10:25And Eddie Murphy says, yeah, unless you pay me $10 million, I'm not doing it.
10:30Fuck you!
10:31Nike did it last night.
10:32Nike wants to try at that point for more like what you might call A-list.
10:36And then I think they offered it to a couple more people.
10:39And then we offered it to Chris Rock.
10:41There are no celebrities here.
10:43And no disrespect to Chris.
10:45At that point, he was an A-lister.
10:47No one knew it yet.
10:48Now they're so desperate, they're thinking about flying in the cast from hanging with Mr. Cooper.
10:54At that time, he was working for Comedy Central, doing political comedy.
10:59But I remembered, obviously, all the great stuff he had done on SNL.
11:02And just how he could be the voice of this campaign quite confidently.
11:06Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.
11:08You always worrying about the white man's Oscar.
11:11Boy, you don't need no Oscar.
11:13I got a one for you right here.
11:16What's that?
11:18I call this the buster.
11:20So we were lucky because we were able to get him.
11:23And then as we got him, he became more successful.
11:27So then we have the equity of like, oh, Chris Rock is the voice of Little Penny.
11:32Had he become Chris Rock in any six months, we wouldn't have been able to afford him.
11:36Forget the fuck!
11:38Forget the fuck!
11:40Hey, Penny!
11:41What do they call these shoes, anyway?
11:43Air Penny.
11:44Hmm.
11:45So who you guys playing tonight, anyway?
11:46Minnesota.
11:47Oh, Los Lobos!
11:49Penny, Penny, I want to say hello to my man, Kevin Garnett.
11:52Kevin Garnett?
11:53Yeah, yeah, yeah, Garnett.
11:54We went to high school together.
11:55Tell him Little Penny from the Science Club says hello.
11:58Can you do that for a brother?
12:00Chris Rock obviously got the ball rolling with the recordings.
12:04Everything Chris did in the first campaign inspired what we did next.
12:08I had written a spot where Penny was on the couch with Little Penny
12:12and a really bad Nike commercial comes on with Penny.
12:15And I remember going in to record Chris for that.
12:18He liked this yellow couch.
12:19He goes, how about at the beginning I say,
12:21Is this couch real leather?
12:22Cause it's sticking to my leg.
12:24Wow, Little Penny is real.
12:26And that was one of the things that Penny Hardaway was so cool about.
12:28I don't remember one time Penny talking to the puppet
12:31and then just turning and cracking up or saying,
12:33this is too weird.
12:34He was just able to do it.
12:35Well, I guess Spike Lee wasn't available.
12:38If it weren't basketball, I wanted to do acting.
12:42I love acting.
12:43So that to me was a part of acting with Chris Rock not being there,
12:46but the voiceover with the puppet.
12:47So I was just kind of showing my acting skills.
12:49I kind of enjoy that.
12:51So that's why I kind of took to the puppet.
12:56Nike really held it down, man.
12:58I loved everything that they built for me.
13:00We talked about the makeup of the shoe.
13:03We talked about the color scheme.
13:05They asked me a ton of questions about what I like.
13:07I love cars, sports cars.
13:09I love like sleek, dynamic things,
13:12and they put that all into the thought process
13:14of making the mold of the shoe.
13:16I'm a sneakerhead,
13:18so to have my own sneaker with my logo was amazing.
13:22In Portland, Oregon at that time, Nike doesn't test.
13:27Nike's not putting commercials through research to tell us,
13:30oh, we need to talk about this more.
13:32We're kind of isolated.
13:34At the time, we don't have internet feedback.
13:36We don't have anything but just kind of, I don't know,
13:39it's either going to be the weirdest campaign on the air
13:41or it's going to be super popular.
13:43And friends of mine had gone to shoot with Kenny Lofton
13:45for a Nike baseball campaign.
13:47They came back and they said,
13:48Stacy, all Lofton wants to talk about is Little Penny.
13:51Spike Lee, who was on Nike's Board of Directors,
13:58liked it and said,
14:00I want to direct the second round.
14:02And I remember thinking,
14:03hmm, that must mean this thing is heading.
14:06Addict to this romantic comedy when directed by me,
14:09starring you and Tara Banks via Smash.
14:11Yeah, that's fine, Spike.
14:12This is Spike.
14:13No disrespect,
14:14but I'm trying to watch my main man, Penny,
14:16dismantle the Knicks.
14:17What's up, Spike?
14:18What's up?
14:19Hey, Penny, answer the Knicks.
14:20No, no, no, not me.
14:21Horse.
14:22Print it.
14:23Pass it to the horse.
14:24He's open.
14:25On the baseline.
14:26On the baseline.
14:27What?
14:28Five seconds.
14:29That's a lot.
14:30Hey, just trying to help my main.
14:31As we did more of the commercials,
14:32we get to the security at the airports
14:34and open the box and people go,
14:36oh, that's Little Penny.
14:37They knew who he was, right?
14:38They knew who he was, right?
14:39So we're starting to realize it was starting to pick up.
14:42Hi, guys.
14:43Hey.
14:44We were informed that Little Penny was going to start wooing Tyra Banks.
14:49So, uh, what's been going on here?
14:51They decided to have Little Penny get interested in her.
14:56Oh, good, cool.
14:57Tyra Banks was the supermodel on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
15:00She was the most beautiful, captivating woman in the world.
15:04Then again, we had the equity and the popularity now of Little Penny and Nike.
15:09And certainly she finds out Spike's directing it.
15:11So we were able to get Tyra.
15:13And then Tyra became a part of the world.
15:15All right?
15:16Little Penny.
15:17Little Penny.
15:18Little Penny.
15:19Now, Penny's the team leader.
15:21But I'm the choreographer for the magic dance.
15:23Get you a job if you want.
15:25Hey!
15:26Whoa!
15:27Penny! Stop the car!
15:28That was Tyra Banks, boo!
15:30Everywhere I went, everybody was like quoting the commercials.
15:33They were quoting Little Penny statements, you know, the sayings and all of those different
15:38things that he was saying.
15:39People everywhere I went, they were saying, hey, that's Tyra Banks, fool.
15:43Everywhere I went.
15:44So I knew that everyone was loving it.
15:46Little Penny?
15:47Can they do it?
15:49People love to laugh.
15:52There's so much going on in our world that it's disappointing.
15:56You can give someone a chance to laugh.
15:58I think that they welcome that.
16:00So I think because it was comedy, people fell in love with the comedy side of it.
16:04Are you having a party in my house?
16:05A party?
16:06I'm just sitting there reading the book.
16:07I just, I'll never forget those moments wherever I saw a billboard or a poster or saw a commercial
16:12on TV.
16:13I was like, wow.
16:14I have my own signature shoe.
16:19Never felt the pressure.
16:20I just wanted to be myself.
16:22I knew that the reason why I got it was being me.
16:24And it wasn't going to make me change who I was.
16:27I mean, I stayed very confident in my game.
16:30I didn't get arrogant.
16:33And at that time in my prime, I was at a level that was unbelievable.
16:38And I studied and I worked on my game very hard.
16:41And it wasn't because of having a signature shoe.
16:43It was because of the pride I had of wanting to be the best card in the world.
16:46Penny Hardaway was one of the more impactful players on the court.
16:53It was really perfect in many ways because off the court, the Little Penny campaign sort
16:58of set the stage for where the nineties were going.
17:01It was more about showing the bright and fun side of where basketball was headed.
17:06It was also how his shoes were designed.
17:09Little Penny had to have different shoes sculpted for every set of commercials that we did
17:14because the style would change.
17:17So we'd have to make new shoes for him every time.
17:21There was always a shot of a shoe.
17:24But the focus in the commercials when we were on set,
17:27the directors were going, can he have more attitude here?
17:30Can he look up at Penny on this line?
17:32They were really focused on the performance.
17:35What's the title of this painting?
17:37It's a little something I like to call
17:39Undiscovered Genius of the Memphis Hardwood.
17:42Puppets say stuff that humans can't say.
17:46That character of Little Penny in a way I think is actually tied into some deeper cultural connection
17:54that goes way, way back, like for hundreds of years.
17:57Puppets always are able to walk that line between what's kind of off-color or forbidden or taboo for a person to say.
18:08If you think of ventriloquist dummies, they're always cracking jokes and saying things that are rude
18:13and insulting people and stuff like that.
18:16Those old, smart-ass, wise-cracking, off-color puppets are Little Penny's ancestors.
18:23I think my favorite spot that we did was, I don't know what it's called, but it's where they're shooting a cop movie.
18:30Like, Little Penny and Anthony are like renegade cops.
18:34I'm gonna tell you, I don't play by the rules. I don't do what the man tells me.
18:37If you're a basketball winner destroyed, I'm getting calls from the mayor, irate citizens, even my wife is upset.
18:43What part of the word undercover do you clowns not understand?
18:46For Sarge, it was a set-up. As soon as the game ended, everything went crazy.
18:51It was Penny's fault. I was just discussing the community watch program with some elderly people.
18:56Well, I'm taking you both off the case.
18:58By that time, Anthony was also kind of getting really relaxed and he was getting used to the relationship
19:02and the relationship between the two of them was actually kind of blossoming.
19:06Well, you know, the movie's called Double Action, you know, and if you would have been in it, it would have been Triple Action.
19:10So, you know, they couldn't change the name of the movie. So, that's how that went down.
19:14That's a Penny thing, right?
19:16Yeah, I understand.
19:18Oh, why don't you just be quiet?
19:20So then when they said he's gonna do a Super Bowl commercial, we were like, I guess that kind of makes sense, you know?
19:26He's skyrocketed to the top of cultural icons.
19:30All of a sudden, we were like, hey, remember when we pitched Charles Barkley's Super Bowl party?
19:35So we thought, let's do that for Little Penny.
19:37We had so many Nike athletes.
19:40I mean, I'm just remembering all the people that were at this party.
19:43Everybody wanted to be in it.
19:45Don't you hear that bell ringing?
19:47Hey, come on in.
19:48The Jets will be next year in Super Bowl.
19:50Hey, yo, please, show them in.
19:52Welcome to my party.
19:53I got dancing, food, and Terrence Trent Darby in my backyard.
19:57Who does a brother have to know to get a little taste of potato salad?
20:01It was an Oscars-type night of who's who in that one home in Orlando when we were shooting that Super Bowl commercial.
20:10That's when I knew it was really real when you had those type of athletes, Hall of Fame athletes, coming to your commercial.
20:16Yeah, I missed the Maps a lot commercial.
20:18When I look back on that commercial, man, iconic.
20:21Stevie Wonder was there.
20:22You gotta be at a penny party.
20:24As people were kind of leaving and we were kind of wrapping different celebrities and stuff, as Stevie Wonder was done, he said he wanted to know what this thing was.
20:32What is Little Penny?
20:34Stevie put his hands on my hands and on some of the other puppeteers' hands.
20:42Then he kind of felt his way along the cables all the way over to the puppet.
20:47And then we made the puppet move.
20:50And we actually have a picture somewhere of Stevie Wonder and Little Penny sitting on his shoulder.
20:57And to me, that was just so cool that Stevie Wonder had his hands on my hands to see how I operated Little Penny.
21:06They briefed us for the last round of Little Penny.
21:09They didn't really say it was going to be the last round, but I kind of could feel it.
21:14I was the creative director at Wind & Kennedy Now, so I was also involved with other commercials and improving other commercials.
21:21And I wrote a campaign where Little Penny was going to collapse courtside at her magic game and be taken out on a stretcher.
21:30And then he would be in the hospital and everyone would be worried about him.
21:37We had a spot where Penny came into the hospital and was holding his hand and saying, keep fighting, keep fighting LP.
21:42And then we would zoom into Little Penny's head and he was boxing the Grim Reaper.
21:48And then we were going to do this whole thing where you track his vital statistics as he tracked Penny's on-court statistics.
21:55And Penny was going to have spots where he says, I'm doing it for Little Penny, keep fighting.
22:00And then ultimately we were going to have him die.
22:03And we were going to have a New Orleans funeral for him.
22:07I know it sounds terrible and grim and everything.
22:10It was just a funny way to end the campaign.
22:14I go out and pitch this to Nike.
22:16And this is where you push your reputation and your trust too far.
22:21And they were like, Stacy, we're not going to kill Little Penny.
22:25Clearly it was one step too far for Nike.
22:28So I'm a kind of, I'm mad that they killed Little Penny dying.
22:34And so I was kind of like in a place where I thought, well, maybe the last Little Penny commercial should just be a parody of a Nike commercial.
22:41And let's parody ourselves.
22:43I mean, the Jordan ad at the time was a very popular Nike commercial.
22:55And so to parody this very sincere, beautiful commercial, there was certainly always an effort to say, well, if it's going to be a Little Penny commercial, we got to do something that's a little bit audacious.
23:05And just think of, okay, well, it's all about slow motion.
23:08So let's just think of stupid things in slow motion.
23:10So we created Frozen Penny.
23:12You guys remind me of my shoe closet.
23:14I got one penny and a bunch of loafers.
23:24We were always just trying to keep Nike relevant, keep Nike cool.
23:29The development and the design of the shoes and the apparel was always going to be that.
23:33So we just needed the advertising to compliment that and support it.
23:40The kids will find the shoe if they feel like their player that they're already captivated by is now even cooler because he's got this campaign on the air that's like a life of its own.
23:49Doesn't seem to play by the rules of advertising.
23:52And then that'll lead you to the shoe.
24:07In a matter of just two and a half years, Penny Hardaway has established himself as one of the best talents in the NBA, arguably among the top five players in the league.
24:15Peter Bessie spoke with Orlando's all-star guard.
24:18Here it is.
24:19You said before that you want to be the best, right?
24:22Definitely.
24:23Yet you have to defer to Shaquille.
24:25You don't have to be the best by scoring points.
24:27I can do other things.
24:28You know, I can rebound, block shots, assist the ball.
24:31I can score points also.
24:32I mean, I don't have to just do one certain thing to be the best.
24:35You're the best when you can do everything.
24:37How do you do that?
24:38How do you dedicate yourself to the team like that?
24:40Well, I want to win.
24:42And that's our go-to guy, Shaquille.
24:44And we go into him, everything starts with him, and we go from there.
24:47You know, we have no jealousy amongst each other.
24:50It didn't take long for Shaquille to realize that his turf was being pounced upon.
24:57There was kind of some debates, who's the better player?
25:00And it was kind of rubbing Shaq the wrong way.
25:03I think he grew tired of being kind of a fishbowl, which, you know, Orlando, small market.
25:12He had a decision to make, and everybody kind of hoped for the best and feared the worst.
25:18What about your future here in Orlando?
25:21You'll be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.
25:24Do you want to remain here in Orlando?
25:26Orlando is the first option, but I think I'm going to have to test the market and look at all my options.
25:34So, because you're sort of avoiding my question.
25:38I don't think it's the first option.
25:40The Bulls have swept the Magic.
25:43Jordan finishes to 45 points.
25:46The Bulls go at 106 to 101.
25:51As the Orlando Magic had been swept from the playoffs.
25:55They were swept by the Bulls, and they weren't even close.
25:58Because this was a Michael who was hungry for the championship.
26:02And then you could hear the drumbeat starting that Shaq was looking around.
26:07Because back then, Shaquille was the biggest free agent in the history of sports.
26:14Orlando wants him. The Lakers want him.
26:16Tampa Tribune reports Shaq turned down a seven-year, $119 million deal from the Magic.
26:21His choice between L.A. and Orlando, quote, it's like two girlfriends.
26:25And you want to marry both of them.
26:27We'll find out soon which team will get stood up at the altar.
26:30We're breaking into programming right now to bring you a live news conference about to take place.
26:35At which Shaquille O'Neal is expected to announce that he has signed a 70-year, $120 million contract to join the L.A. Lakers.
26:46When Shaq left Orlando in 96, it was the biggest free agent lost in basketball.
26:50In basketball history.
26:52He just could not turn down the big market.
26:56He had a great understanding of what awaits a player in Los Angeles.
27:02Movies, music, toys.
27:05It was sort of towards the end of the Shaq run in Orlando where Penny Hardaway was getting marketing from Nike at the highest level.
27:12And his shoes were definitely taking over Shaq's line from Reebok.
27:16And no rings.
27:17Shaq had a commercial poking fun at the Little Penny character swiping out a puppet from the scene.
27:24This is my planet.
27:25You got room for a brother on your planet.
27:27Shaq was always somebody that tried to have fun with his commercials and take a light tone, but that one felt a little personal.
27:35When you fast forward to 1996, Reebok was dwindling and trying to find their footing in basketball.
27:42Shaq had the Shaq-nosis.
27:45Sean Kemp had the kamikaze.
27:47Like all that stuff was coming out during that time.
27:50I got my start at Reebok through an internship.
27:53There was a guy who was in the basketball division at Reebok that was leaving.
27:57They asked me would I be interested, and the role was called, they were like, you're going to be a bum.
28:03I was like, a bum?
28:04I was like, why would I want to be a bum?
28:06But they were like, no, it's an acronym.
28:08It stands for Business Unit Manager.
28:10And so we're basically working in a futures business.
28:14We have a lot of great things happening, but it's still something missing.
28:18We still don't have that thing.
28:20George, now you, Matt Quinn, this is one everybody wants to see.
28:23I mean, I'm excited like you.
28:25You win two teams you're talking about here.
28:27I'm a huge Georgia fan, and I'm watching this game, and they're playing UMass.
28:31They're playing Marcus Camby.
28:33When you got the player of the year, Marcus Camby, he presents some problems for Georgetown.
28:37My guy comes down, he's on the left-hand side.
28:39Never forget it, he's on the left-hand side.
28:41Just crossed half-court with the ball in his left hand.
28:45He just hits that little cross, like, not as vicious as he was hitting it in the NBA.
28:49It was more of a quick one.
28:50He just comes down, changes speed, comes right down the middle.
28:53Two hands, boom, right on Marcus Camby.
28:57I say, oh, look, that's it right there.
28:59That's what I need.
29:00We need him on our team.
29:02We need him.
29:04We need him on the left.'
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