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00:00THE END
00:10Yo! This is Morris Blackman, and this is my main man, Michael Jordan.
00:14And there's a pair of tightens from Ed Jordans from Nike.
00:17This is something you can buy.
00:19Spike and Mike was like from another planet.
00:21I'd find 360 slam dunk. This is something you cannot do.
00:25Spike and Mike blew my mind when it came on TV
00:27and seemed to reinvent what advertising could be.
00:30I remember watching an NBA game
00:33and seeing it come on for the first time
00:35on traditional linear television
00:38and feeling like the world shifted a bit.
00:41That's a campaign that Jim Rizwold and Bill Davenport
00:44went out and saw a Spike Lee movie called She's Gotta Have It
00:47and were just so captivated by that movie
00:50and Spike's performance and character of Morris Blackman
00:53that Jim had the idea of,
00:55well, maybe Morris Blackman could become
00:57Michael Jordan's greatest champion.
01:00That marketing component really felt like art
01:04and cool and modern in a way that advertising was not at that point.
01:09Do you know how I get up for my game?
01:11Do you know? Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?
01:13That's right. Air Jordan, Air Jordan, Air Jordan.
01:16I was always kind of fascinated with advertising.
01:18Never really considered it as a job or as a career
01:22until I got to college.
01:24I knew about Wyden & Kennedy, but it was like a dream job.
01:28Wyden & Kennedy has been the agency for Nike since about 84, 85,
01:34maybe even earlier.
01:36Founded by Dan Wyden and David Kennedy.
01:39I distinctly remember going out to Nike for my first meeting
01:42to present something and I was completely freaked out
01:44and I couldn't believe it and I was having an out-of-body experience.
01:49At the time I was working on a football campaign
01:51with Dennis Hopper as this crazy ex-NFL ref.
01:55When I was a boy, I dreamed of playing football!
02:13But I was allergic to milk and the soybean juice substitute that my mother...
02:18You know, I didn't sit in a room and thought kids would connect with Dennis Hopper.
02:21I sat in a room and said, I would like that.
02:23I love football!
02:26Football!
02:27I was so fortunate to be at Wyden & Kennedy,
02:30to be working alongside people that I had read their names in the award show books
02:34and, you know, legendary Nike campaigns.
02:36I am not a role model.
02:38And it was kind of, at that time, kind of a small group.
02:40I'm not paid to be a role model.
02:42We were all sort of operating out of,
02:44how do we make Nike basketball the coolest brand?
02:48We're reminded of Barkley on that set off camera.
02:54And we're reminded of what it was like to hang out with him in his trailer.
02:58And we're reminded of how he just kept the conversation flowing.
03:02And as a basketball fan, you like sitting there listening to him,
03:05have private conversations and hilarious conversations with other basketball players.
03:10So we tried to think of a context in which these conversations could happen and we could watch them.
03:16And that's when we came up with Nike Barbershop.
03:20Yeah, didn't you see Chris, uh, dunk on Charles Barkley?
03:23Nah.
03:24He didn't see that.
03:25It went something like this.
03:26Put the cape on though, cause I was like Superman.
03:27Oh yeah, you were.
03:28Let me just put that on.
03:29Let me just put that on.
03:30Let me just put that on.
03:31Let me just put that on.
03:33Catch it like this, around the back.
03:35So he's Barkley trying to block it.
03:38Wait, he's too high.
03:39He's too high.
03:40And then what did Barkley say?
03:42He said, I don't believe in role models, but, uh, you mind.
03:45We had like, Webber, Sprewell,
03:49Sprewell, Tim Hardaway, Rodman,
03:53all the current Nike guys just hanging out talking.
03:56They don't put my name on this shit, man.
03:58They got Micah Joy, but they gonna put Dennis Rodman on there, see?
04:01And it gleaned so many good conversations and spots that had this kind of cinema verite,
04:07fly on the wall kind of thing.
04:09The money don't mean anything to me.
04:10You know, I can go out there and play for free.
04:12The thing is, you got them two rings.
04:14That's what it is.
04:15That's what it is.
04:16If you didn't have them two rings, it'd be...
04:18So they can't do nothing to them now.
04:20Right, right, right.
04:21Boy, he had the rings.
04:22He was like...
04:25No, those rings don't mean anything, really, though.
04:27Oh, those rings don't mean nothing?
04:28No, I think it's party history.
04:29Can I add one of them?
04:33Growing up in North Carolina, one of the posters I had on my wall was the Iceman, George Gervin.
04:39And, man, the most popular commercial of all of them was George Gervin's One Thing I Could Do Is Finger Roll.
04:46Super George, tell us about that finger roll from the free door.
04:49Oh, yeah, that was my patented. That was my patented shot.
04:52One thing I could do was finger roll.
04:54Everything you do at an agency and for a client like Nike gives you a little more voice in the room for your next thing.
05:04I had people sort of feeling like, well, I wonder what Stacy's gonna come up with.
05:09I wanted to make marionettes of all the basketball players and do these kind of lifestyle commercials with puppets.
05:15Nike thought, well, this could be cool, but it could also be really weird. Stacy, why don't you go shoot a test?
05:21We had shot one test, Jordan and Penny Hardaway, playing one-on-one on a street court.
05:28And we did it with marionettes, and we made a little miniature court.
05:33That campaign is met with crickets.
05:35They hated it, and it's one of the forgotten, weird commercials.
05:39It never aired.
05:40The Jordan puppet, you know, he's a hard guy to capture.
05:43I don't think his puppet really ever captured how cool, you know, Michael Jordan is.
05:48But Penny's puppet was really cool.
06:05And they're not trying to pick up his game, very quiet, have a series against the Celtics.
06:18And some problems at the end of the year.
06:20Anthony Hardaway trying to pick up his game, very quiet in the series against the Celtics.
06:31Had some problems at the end of the year.
06:33That's Hardaway with the reverse.
06:36When Michael first came back, you know, we beat them in the playoffs.
06:40Anytime you beat the team that was the dynasty, we could talk about everything we wanted to
06:45talk about, but they were still the Bulls.
06:48That series definitely defined me in my career to push me to a level that I hadn't been
06:52before we played that series.
06:55There were a lot of veterans around the league vouching for me as being the next up.
07:00And I was just kind of waiting in the wings.
07:01I was just betting on myself to be a guy that was going to be one of the premier athletes
07:05in the company.
07:07And Nike didn't take long after that to come to me and offer me a signature sneaker.
07:15I was in Portland, Oregon on campus.
07:18They showed me around, saw how everything was ran.
07:22All the different opportunities I had with my line and with my signature shoe.
07:27And I was just sitting there in amazement, man.
07:30Like, man, wow.
07:31I'm about to have my own brand inside of Nike.
07:34We did talk strategically and the decision was we need to do something serious about basketball
07:41and Penny's love for basketball.
07:43Now's not the time for comedy.
07:45In my head I'm like, yes it is.
07:47I'm going to go get that puppet.
07:49Now the puppet ended up on my client's shelf at Nike.
07:54So I stole the puppet out of my client's office, put it in a box, had it beside me in the meeting.
08:01We presented three campaigns in that meeting, two of which were not mine.
08:06And they were good campaigns.
08:07They were serious about basketball.
08:09I open up, it's time for his Mars Blackman.
08:12I got this puppet pulling out of the box.
08:16What if I did the puppet kind of like a comedy version of his alter ego, but his alter ego is a puppet.
08:24And he'll say things that Penny could never say and we'll call him Little Penny.
08:30And the room just cracked up.
08:33Nike loved it.
08:34In the conference room at the table, just talking about what do you think of an alter ego?
08:39A guy is going to talk trash for you and then you go back it up and I loved it right away
08:44because I knew it would be a hit.
08:46That's when everything started to take off.
08:49In the marionette commercial, he was quite traditionally a marionette with strings.
08:53So we re-engineered him and clipped his strings.
08:57He was alive and quite complicated.
08:59It wasn't post, it wasn't what you'd probably do today, which is making CGI.
09:03As a team, we had never built an animatronic puppet before.
09:08Because I was actually a trained puppeteer, I got the cheery job of operating Little Penny's head and eyes.
09:15We didn't really know what was going to be required of us until we got on set.
09:20Five puppeteers operating one puppet, you really need to be one mind.
09:26And I think that first commercial was just trying to figure out, like, how does this even work?
09:32I was just focusing on making him look in the right direction with the eyes and not make his head look, you know, like it's about to jerk right off his shoulders.
09:43We were just sweating.
09:46I mean, you know how much it costs to shoot a commercial like that.
09:49We didn't really have a flow yet.
09:53We had a script that was temporary.
09:56We didn't have the actual audio.
09:59And Stacy would stand, you know, over behind the camera and just say stuff.
10:04I 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?
10:15Joe Louis always lied about his age. He lied about his age all the time.
10:18One time, Frank Sinatra comes out here and sat down in his chair.
10:21And I said, Frank, you hang out with Joe Louis just between me and you. How old is Joe Louis?
10:24You know what Frank told me? He said, hey, Joe Louis is 137 years old. 137 years old.
10:29And Eddie Murphy says, yeah, unless you pay me $10 million, I'm not doing it.
10:34Fuck you!
10:36Nike did it last night.
10:37Nike wants to try at that point for more like what you might call A-list.
10:41And then I think they offered it to a couple more people.
10:44And then we offered it to Chris Rock.
10:46There are no celebrities here.
10:48And no disrespect to Chris. At that point, he was an A-lister. No one knew it yet.
10:53Now they're so desperate, they're thinking about flying in the cast from hanging with Mr. Cooper.
10:59At that time, he was working for Comedy Central, doing political comedy.
11:04But I remembered, obviously, all the great stuff he had done on SNL.
11:07And just how he could be the voice of this campaign quite confidently.
11:11Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.
11:14You always worrying about the white man's Oscar.
11:17Boy, you don't need no Oscar. I got an award for you right here.
11:20What's that?
11:22I call this the buster.
11:25So we were lucky because we were able to get him.
11:28And then as we got him, he became more successful.
11:32So then we had the equity of like, oh, Chris Rock is the voice of Little Penny.
11:36Had he become Chris Rock maybe six months, we wouldn't have been able to afford him.
11:41Forget the fuck!
11:44Hey, Penny! What do they call these shoes anyway?
11:47Air Penny.
11:48Hmm. So who you guys playing tonight anyway?
11:50Minnesota.
11:51Oh, Los Lobos!
11:54Penny, Penny, I want to say hello to my man Kevin Garnett.
11:57Kevin Garnett?
11:58Yeah, yeah, yeah, Garnett. We went to high school together.
12:00Tell him Little Penny from the Science Club says hello.
12:03Can you do that for a brother?
12:04Chris Rock obviously got the ball rolling with the recordings.
12:09Everything Chris did in the first campaign inspired what we did next.
12:13I'd written a spot where Penny was on the couch with Little Penny
12:17and a really bad Nike commercial comes on with Penny.
12:20But I remember going in to record Chris for that.
12:23He liked this yellow couch. He goes, how about at the beginning I say...
12:26Is this couch real leather? Because it's sticking to my leg.
12:29Wow, Little Penny is real.
12:31And that was one of the things that Penny Hardaway was so cool about.
12:33I don't remember one time Penny talking to the puppet
12:36and then just turning and cracking up or saying,
12:38this is too weird. He was just able to do it.
12:40Well, I guess Spike Lee wasn't available.
12:43If it weren't basketball, I wanted to do acting.
12:47I love acting, so that to me was a part of acting with Chris Rock not being there,
12:51but the voiceover with the puppet.
12:53So I was just kind of showing my acting skills. I kind of enjoy that.
12:56So that's why I kind of took to the puppet.
12:58Nike really held it down, man. I loved everything that they built for me.
13:05We talked about the makeup of the shoe. We talked about the color scheme.
13:10They asked me a ton of questions about what I like. I love cars, sports cars.
13:14I love, like, sleek, dynamic things, and they put that all into the thought process of making the mold of the shoe.
13:23I'm a sneakerhead, so to have my own sneaker with my logo was amazing.
13:29In Portland, Oregon at that time, Nike doesn't test. Nike's not putting commercials through research to tell us,
13:35oh, we need to talk about this more. We're kind of isolated.
13:39At the time, we don't have internet feedback. We don't have anything but just kind of, I don't know,
13:44it's either going to be the weirdest campaign on the air or it's going to be super popular.
13:48And friends of mine had gone to shoot with Kenny Lofton for a Nike baseball campaign.
13:52They came back and they said, Stacy, all Lofton wants to talk about is Little Penny.
14:00Spike Lee, who was on Nike's Board of Directors, liked it and said, I want to direct the second round.
14:07And I remember thinking, hmm, that must mean this thing is hitting.
14:11Picture this, a romantic comedy, written and directed by me, starring you and Tyra Banks via Smash.
14:16Yeah, that's fine, Spike. This is Spike. No disrespect, but I'm trying to watch my main man, Penny,
14:21dismantle the Knicks. What's up, Spike? What's up?
14:24Hey, Penny, pass it to Nick. No, no, no, not Nick. Horse. Penny, pass it to Horace. He's open.
14:28On the baseline. On the baseline, baseline. What? Five seconds.
14:32Thanks a lot. Hey, just trying to help him, man.
14:35As we did more of the commercials, we get to the security at the airports and open the box
14:40and people go, oh, that's Little Penny. They knew who he was, right?
14:44So we're starting to realize it was starting to pick up.
14:47Hi, guys. Hey.
14:48We were informed that Little Penny was going to start wooing Tyra Banks.
14:54So, uh, what's been going on here?
14:56They decided to have Little Penny get interested in her.
15:00Oh, good, cool.
15:01Tyra Banks was the supermodel on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
15:05She was the most beautiful, captivating woman in the world.
15:09Then again, we had the equity and the popularity now of Little Penny and Nike.
15:13And certainly, she finds out Spike's directing it.
15:15So we were able to get Tyra.
15:17And then Tyra became a part of the world.
15:19All right. Little Penny.
15:21I'm an interesting part of the magic organization.
15:23Now, Penny's the team leader.
15:25But I'm the choreographer for the magic dance.
15:27Get you a job if you want.
15:29Hey! Ooh! Whoa! Penny! Stop the car!
15:31That was Tyra Banks, boo!
15:33Everywhere I went, everybody was, like, quoting the commercials.
15:38They were quoting Little Penny's statements, you know, the sayings,
15:41and all of those different things that he was saying.
15:44People everywhere I went, they were saying,
15:46hey, that's Tyra Banks, fool, everywhere I went.
15:49So I knew that everyone was loving it.
15:51Little Penny?
15:52Can I do it?
15:54People love to laugh.
15:56There's so much going on in our world that it's disappointing.
16:01You can give someone a chance to laugh.
16:03I think that they welcomed that.
16:04So I think because it was comedy,
16:06people fell in love with the comedy side of it.
16:08Are you having a party in my house?
16:10Party?
16:11I'm just sitting there reading the book.
16:12I'll never forget those moments
16:13wherever I saw a billboard or a poster
16:15or saw a commercial on TV.
16:17I was like, wow, I have my own signature shoe.
16:24Never felt the pressure.
16:25I just wanted to be myself.
16:26I knew that the reason why I got it was being me,
16:29and that wasn't going to make me change who I was.
16:32I mean, I stayed very confident in my game.
16:35I didn't get arrogant.
16:38At that time, in my prime,
16:40I was at a level that was unbelievable.
16:43And I studied, and I worked on my game very hard,
16:46and it wasn't because of having a signature shoe.
16:48It was because of the pride I had of wanting
16:50to be the best guard in the world.
16:52Penny Hardaway was one of the more impactful players
16:57on the court.
16:58It was really perfect in many ways
17:00because off the court,
17:02the Little Penny campaign sort of set the stage
17:04for where the 90s were going.
17:06It was more about showing the bright and fun side
17:09of where basketball was headed.
17:11It was also how his shoes were designed.
17:13Little Penny had to have different shoes sculpted
17:16for every set of commercials that we did
17:19because the style would change.
17:21So we'd have to make new shoes for him every time.
17:25There was always a shot of a shoe,
17:28but the focus in the commercials when we were on set,
17:31the directors were going,
17:32can he have more attitude here?
17:34Can he look up at Penny on this line?
17:37They were really focused on the performance.
17:39What's the title of this painting?
17:41It's a little something I like to call
17:43undiscovered genius of the Memphis hardwood.
17:46Where you going?
17:47Puppets say stuff that humans can't say.
17:50That character of Little Penny, in a way,
17:54I think is actually tied into some deeper cultural connection
17:58that goes way, way back, like for hundreds of years.
18:01Puppets always are able to walk that line
18:06between what's kind of off-color
18:09or forbidden or taboo for a person to say.
18:13If you think of ventriloquist dummies,
18:15they're always cracking jokes
18:16and saying things that are rude
18:18and insulting people and stuff like that.
18:20Those old, smart-ass, wise-cracking, off-color puppets
18:25are Little Penny's ancestors.
18:27I think my favorite spot that we did was,
18:30I don't know what it's called,
18:31but it's where they're shooting a cop movie.
18:34Like, Little Penny and Anfernee are, like, renegade cops.
18:38I'm gonna tell you, I don't play by the rules.
18:40I don't do what the man tells me.
18:41Every time basketball winner destroyed,
18:43I'm getting calls from the mayor, irate citizens,
18:45even my wife is upset.
18:47What part of the word undercover do you clowns not understand?
18:50Masage, it was a set-up.
18:52As soon as the game ended, everything went crazy.
18:55It was Penny's fault.
18:57I was just discussing the community watch program
19:00with some elderly people.
19:01Well, I'm taking you both off the case.
19:02By that time, Anfernee was also kind of getting really relaxed,
19:05and he was getting used to the relationship,
19:07and the relationship between the two of them
19:09was actually kind of blossoming.
19:11Well, you know, the movie's called Double Action,
19:12you know, and if you would have been in it,
19:13it would have been Triple Action,
19:14so, you know, they couldn't change the name of the movie,
19:16so that's how that went down.
19:18Just a Penny thing, right?
19:20Yeah.
19:21I understand.
19:22Oh, I want you to just be quiet.
19:24So then when they said he's gonna do a Super Bowl commercial,
19:27we were like, I guess that kind of makes sense, you know?
19:30He's skyrocketed to the top of cultural icons.
19:33All of a sudden, we were like, hey,
19:36remember when we pitched Charles Barkley's Super Bowl party?
19:39So we thought, let's do that for Little Penny.
19:42We had so many Nike athletes.
19:44I mean, I'm just remembering all the people
19:46that were at this party.
19:47Everybody wanted to be in it.
19:49Don't you hear that bell ringing?
19:51Hey.
19:52Come on in.
19:53The Jets will be next year in Super Bowl.
19:55Excuse me.
19:56Hey, yo, please, show them in.
19:57Welcome to my party.
19:58I got dancing, food,
19:59and Terrence Trent Darby in my backyard.
20:02Who does a brother have to know
20:04to get a little taste of potato salad?
20:06Party. Good boy.
20:07It was an Oscars-type night of who's who
20:10in that one home in Orlando
20:12when we were shooting that Super Bowl commercial.
20:14That's when I knew it was really real
20:17when you had those type of athletes,
20:19Hall of Fame athletes, coming to your commercial.
20:21Yeah, I missed the Maps a lot commercial.
20:22And when I look back on that commercial, man, iconic.
20:25Stevie Wonder was there.
20:27You gotta be at a Penny party.
20:29As people were kind of leaving
20:30and were kind of wrapping different celebrities and stuff,
20:33as Stevie Wonder was done,
20:34he said he wanted to know what this thing was.
20:37What is Little Penny?
20:42Stevie put his hands on my hands
20:44and on some of the other puppeteers' hands.
20:46Then he kind of felt his way along the cables
20:49all the way over to the puppet.
20:51And then we made the puppet move.
20:53And we actually have a picture somewhere
20:56of Stevie Wonder and Little Penny
20:59sitting on his shoulder.
21:01And to me that was just so cool
21:03that Stevie Wonder had his hands on my hands
21:06to see how I operated Little Penny.
21:09They briefed us for the last round of Little Penny.
21:13They didn't really say it was going to be the last round,
21:16but I kind of could feel it.
21:19I was the creative director at Wine & Kennedy Now,
21:22so I was also involved with other commercials
21:24and improving other commercials.
21:25And I wrote a campaign where Little Penny
21:29was going to collapse courtside at a magic game
21:32and be taken out on a stretcher,
21:34and then he would be in the hospital
21:36and everyone would be worried about him.
21:41We had a spot where Penny came into the hospital
21:43and was holding his hand and saying,
21:44keep fighting, keep fighting, LP.
21:46And then we would zoom into Little Penny's head
21:49and he was boxing the Grim Reaper.
21:51And then we were going to do this whole thing
21:54where you track his vital statistics
21:56as he tracked Penny's on-court statistics.
22:00And Penny was going to have spots where he says,
22:02I'm doing it for Little Penny, keep fighting.
22:04And then ultimately we were going to have him die.
22:07And we were going to have a New Orleans funeral for him.
22:10I know it sounds terrible and grim and everything.
22:15It was just a funny way to end the campaign.
22:19I go out and pitch this to Nike,
22:21and this is where you push your reputation
22:24and your trust too far.
22:26And they were like, Stacy,
22:28we're not going to kill Little Penny.
22:31Clearly it was one step too far for Nike.
22:34So I'm kind of, I'm mad that they killed Little Penny dying.
22:39And so I was kind of like in a place where I thought,
22:42well, maybe the last Little Penny commercial
22:44should just be a parody of a Nike commercial.
22:46Like, let's parody ourselves.
22:56I mean, the Jordan ad at the time
22:58was a very popular Nike commercial.
23:00And so to parody this very sincere, beautiful commercial,
23:04there was certainly always an effort to say,
23:06well, if it's going to be a Little Penny commercial,
23:08you got to do something that's a little bit audacious.
23:11And just think of, okay, well, it's all about slow motion.
23:13So let's just think of stupid things in slow motion.
23:15So we created Frozen Penny.
23:17You guys remind me of my shoe closet.
23:19I got one penny and a bunch of loafers.
23:22We were always trying to keep Nike relevant, keep Nike cool.
23:34The development and the design of the shoes and the apparel
23:37was always going to be that.
23:38So we just needed the advertising to compliment that and support it.
23:42The kids will find the shoe if they feel like their player
23:48that they're already captivated by is now even cooler
23:51because he's got this campaign on the air that's like a life of its own,
23:54doesn't seem to play by the rules of advertising.
23:57And then that'll lead you to the shoe.
24:12In a matter of just two and a half years,
24:14Penny Hardaway has established himself as one of the best talents in the NBA,
24:18arguably among the top five players in the league.
24:20Peter Bessie spoke with Orlando's all-star guard. Here it is.
24:23You've said before that you want to be the best, right?
24:27Definitely.
24:28Yet you have to defer to Shaquille.
24:30You don't have to be the best by scoring points.
24:32I can do other things.
24:33You know, I can rebound, block shots, assist the ball.
24:36I can score points also.
24:37I mean, I don't have to just do one certain thing to be the best.
24:40You're the best when you can do everything.
24:42How do you do that?
24:43How do you dedicate yourself to the team like that?
24:45Well, I want to win.
24:47And that's our go-to guy, Shaquille.
24:49And we go into him, everything starts with him, and we go from there.
24:52You know, we have no jealousy amongst each other.
24:54It didn't take long for Shaquille to realize that his turf was being pounced upon.
25:01There was kind of some debates.
25:03Who's the better player?
25:04And it was kind of rubbing Shaq the wrong way.
25:08I think he grew tired of being kind of a fishbowl,
25:14which, you know, Orlando, small market.
25:17He had a decision to make, and everybody kind of hoped for the best and feared the worst.
25:24What about your future here in Orlando?
25:27You'll be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.
25:29Do you want to remain here in Orlando?
25:32Orlando is the first option.
25:34But I think I'm going to have to test the market and look at all my options.
25:39So, because you're sort of avoiding my question.
25:44Orlando is the first option.
25:46The Bulls have swept the Magic.
25:48Jordan finishes with 45 points.
25:51The Bulls do it 1-0-6 to 1-0-1 as the Orlando Patriots have been swept from the playoffs.
26:00They were swept by the Bulls, and they weren't even close.
26:03Because this was a Michael who was hungry for the championship.
26:06And then you could hear the drum beat starting that Shaq was looking around.
26:11Because back then, Shaquille was the biggest free agent in the history of sports.
26:17Orlando wants him.
26:19The Lakers want him.
26:20Tampa Tribune reports Shaq turned down a seven-year, $119 million deal for the Magic.
26:26His choice between L.A. and Orlando, quote,
26:28It's like two girlfriends, and you want to marry both of them.
26:31We'll find out soon which team will get stood up at the altar.
26:34We're breaking into programming right now to bring you a live news conference about to take place.
26:39At which Shaquille O'Neal is expected to announce that he has signed a seven-year, $120 million contract.
26:46to join the L.A. Lakers.
26:50When Shaq left Orlando in 96, it was the biggest free agent loss in basketball history.
26:56He just could not turn down the big market.
27:00He had a great understanding of what awaits a player in Los Angeles.
27:07Movies, music, toys.
27:09It was sort of towards the end of the Shaq run in Orlando
27:13where Penny Hardaway was getting marketing from Nike at the highest level,
27:17and his shoes were definitely taking over Shaq's line from Reebok.
27:21And no rings.
27:22Shaq had a commercial poking fun at the Little Penny character swiping out a puppet from the scene.
27:29This is my planet.
27:30You got room for a brother on your planet.
27:32Shaq was always somebody that tried to have fun with his commercials and take a light tone,
27:36but that one felt a little personal.
27:40When you fast forward to 1996,
27:42Reebok was dwindling and trying to find their footing in basketball.
27:47Shaq had the Shaq-nosis.
27:50Sean Kemp had the kamikaze.
27:52Like, all that stuff was coming out during that time.
27:55I got my start at Reebok through an internship.
27:58There was a guy who was in the basketball division at Reebok that was leaving.
28:02They asked me would I be interested, and the role was called.
28:06They were like, you're going to be a bum.
28:08I was like, a bum?
28:09Like, why would I want to be a bum?
28:11But they were like, no, it's an acronym.
28:13It stands for Business Unit Manager.
28:15So, we're basically working in a futures business.
28:19We have a lot of great things happening, but it's still something missing.
28:23We still don't have that thing.
28:25Georgetown, UMass Quinn, this is one everybody wants to see.
28:28I mean, I'm excited like you.
28:30When two teams you're talking about here...
28:31I'm a huge Georgia fan, and I'm watching this game,
28:34and they're playing UMass.
28:36They're playing Marcus Camby.
28:38When you got the player of the year, Marcus Camby,
28:39he presents some problems for Georgetown.
28:41My guy comes down, he's on the left-hand side.
28:43He's on the left-hand side, never forget it.
28:44He's on the left-hand side, just crossed half-court
28:47with the ball in his left hand.
28:50He just hits that little cross, like,
28:52not as vicious as he was hitting it in the NBA.
28:54It was more of a quick one.
28:55It just comes down, changes speed,
28:57comes right down the middle, two hands, boom!
28:59Right on Marcus Camby.
29:02I say, oh, look, that's it right there.
29:04That's what I need.
29:05We need him on our team.
29:13we need him.
29:15Thank you so much.
29:28I got it.
29:30Transcription by CastingWords
30:00CastingWords
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