A Heated Commerical

It’s important to remember, as we play our various fantasy sports game and idolize our heroes and memorize their Hall-of-Fame-statistics that in the phrase “professional athlete” the word “professional” comes first. They are just (overpaid) working men and women like anyone else, the fall of the previously near-deified Brett Favre has shown us that (although, I suspect the media had to do with that circus than Favre himself.) The Mythos of the Athlete has been building since Ancient Greece and the first marathon. Americans idolize the greats of whatever game it is we choose to love, if not more than one.

But we, the fans, are stuck in another age. We believe that we are still living in the era where athletes were normal citizens like us, people to relate to, people we could drink with and talk shop with. This is no longer the case, the “everyday” heroes of the past are now the exception to the rule, the days of the “down to Earth” athletes have left us behind, only, most of us are too star-struck to realize it.

I bring this up because of a recent commercial I saw on TNT advertising that they do in fact have NBA basketball available for our viewing pleasure. This particular commercial used the major cast of the Miami Heat, due to their upcoming game, or more likely because even LeBron commercials garner high ratings.

I have a few “beefs” with this commercial, and none of them so serious as to cause any actual disgruntlement, rather, it has given me a severe case of simple bewilderment, or near-amazement even. That either the athletes themselves (I don’t want to believe that) or the producers/directors of the ads (I want to believe that) actually think any of this is close to reality, or will help sell the NBA (which needs very little help, but maybe this commercial will do that) is outside of the realm of my understanding.

First up in the commercial is our ever ego-friendly LeBron. The first thing he says is “I’m redefining myself.” Really? Does he really believe that’s what he’s doing?
Let’s look at the list of what Lebron was in Cleveland:

1) Hero to a City. (That’s pretty huge. Cities are big places, normally. Hence being called cities rather than towns, or “places where people sometimes gather and or live.”)

2) NBA Super Star on the level with the greats like Michael, Kobe and Larry. (There are others, but I felt like acting like a first name basis was merited, or even possible.)

3) Future Hall of Famer (This won’t, and honestly shouldn’t, change.) Franchise Player (Sadly, for he City and him, the only one.)

4) An incredibly rich young man with legitimate NBA title aspirations and a baby powder fetish.

Now let’s look at his Miami self-makeover.

1) One of three “Heroes” to a City.

2) NBA Super Star on a level with…

3) Future Hall of Famer (Possibly with an asterisk beside his name.)

4) One of three "Franchise players."

5) A slightly more incredibly rich slightly older young man with legitimate NBA title aspirations (but now with a Yankee-like stigma of just out-spending the competition) and a baby powder fetish (that fans are losing a taste for.)

I’d say I’d like to take the first list, but honestly, I’d take either, or just the first part of number five.

However, we can (and should) agree, that no real changes have taken place, LeBron simply is now what he was then, but in a warmer climate. I think LeBron got the words “relocate” and “redefine” mixed up somewhere, an understandable mistake.

The second part of the commercial (for LeBron) has him saying:

If winning was the only thing that mattered the Magic would have collapsed as a franchise a long time ago, and I’m pretty sure Cleveland would have imploded in a tidal wave of self-pity and sports related woe decades ago.

Wade goes onto say some things about how proud he is to wear the Miami uniform (a sentiment that Bosh and LeBron followed with) and I don’t mind this. He should be proud, he brought the team a Championship years ago. More importantly, he hasn’t betrayed (whether you feel LeBron and Bosh did that or not) any fans, or gone against his roots in any way. But, it’s important to remember that Miami isn’t a city to be proud of (that’s not saying it’s a city to be ashamed of, but it is no “City Upon a Hill.) It’s the home of public thongs, amateur porn, Mickey Rourke and retiring New Yorkers, it’s pride left when Marino started doing commercials for car dealerships.

Bosh took a different approach with his screen time:

It's implied that these players consider themselves (or are told to consider themselves) heroes of their respective cities. Cleveland may have needed one, and every city loves a super star, we (the fans) love the greats, we’re Americans and we can’t help ourselves, but let’s not get carried away. Ask anyone who their hero is and they’ll say something about firemen or the troops overseas, police officers and paramedics.

I love Dwight Howard and I can and do mention Turkoglu (I even pronounce his name correctly!) at least twice a day, once at breakfast, and once beside my bed, before I go to sleep--but my heroes they are not. They are incredibly talented athletes who play for a team that I consider “my own” and have somehow managed to apply the word “we” to so often that some people might believe I’m actually a part of the Magic organization. However for Bosh, James and Wade to consider themselves heroes in a city (we're gonna' go with the positive side of Miami now, as I've already used up my negatives for the day) so massive it takes up most of the southern tip of Florida (this may not be a positive), a city that calls itself the Winter Home of every super model on Earth (yes!) and better Cuban food than you could get in Cuba is almost laughable (in fact it is laughable. I laughed, and then decided to write this, and now it has been read. Ha ha ha. Laughable.) For me it’s important to rationalize the entire thing. Professional athletes, I imagine, are required to do PR bits like this. It’s like when an author has to go on a book tour and sign half a million (he or she hopes) of his book, or a movie star has to walk the red carpet to go watch a movie s/he just spent two years working on and has watched half a thousand times already.

It’s a part of the job, they get paid in the millions (yearly) and if they are told to act like complete tools so as to continue receiving those paychecks, they will.