Charles Barkley was cautious. Awaiting the filming of a commercial in TNT’s new National Basketball Association promotional campaign yesterday at a sound stage in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, he said: “The people who make these spots don’t have a clue. They don’t know what’s funny.”
Even a Coors Original commercial directed last year by Spike Lee, who is also in charge of the TNT campaign through his agency, Spike DDB, made the jolly Barkley unhappy.
It is natural that TNT would look to the stars of its studio to be part of a campaign that includes Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, Jason Kidd and Ben Wallace. Since Barkley’s arrival, “Inside the NBA” has been a must watch for its humor, unpredictability and occasional foray into danger. The host Ernie Johnson has emerged as a sports Bud Abbott, a straight man to Barkley, Kenny Smith, and Magic Johnson.
“Everyone thinks we’re joined at the hip,” Smith said. “When people see me, they ask, ‘Where’s Charles?’ Like I knew. It’s hilarious. I’ll be in a bathroom in a restaurant, and somebody says, ‘Where’s Charles?’ And I’ll say, ‘Right here in the next stall.’ ”
The set was made to look like TNT had hired the Little Rascals to overhaul the look of the studio used for “Inside the NBA”. There are cardboard TV sets, a Shaq bobblehead doll with a hair transplant and a TNT logo encircled by a bicycle tire painted yellow. Behind a desk (a door set up horizontally), Barkley Co. sat crammed together as if they were on kindergarten chairs. jerseys sat in as guests.
After the kids offered their thoughts on who the next Dr. J, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan would be, Smith asked, “Who do you think’s going to be the new Barkley?”
“Who?” the four kids replied in unison.
Barkley glared. His cohorts laughed and laughed, take after take.
The kids nailed their lines with aplomb, and Barkley refused to believe that they learned their parts an hour before shooting. Of course, Barkley only had to practice his glare; his only line was given to Smith earlier in the day, Smith said. “I didn’t know that,” Barkley said.
Lee was subdued during the smooth two hours of filming, pausing occasionally to ask the children to speak faster or to suggest who should look at whom while a line was delivered.
But he seemed more like the ubiquitous Knick fan when, between takes, he spent his time discussing basketball with Barkley, Smith and the Johnsons.
“Are you going to skewer Scott Layden?” Lee asked, referring to the Knicks’ general manager.
“I like the Sweetney kid,” Barkley said about the Knicks’ No. 1 pick, forward Mike Sweetney. But he said: “I’ve given up on Van Horn. If you can’t get it done with Jason Kidd. ”
Lee, who is indelibly viewed as the Knicks’ No. 1 fan, said, “Knick fans are going to kill him.”
After a cheap nhl jerseys subsequent take, Magic Johnson continued the conversation. “The problem is they need to be the worst. If you don’t ”
“You never get the good draft picks,” Barkley said. that TNT has farmed out to an outside agency. Spike DDB beat out five other agencies because of the focus on children’s candor.
“Kids are honest and truthful before they learn to lie,” Lee said. “We wanted to get from the mouths of kids what they would say to the players.”
He said that his basketball image as a superfan and his Mars Blackmon character in Nike commercials “might have helped” when pitching the campaign to TNT. “But if the presentation wasn’t any good, it wouldn’t have mattered that I was Mars Blackmon,” he said.
The campaign is a companion to TNT’s “We Know Drama” thrust (which features “Law Order” and “NYPD Blue” stars) and an attempt to lure more casual viewers to the network’s games.
“Nothing is more dramatic than the truth,” said Jeff Gregor, TNT’s and TBS’s senior vice president of marketing. “The kids are telling truths, and we have truth tellers like Charles and Magic.”
In the other promos, the kids sang doctored nursery rhymes to James (who sat in a cradle atop a tree); Wallace (in a giant Afro accompanied by an 8 foot by 4 foot pick); O’Neal (who stood before a barn) and Kidd (who sat on the hand of a giant clock set at 9 o’clock).
The Wallace promo, sung to “Old McDonald,” ends with a warning to the Pistons’ defensive machine: “Here a block, there a block/Everywhere Dt5FW6a9x a big block/But if Detroit can’t win again/Go home and pick your ‘fro.” http://www.l2info.lt/forumas/viewthread.php?forum_id=5&thread_id=4303
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