Sports How To Sell The NBA Finals Without A Kobe-LeBron Matchup
David Stern to Kobe and LeBron: Please don’t turn your backs on me!
Like Shaq shooting free throws, NBA Commissioner David Stern is shitting a brick. All season long, it’s seemed a foregone conclusion that the renewal of the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry last year would be followed by a marquee match-up of the league’s two biggest stars, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, in the 2009 NBA Finals. The Commish was no doubt creaming in his suit pants just thinking about it. The same goes for the folks at Nike and Vitamin Water, who’ve been churning out ads playing up the superstar showdown. That’s a lot of cream, and now somebody’s going to need to mop it all up, because Carmelo Anthony’s Denver Nuggets are knocking Kobe around in the Western Conference Finals like they want to pay him back for that Colorado rape trial and Dwight Howard’s Orlando Magic have pushed the Cavs to the brink of elimination in the East and made it look like King James got his crown from Burger King.
With a Cavaliers-Lakers Finals in doubt, the NBA suddenly has to scramble to sell alternative match-ups that are about as sexy as Chyna with a raging case of (manly) female gonorrhea. Though we enjoy seeing Puppetmaster Stern squirm when the magnets in the balls and his team of crooked refs fail to determine the outcomes of series, Complex wants other sports fans to know that all is not lost! Check out 5 awesome story lines that a commercial announcer could play up in an overly dramatic voice should LeBron or Kobe or both fail to make it to the trophy round. Keep the cream alive!
