Sep 4th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Selling Bad Teams
I was a bit curious as to how the sad-sack Minnesota “Yes Kevin Garnett won a championship the very season we gave him away for spare parts” Timberwolves were marketing themselves these days. Apparently, the pitch is that they play complete games:
Elsewhere in NBA marketing, ladies and gentlemen meet the Oklahoma City Thunder.
70 Responses to “Selling Bad Teams”
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September 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
The other team only has to play its starters for 28 minutes, though, since the game is usually wrapped up by then.
And not one minute more.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Re: Oklahoma City Thunder logo
My (hypothetical) kid could draw that.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:54 am
you really should step out of nicolletttee mall and see uptown or northeast minneapolis (not the st. anthony area, but the arts-y part)
September 4th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Are you thinking about this because you’re wondering how the Republicans are going to sell their crappy team (the equivalent of Kevin Willis and Andrew Bynum) to the voters?
September 4th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Just to be fair, Al Jefferson is NOT a ’spare part’.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
In the early eighties I was the Bat Boy for the San Francisco Giants. In 1984 the team’s marketing slogan was “C’mon Giants, hang in there!” It was quite embarrassing when they’d get behind early and the Candlestick P.A. system would play said slogan as a chirpy, upbeat jingle. However, it was a prescient campaign. We finished 66-96.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I’m thinking the equivalent of Juwan Howard and Tyrus Thomas, myself, mars.
And the Dem ticket — I don’t know, Deron Williams and Rasheed Wallace?
September 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
So they took an Arena League Football-style name and applied to the Nets’ logo?
September 4th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Thank You Minnesota for Kevin Garnett. He helped me get over the choke job by the Pats.
Hey Matt, could you help a fellow blogger out? John Cole needs a website that works. Can you give him some advice, or maybe start a collection jar for him. He has a jar but since his site is dead all day we can’t donate to it.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
At least they aren’t advertising a fun day out at the ballpark and all the great food like we have to suffer through with the Pittsburgh Pirates. That’s a franchise that’s running out of marketing slogans. They’re a year or two away from “Remember when this team was good? We’ll show some old footage on the Jumbotron if you come!”
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
September 4th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
At first I wanted to mock the name Thunder for sounding like a rejected name from an American Gladiators brainstorming session:
Low-Level Marketing Exec 1: How about Thunder?
Low-Level Marketing Exec 2: No, that’s lame.
Low-Level Marketing Exec 1: Too lame for American Gladiators?
Low-Level Marketing Exec 2: Yes- too lame for American Gladiators.
But then I realized my old team was called the SuperSonics, which kinda sounds like something out an American Gladiators spinoff, American Gladiators Extreme (”Now entering the Extreme Pyramid…SuperSonic!”) So who am I to judge?
But then I remembered the NBA is a corrupt, David Stern completely screwed Seattle to help out his old buddy and everyone involved in moving the team perjured themselves to cover up what they had done (any time you hear David Stern talk, remember that he is a FU**ING LIAR) So wgaf?
FU** the NBA.
MICHAEL CAGE IS THE KING OF ALL MEDIA!
(Oh yeah, one more thing: Thunder is a stupid name.)
September 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Wow. There’s a sales pitch!
“We play complete games. Maybe we’ll even win a couple!”
And the new OKC team’s logo is really really lame.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
$5 says they’ve already paid AC/DC for the use of “Thunderstruck” in the arena.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I’m still in denial about my Supersonics.
Oklahoma City?
I mean, Oklahoma frickin’ City?
From the 15th largest market to the 48th
Good Luck with that David Stern.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Yes, the OKC logo is a ripoff of the Nets logo (which itself sucks). But I suppose that that Nets don’t mind too much since they will be getting a new logo next year when they move to Brooklyn.
As to the rest of the post, I’d agree with rochrist – Al Jefferson is a solid player, not a spare part. Frankly, I don’t think the T-Wolves did too badly in the trade, given Garnett’s then-existing contract, salary, and age. But, yeah, marketing the T-Wolves has got to be difficult… but what exactly would you propose they do instead?
September 4th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I remember. In ‘79 they won the world series and were near the bottom in attendance. In ‘71 they won it and finished at the bottom in attendance. I’d say the fans prefer the fun and food to winning.
They’d do better if they showed Steelers’ highlights on the jumbotron.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
F*** Clay bennett & David Stern
sincerely,
cd6 in seattle
September 4th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The “Thunder” was perhaps the least bad option for the OKC team. It could have been the Barons.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I’m with Thlayli at #13. They worked backwards from the music.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
I can’t believe they passed up the opportunity to be the Oklahoma City Outlaws…
Meanwhile, doesn’t the giant metropolis of Wasilla need an NBA team now?
September 4th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Oddly, the Sonic chain of drive-in restaurants is based in OKC. I’m guessing that was actually the deal-breaker for keeping the name; i.e., however commercialized the game is, you can’t name a team after a company (yet). But the OKC team no doubt hopes that Sonic will be a big patron, the way AutoZone and FedEx are for the Memphis Grizzlies. So they can’t call themselves the Sonics, unless they don’t want to take any money from the burger kingpins.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
21/11 is a spare part? Stick to politics dude.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I like the team and I like the ad. Al Jefferson is exactly who they needed to get in the KG trade. The Celtics following up the trade with a Championship isn’t an indictment of the trade (though maybe of the other players on that wolves team) but it did show how much @#$ KG kicks.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:26 am
It would have been better if the Knicks had not played complete games last year and the year before. At some point in the season, the coach should have just pulled the entire team off the floor, forfeited, and told the media and the fans that they would come back when they figured this “basketball” thing out.
It doesn’t make much sense to be a NFL fan if you live in Los Angeles and it doesn’t make much sense to be a NBA fan if you live in Seattle or New York.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 am
Just hours after finishing its game against UMass early this morning, the University of Memphis basketball team is scheduled to depart this afternoon for San Juan, Puerto Rico, and begin preparations for a key week in its
December 12th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
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