🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Jaybate... this link is for you.

I think most of us didn't take your posts on shoe contracts serious enough in the past.

You just recently got me interested enough to do some research, and what I found was Adidas seems eager to spend more for one (or a few) top contracts to lift their line. It made me think that there was more to Wiggins picking Kansas than Wiggins picking Kansas (Adidas school).

I'm curious how much sneaker money he'll gobble up next year and could the news in this link impact Wiggin's deal?

It would be great if many can post their thoughts and news on this subject.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/playoffs/2014/05/11/nba-playoffs-damian-lillard-adidas-contract-blazers-spurs/8970691/ ↗

It seems that perhaps this news may be used as recruiting bait for Kansas.

How many blue blood programs are with Adidas?

Louisville, UCLA, Memphis (all adidas schools). Actually the 2008 Final Four was 3 adidas schools...and 1 Nike/Jordan school (UNC). That 2008 final was all adidas, as was last season's Louisville NC.

Adidas has been the sponsor for the McDonalds All-American game also.

@drgnslayr

Thanks for the link. adidas management appears to be in a fight for its life. Damien = right place|right time. If they can't sign a superstar, they are going the old Hollywood route and create one out of someone that can look like one. Damian Lilliard, meet Rock Hudson. Hey, Rock got rich. Looks like Damien has, too.

Regarding contracts, next milestone coming soon will be $200M. Sky's the limit in a global apparel market with an asymmetric duopoly.

Wisconsin. Nebraska. Notre dame.

More football blue bloods but wisky and NU both are doing better in BBall.

@jaybate 1.0

So, you don't think Lillard is a superstar?

In college he was conference player of the year, second in scoring in Division I, selected #6 overall in the 2012 draft.

In his first year in the NBA he was named Rookie of the year.

In his second year he was named to the All-Star and is the first player ever to compete in 5 events in the All-Star weekend. He has several Portland records and more importantly, have you seen him in the current playoffs?

He is a 6'-2" "score-first" point guard and as such he gets a lot of publicity. I don't particularly care about the Blazers much except for TRob, but Lillard is the real deal and has superstar written all over.

@JayHawkFanToo

I agree with you, Lillard is a superstar.

Also, Tim Duncan has agreed that Damien Lillard is a superstar

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=10924293 ↗

I think Lillard has superstar potential in the league.

But if you read that link, it isn't all about playing level in the league.

This gets back to my original thread several months ago where I addressed the culture of basketball moving towards more general entertainment, and as such, the game is headed for some unique twists that may catch us off guard and not to our liking.

The story on Lillard is a prime example.

Shoe marketing people "ran the numbers" on Lillard and they used more than his game stat sheets to come up with the decision to pay him $100+ million.

What brought Lillard the fat deal was his interest in the shoe culture, his very capable ability in becoming a social media hog (FB, Insta, TW), his location at the home of Nike and Adidas, his playing position, his winning potential, his ability to 'play the character', his looks, his personal style...

It all points to Lillard being primed by marketing execs to be the entertainer more than be the basketball player.

Now compare all those factors to Andrew Wiggins. Andrew has the physical appeal, and he has crazy athleticism capable of creating artful dunks that will be captured for permanent entertainment value... but is that enough?

Perhaps Andrew should be spending his time between KU and the NBA not with a basketball trainer, but with a marketing coach. Someone to evaluate and make gold from his potential as a celebrity. Develop Andrew Wiggins, the character... the entertainer. And for God's sake, make some noise on the social web away from just mainstream sports media controlling his destination and make his own noise!

We are about to see many new things around basketball... all related to big business shelling out big bucks. And it will make young players mimic the pro players on how to get those big bucks (besides playing the game). After all, the entire game of basketball is largely just one big "copy/paste" as youth copy their predecessors.

That's what scares me. That basketball goes over the edge and becomes just another carnival show.

@drgnslayr

You are on the right track here, though I would go much farther.

Like you I would say Lillard is at most a young star that has some potential to become a superstar.

Like you I would say that Lillard is only "called" a superstar largely because of off court stuff.

But then I would go further. I would make clear that superstar and star are anachronistic, 20th Century words referring to performance on the floor.

I would add that superstar in the present refers largely to off court stuff.

Then I would add that in the Age of Hypertelia, i.e., in the age in which the simulation model of a superstar (the hype generated off-court) has eclipsed the reality of the superstar's performance on-court, Damien Lillard is a simulated superstar.

I would point out that adidas desperately needs a simulated superstar, because Rose, once considered a 20th Century superstar throwback, and Howard, always a simulated superstar, have gone bust, leaving adidas without a superstar, or a simulated superstar to schlep shoes and outfits.

I would also point out that the recession in Europe and reputed changes in the stock ownership structure of adidas might put additional pressure on management to have a superstar, or simulated superstar, ASAP.

Lacking a handy 20th Century-style superstar, adidas management appears to have to spend the bones to generate a simulated superstar, because it is the minority duopolist in a highly asymmetric shoeco duopoly, and could find itself marginalized without at least a simulated superstar, until it can find a real one.

Compare what Damien Lillard's production on the floor now to real ones like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Shaq, Lebron, etc. These were superstars under the old on-floor, performance based criterion. I just don't see much comparison.

But we reputedly live in the hyperteliac age, when the simulation of reality has eclipsed reality.

Fine. I am willing to junk superstar and star entirely.

Let's coin a new hyperteliac word for Damien Lillard's current status.

How about "hyperstar"?

It seems less loaded and denigrating than "simulated superstar."

Damien Lillard is a hyperstar.

Who the flip cares if he ever becomes a 20th Century Anachronism "superstar"?

Power to the simulation!

And Andrew Wiggins is on the cusp of hyperstardom, IF he finds a marketing coach and a shoeco committed to hyperstar product endorsers.

What the hell! Maybe the game has just moved off the floor.

Maybe we need to start painting some name on the ribbon of space between the floor and the seating.

The name should be some master of simulation.

How about Jean Baudrillard Court?

Nah, he didn't go to KU.

Hey, in the age of simulation, let's just say he did.

Let the Midnight Special, shine its ever lovin' simulation on you!!

Rock Chalk!

@jaybate 1.0

I didn't used to be... but I am now 100% a believer in your hype vision.... especially as related to the shoe industry; the monsters of sports hype.

Your post was right on, and I like your 'coined' term "hyperstar." Funny... but before getting that far in your post my mind was working on a potential trending word. I came up with "simstar."

Here is a thought. We now go underground. Maybe we take a couple of other posters with us. We design the perfect "hypersimstar" in our labs. We create the mystery behind him, the folklore to come, where everyone knows his name but no one knows his game. He's a guy that has a reason (and a story) behind his hiding. We get a visual expert to create a blurry clip showing a dunk beyond anything anyone has ever seen. He stuffs it with his feet. Someone clever can strip the video of any tampering markers and make it look real. Too bad it was blurry and can't identify his face.

Capitalize it. Become his agent. Make some masterful moves like they used to make in the boxing hype world. You only have to threaten the world now and then that he is coming. Use the "meeting of the minds" to create a better basketball shoe. Make Adidas, Nike and anyone else come up with something truly ingenious... truly superior. Bathe in mystery... let the hype take over.

Pull down the pants of the modern-day hype machine while stuffing our coffers. Our guy, 'Jetron', defies gravity to become the first "mysterystar."

Boys would put down their comic books and goo all over the stories published in SI.

The powerful side of modern capitalism is exposed... the hype carnival and its big tent tentacles devouring (and exploiting) the public to spend spend spend on the spin spin spin.

@drgnslayr

"Jetron the hypersimstar..."

"Boys would put down their comic books..."

I had to finish howling with laughter before I could respond!!!!

So glad you get what I am talking about AND took it to a another level!

Your idea reminds me of an old TV episode of an ancient show called Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus as a high school teach back in the '60s. You may be old enough to recall it, or have seen it in reruns, but more likely were too hip to have watched the show. :-)

Anyway, the episode was titled "The Student Who Never Was," and in it a super smart, but cynical student decided to show how phony and impersonal school administrators and faculty were. He invented a student named Sam Orez and enrolled him in the school and, if I recall correctly, got a number of students to attend various classes pretending to be Sam Orez in hopes of graduating this non existent student from Jefferson High. Sam Orez, of course, when his last name was spelled backwards, spelled "Zero."

Your deliciously funny idea also reminds of an earlier and much more sophisticated story like this was the plot of Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" starring Cary Grant as Madison Avenue ad man Roger O. Thornhill. Poor Roger did not realize how impersonal the world had become in the age of the Mies van der Roe high rises. Nor did he appreciate how fungible identity could be under the wrong circumstances. Anyway, Roger was mistaken for a spy that did not actually exist; i.e., he was mistaken for a spy identity with no human attached to it invented by an unnamed American intelligence organization to deceive some foreign spies into revealing the location of a microdot (the McGuffin) the spies have stolen. And if that were not bad enough, Roger gets photographed holding the bloody knife he has withdrawn from a stabbed man and so is believed to have murdered him. It is my favorite Hitchcock film. And of course we learn along the way that the "O." in Roger O. Thornhill stands for nothing. And the paradoxical movie title refers to a direction that does not actually exist on a compass, or in usage. Roger is in the predicament of trying to prove a double negative; that he is not the spy that does not exist that he has been mistaken for, plus that he did not murder anyone. Tough spot for an ordinary ad man to find himself on an ordinary day in NYC. Ernest Lehman who wrote the screenplay was a minor genius. :-)

The difference between then and now is that the kid could never have made any money of Sam Orez, and Roger O. Thornhill had a functioning legal system to appeal to sooner or later, but, today, in the reputed age of hypertelia, I fear someone perhaps could attract some bones doing what you have proposed tongue in cheek.

At the very least, your idea might make a terrific book and movie deal. :-)

Maybe pitch it to Kevin Wilmott, or Spike Lee.

Probably start a bidding war.

Seems timely. :-)

Rock Chalk!

@jaybate 1.0

"Jetron the hypersimstar..."

If you saw a book title by that name... would you pick it up?

Okay... I found the videoclip we can rig up for our hypersimstar. And if that fails, we can always promote our version of "flubber!"

But seriously... back on point... here is a clip by the legend himself, discussing how money is destroying the game of basketball.

@drgnslayr

Thank you so much for posting this link to Wilt's interview in One on One.