Around the World, produced by David Beinstein for NBA Entertainment.
Sound02 - nba.avi or Sound03 - nba.mov; download time, 3.50 minutes at 56K Sound01 - VR-NBA.asf; for sound only
A lively guitar and plastic colors animate this Grand Tour, which begins with an overhead shot of the globe, North America in the foreground. A young black boy dribbles a basketball across an improbably bucolic New Jersey toward the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan behind her. Cauliflower clouds scud by and birds take wing. The dribbler pauses at water’s edge, then lofts the ball toward Lady Liberty, who reaches for it. The ruddy basketball and the boy’s red, white, and blue togs seem to reinforce the message: This is America’s game. ‘Twas a time when baseball was the national pastime. No longer.
But the statue misses, and the ball sails over the Atlantic, past a curious Big Ben and the Arc de Triomphe. Clearly, we’d fumbled the point. Basketball isn’t America’s preserve: Europe loves it too. And it transcends color and gender: The player who grabs the ball, dodging a spry Eiffel Tower, is white and female.
A lively guitar and plastic colors animate this Grand Tour, which begins with an overhead shot of the globe, North America in the foreground. A young black boy dribbles a basketball across an improbably bucolic New Jersey toward the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan behind her. Cauliflower clouds scud by and birds take wing. The dribbler pauses at water’s edge, then lofts the ball toward Lady Liberty, who reaches for it. The ruddy basketball and the boy’s red, white, and blue togs seem to reinforce the message: This is America’s game. ‘Twas a time when baseball was the national pastime. No longer.
But the statue misses, and the ball sails over the Atlantic, past a curious Big Ben and the Arc de Triomphe. Clearly, we’d fumbled the point. Basketball isn’t America’s preserve: Europe loves it too. And it transcends color and gender: The player who grabs the ball, dodging a spry Eiffel Tower, is white and female.
Seeing a plane in the background, you know what’s coming. The ball’s on the move again. Destination: Egypt, where a young boy lobs it past the pyramids and an inquiring Sphinx. Then onward to China, the next pause on the tour, and the Great Wall, which invites the backboard. And again, there’s a shot of the plane, climbing into the sky after unloading … basketballs? Not likely, given that they’re made there now.
–Robert Shrum
