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"FacebookPinterest\n\nDavid Roth: So, apropos of its being on, what is your favorite thing about the D-Rose Adidas commercial? Because it kind of seems like the most you've liked him.\n\nBethlehem Shoals: I like Chicago. I like that he actually sounds like he understands what he's saying.\n\nRoth: He does deliver his lines convincingly.\n\nShoals: I like that he says \"I will light you up\" like he thinks that way.\n\nRoth: And it definitely looks like Chicago in that everything is the color of gunmetal and November 445pm's. But wouldn't it be cooler if he jumped over a midsize sedan?\n\nShoals: Only if he had a bunch of tennis balls glued to him. And farted a lot. That seemed like something on the way in the next Blake Griffin ad: fart jokes. When did he become The Hangover of NBA pitchmen? Is this how Blake Griffin gets undone?\n\nRoth: I don't know. He is getting some weird advice, though. Some defective svengali is like \"if you want to be an icon, you should do that Subway commercial where you talk about how you like healthy lunches.\" I want more local-TV ads. Kurt Thomas and Taj Gibson doing ads for furniture places. Sectionals. Kyle Korver for Supercuts. \"It's always right on target!\" followed by a stilted, held-too-long grin.\n\nShoals: You know how they say \"all politics are local?\" Well, all Bulls ads are local.\n\nRoth: The thing with Rose, if I can put on my Brand Manager Cap (it has earflaps!) for a moment, is that the Chicago connection works for him. LeBron is from no-place at this point. Spiritually, he has apparently always been from a gated community near Miami. I think you're right that the thing that works about the Rose commercial, and maybe doesn't work for you about Rose, is that he seems to mean it\u2014it feels like he cares because I guess he's repping his stuff. All the best sneaker commercials have that. There was a Melo one in Baltimore I remember really well that way, with a creepy cameo by a nodding Jim Boeheim.\n\nShoals: \"His stuff\". That sounds like you are saying he's earnest about his balls. The thing is, sorry Cleveland, LeBron's Cleveland was always part of him putting the city on the map, even when they tried to draw on local color. That Melo ad was unreal. Actually, he double-scored, because he had a similar one in Puerto Rico. Melo really is place; that's why people always like to talk about how he's from New York. He can be from anywhere and make you love him for it.\n\nRoth: It's amazing. He's basketball's Tupac like that. A million hometowns.\n\nShoals: You know that he basically dictated that B.More ad, right? And has never watched the Wire. Pretty sure the director of the ad put some Wire in there, though.\n\n Roth: Snitchin' Bubs pushing his whitey-sale cart? I don't remember that.\n\nShoals: Just the feel and look of it. Or maybe Baltimore is Baltimore, and that's the common ground. That's one of my favorite ads of recent years.\n\nRoth: I think it's hard to fuck that up. But they should've made a Baltimore-themed ad that was Sam Cassell eating crab with the cast of Homicide, talking about team defense. Yaphet Kotto with a bib on and a crab-mallet. That ad would've been for Avia or something. So...are you burned out on the Thunder In Crisis stuff? I was almost relieved when they dropped Game 5. It was just kind of making me sad. Everyone needs a few months off. Also, do you think Durant will ever do an ad where he eats barbecue in Oklahoma City and talks about how much he likes the weather there?\n\nShoals: Durant had a quote to the effect of \"well, we didn't expect to be this far, this soon, but there's no rule that says we can't be\". In that press conference, though, he gave another stern answer (besides the Dirk one) that basically said \"we know we have shit to improve on, here it is.\" Jonah Keri wrote yesterday about the Perkins trade from the Celtics perspective, but from the Thunder's side, he hit on an important point: Without Perk healthy, they won't be that full-realized team yet. Also, I was going to say something about how Durant never reps OKC, but he's not from there. That's how he is different from Bron or Rose. Still, best Iverson ad was just him jogging in Philly.\n\nRoth: Could've been improved by the Jadakiss verse that became de rigeur for Iverson later on. But I agree, that ad was great. Durant is the most admirable superstar I can remember, honestly. And not because of the par-for-the-course God-thanking. He is more or less the only star of that caliber who doesn't seem to be operating from a place of (ill-defined) grievance, and he is freakishly mature for his age. In the good ways that one can mean that. Like settled-into-himself in a way that I kind of don't think of many athletes ever being. I guess that's what Tom Scharpling was writing about to a certain degree.\n\nShoals: God, can you imagine what a relief it must be for an organization to have a superstar who is never going to put on superstar airs? Westbrook is karmic payback. Actually, that's unfair. Westbrook just seems to have such a gross dissonance, or gulf, between who he is and the perception of him. Before this spring, everybody thought he was Durant redux. Now everyone thinks he's an ass.\n\nRoth: Yeah, I can't imagine who he is. But he seems to miss the point in exactly the way I would if I were a 22-year-old crypto-superhuman. I kind of wonder what he'll actually be. Do people grow out of that? Or do they grow out of it before they have to become shuffling ghosts of themselves, a la Ron Harper? I hope he does, because I like watching him play and he doesn't seem like a bad guy.\n\nShoals: I think he's not that different from any other athlete. He just suffers from being compared to Durant, who is at once totally perfect and completely authentic. We almost never get the REAL athlete. And he's almost never a uniformly noble, smart, likable human being.\n\nRoth: At some point in my life, I'll be enlightened enough not to care. Like care about the pathological personalities behind the transcendent basketball. I am in no way there yet. Wait, Royal Ivey just tweeted something. He was encouraging everyone to follow Robert Vaden, \"the darkest dude in the NBA.\"\n\nShoals: It also doesn't hurt that Westbrook is an irresponsible basketball player. Durant isn't perfect, but his personality gives him some leeway. We project that onto his play. With Westbrook, we see how he plays and assume the worst. I still believe that the human shows through in the style, but it's subject to distortions and noise. Something something something Freud something something.\n\nRoth: That's all fair. He's unlucky that his natural style\u2014the only one he can really display at this point in his career\u2014is reckless tear-assery, whereas Durant's is preternatural calm.\n\nShoals: Right, and within that, there's some free will. We just get overwhelmed by the main theme. There is a better word there.\n\nRoth: The only other words are pretentious. Ur-something or whatever.I am really enjoying the experience of puzzling over Dirk, too, in the interest of discussing someone who is still in the playoffs. I guess winning makes you more interesting, but he is really the last grown-up in the postseason, it feels like. The grown-up in question possibly being Teutonic Buddha.\n\nShoals: The Mavs aren't grown-up, or mature. They're actually pushing \"old\". Does it make you nervous that there might be no grown-ups left? Do you know that you are older than everyone in the NBA?\n\nRoth: Jason Kidd served under general Omar Bradley in World War II, so not everyone. But I am probably the only person to notice and be bothered by the fact that IHOP clearly went long on the ad-buy for this Cheezy Tortilla Scramble commercial. But for some reason still shot it on one of those old, heavy VHS cameras. I am not bragging about noticing this, by the way.\n\nShoals: Did I see that? I like that you pay ultra-close attention to crappy food ads, while I apparently don't even notice them.\n\nRoth: One of us should like it. You probably don't have trouble sleeping because stuffed-crust pizzas haven't been banned yet. I do, and I'd trade places in a heartbeat.\n\nShoals: Oh hey, we have our Finals. Do you want to talk about that?\n\nRoth: Not really. Maybe next week.\n\nShoals is the founder of FreeDarko.com and the co-author of The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History.\n\nRoth writes for The Wall Street Journal, The Awl and Can't Stop The Bleeding."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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