WOKE NBA Stars Seems Natural For CDN Advertisers. Why Won't They Bite?

The wonderful people who brought you Elbows Up and Don’t Shop At Home Depot! are now on to Edmonton Oilers Bring Home The Cup. In response to no Canadian-based team winning the Stanley Cup since 1993 the corporate nostalgia folks are linking arms with Connor McDavid & Co in their struggle with the dastardly Florida Panthers. The Oil are now Canada’s team!

In one bit they were taking ice shavings from McDavid’s home rink in southern Ontario to mix with the frozen Zamboni water of Edmonton’s Rogers Place arena. Okay, they have eight players on the Oilers roster who aren’t Canadian (hello Leon Draisaitl), and the stars now killing it for the Panthers, Sam Bennett and Brad Marchand, are from Ontario. But never mind. Like playing Mr. Dressup trivia with Mike Meyers it’s just too good an idea to waste. 

The outcome of all this patriotic wind therapy will be determined Tuesday— or Thursday at the latest. But it will have achieved the desired goal of warming the cockles of all those Canadians who turtled in the election, flipping back to Mark Carney’s Liberals when the going got a little rough with Donald Trump. Resulting in a maximum four more years of Carney’s faculty lounge of dunces and Kamala Harris clones.

While the marketers were playing the Maple Syrup March over the Stanley Cup Final they missed an even better opportunity to marry Canadian patriotism with sport. We speak, of course, of the inevitable crowning of Canadian stars as champions of the NBA. In fact the entire progress of the postseason in the sneaker league has witnessed great Canadian results. 

Not least of which: Hamilton’s Shai Gilgeous Alexander winning the NBA MVP while leading his Oklahoma City Thunder to the brink of the NBA crown. For those distracted by Stu Skinner and Corey Perry, SGA is a revelation, If you missed him leading Canada back to the Olympics last year the wiry 26-year-old is a lithe, unstoppable chinook who routinely scores 30 points a game.

He has help from another Canadian, Montreal’s Lu Dort, a finalist for NBA defensive player of the year, who also led Canada to the Olympics. As unstoppable as SGA is, Dort is immovable. But that’s not all the Canadian content. In the Finals they are up against two more Canadian teammates from last year. Aurora Ont.’s Andrew Nembhard is the back-court catalyst for Tyrese Haliburton’s  Indian Pacers, taking them to the Eastern title and within two wins of the NBA title. He’s assisted by another Canadian, Montreal’s Benedict Mathurin, the hero of the Game 3 win for the Pacers. They’re now household names.

The Canadian content didn’t end there, either. In the semifinals, the Thunder beat the Minnesota Timberwolves featuring SGA’s cousin Nickeil Alexander-Walker , another alumnus of the CDN national team. At one point the two close friends were anything but friendly, shoving each other under the basket.

They had Canadian company in the postseason. In earlier rounds R.J. Barrett and the New York Knicks made it to the second round in the East, Jamal Murray’s Denver Nuggets fell to the Thunder in Round Two, while the Houston Rockets and Mississauga’s Dillon Brooks, a tenacious physical presence, lost to Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors . Meanwhile, Corey Joseph’s Orlando Magic lost in the first round to Boston.

But the Canadian content didn’t end there. The Toronto Raptors, NBA champs of 2019, are now spread throughout the league, affording nostalgic Canadian fans a rooting playoff interest in players such as Pascal Siakim, who’s pairing with Nembhard and Mathurin to push the upset-minded Pacers, shooting guard OG Anunoby teamed with small forward R.J. Barrett on the Knicks and point guard Fred Van Vliet of the Rockets. All harkened back to the Raptors’ greatest days.

But in the heat of Elbows Up marketing these great performances don’t seem to get a sniff from marketers looking to promote Canadian unity in these fractious days. While the sports networks give airtime to the stories in the Association. the general public and advertisers have little time or inclination to draw patriotic strength from these young men. 

Before we completely condemn Canadian marketers it should be noted that the interest in the NBA in general is waning. The NBA has lost 75 percent of its TV audience since the Michael Jordan peak while many other sports — NFL, men’s & women’s college basketball, college football — have set record TV ratings. Yes, TV ratings in many fields have dropped since the 1990s. Still, it seems significant.

The problem for the NBA in a Time of Trump is its embrace of hard-left politics. Whether it’s LeBron James defending Chinese shoe manufacturers, the slavish devotion to #BLM even as its corruption is revealed and a maniacal obsession with Donald Trump (and embrace of Kamala Harris) the NBA has made its bed with radical political and cultural elements. It’s as if the Trump election and cultural shift never happened. 

In this wilful blindness they are supported by their media partners whose own credibility is at an all-time low after carrying water for the Biden farce and Kamala’s erasure. Ironically, this is the same political crash car running Canadian politics at the moment.  You’d think that would make the NBA— and its sister Women’s NBA—like catnip to the Canada Not For Sale crew.

So far the hockey quest is foremost in their minds. But perhaps when SGA holds the Larry O’Brien Trophy they might just achieve the symbiosis that the sport has always coveted. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.