His team is getting a beating in Taipei but expect Vince "Big Dog" Carter to arrive Saturday and slam dunk the competition to keep the funk alive.
Sport, fashion and celebrity will seamlessly fuse in the capital city this weekend when Vince Carter of the NBA joins his teammates for a jam on the Nike Hoops Tour of Taiwan.
The NBA and Nike have combined their "influencing powers" so the Toronto Raptors star can reprise his role in the 1970s style TV advertisement that is currently taking up valuable airtime in Taiwan.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"What it is," said Nike Hoops Tour poster boy Seth Marshall, "Is we have two teams and the Silver Hunters are beating up on the Black Samurai and so we call in the Big Dog, Dr. Funk, to keep the funk alive.
"He saves the day, helps the Black Samurai, so we get redemption," Marshall told the Taipei Times yesterday.
He and five other "street players" have been sponsored by Nike to return to Taiwan after the success of the Nike Hoops Tour last year, as part of another Nike ad campaign: "Keep the funk alive."
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
They will stay in Taiwan for 10 days to play a few games of three-on-three, do some trick shots, do a couple of public relations shoots and "pass on the word."
"We're here to spread a message and bridge a culture gap in sports and `socialism' -- by which I mean communicating with each other," said Marshall, who is from Queens in New York and has played pro basketball all over the world.
Teammate Jason "The Messenger" Wallace, a college and pro player, said bringing players from the US, like his teammates and Carter, would give basketball fans a real taste of the game "back home."
"With the ads, it's a lot of cutting and editing and that's not all you see and feel when you go live, you see the whole thing.
"You see the setup move maybe, before the cross over or freestyle, you can pick it all up. You can't see that on TV."
Nike Hoops Tour player Ramon Rodriguez, said, "They get to see the moves in real life and get to see if they actually work.
"They want to see [Jason] Wallace jump so high, but when you're actually there and you see it, you think `wo-aaah' he did that, I'll try that.
"It makes a reality for them, if they see it then they think they can do it. It makes it achievable."
They're back
Marshall said it was good to come back and play against local players who they went up against last year.
"This time all the courts were repaired and everything. But one guy, he goes to me that the local players were being `overly aggressive' to us.
"I don't think so, but they had certainly stepped it up [faster and more physical] this year, in every facet of the game," he said.
"They take what they've learned from us and what they inherited and put the two together and come up with something else."
Wallace said, "The way they play here is pretty organized but has its own flavor. It's got the fundamentals but they need the extra step that makes our game unique."
Marshall said, "There's been an evolution of the game and its still happening. We're, like, spreading the US game. The New York game, more accurately."
Somewhere, among the cuts and edits for the Vince Carter promotional show on Saturday and the games played by the the Nike Hoops Tour stars, there is the "spirit of basketball," Marshall said.
"That's the funk, we're bringing people back to a time when basketball was young and there wasn't just the NBA, there was the ABA too."The now-defunked league gave many black and emerging players their chance to play the game in the 1970s and was famous for its razzmatazz.
Capitalism rules
Asked whether Nike was capitalizing on street style to make millions of dollars for themselves, Rodriguez agreed to an extent.
"We make the style, we make the funk. ... The stuff we were doing or wearing for years, they [Nike] just come along and commercialized it. They take freestyle and make it everyone's style."
So, did they steal the style?
"If they do all this for me and pay my way, then I'm happy about it," Rodriguez said. "We love what we do, NBA shows, tours, all that. We're doing what we like and yeah, they comemercialize, but it's a symbiotic relationship."
At the moment Nike has the power to promote the game of basketball and what is worn around it, Rodriguez said.
"No other company can come into the 'hood and do a commercial. Nike's got the `influencing power.'"
"Without Nike, no one would see us, they are the vehicle for all of this," Wallace said.
"Without the majors you don't get the power numbers," Marshall said. "I play in NY and if it wasn't for Nike the only people who would know me would be my mother and the sister."
Nike Hoops Tour: Tonight and tomorrow at Sungshan Tobacco and Wine plant, Guangfu S Road, 5pm to 9pm. Saturday is for Vince Carter and VIPs, but there will be a screen to watch the action.
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