Like its other pro sports league counterparts, the National Basketball Association relies on focus groups to test new marketing campaigns. Thanks to a leaked transcript from a source inside the league’s office, the Scene enjoyed a rare glimpse of one of these groups, assembled on Monday evening to provide feedback on the NBA’s new slogan, “Love It Live.”
Here is a partial transcript.
Panelist 1: Love it live? How the [bleep] am I supposed to even see it live? I about had to take out a second mortgage last time I took my family to an NBA game. My buddies were all laughing at me for spending $600 to see the sorry [bleep] Grizzlies and Cavaliers.
Panelist 4: Personally, I haven’t found NBA tickets to be so pricey. Of course, from where I sit, it looks like 10 ants on the floor. Maybe 11. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Moderator: Um, let me suggest that the “Love It Live” slogan might also apply to seeing games...live on TV.
Panelist 2: I’d like to apply my foot to the butt of whoever thought up that one.
Panelist 5: He’s probably back there watching behind that two-way mirror right now.
Moderator: Sir, there’s no one behind the mirror.
Panelist 5: Yeah there is. I know how these things work.
Panelist 2: Come on out and take your whuppin!
Moderator: OK, hold on. Let me ask why you so dislike the slogan.
Panelist 3: I sat through Game 3 of the Boston-Detroit series last week.
Panelist 2: All of it?
Panelist 3: Yeah.
Panelist 2: Was it as ugly as they said?
Panelist 4: Imagine seeing Roseann Arnold first thing in the morning. It was five times uglier than that.
Panelist 1: At least.
Panelist 2: It was actively ugly.
Panelist 3: Primitively ugly.
Moderator: Number 6, we haven’t heard from you yet.
Panelist 6: I love this game!
Panelist 5: The Celtics and Pistons played 48 minutes, and neither one could break 70 points.
Panelist 1: I thought some of those bricks would break the backboard.
Panelist 3: Ben Wallace got 21 rebounds for Detroit, and Charles Barkley said that anyone who wasn’t lazy should have had about 40, the way shots were clanking off the iron.
Panelist 2: And when they weren’t heaving ugly, stupid shots they were making ugly, stupid turnovers.
Panelist 4: I wouldn’t say I watched that game; I survived it.
Moderator: Well, you have to recognize that was just one game.
Panelist 5: You’re right. But then I saw Game 4.
Panelist 3: Tom Tolbert said the first half of that one was pathetic. And he’s supposed to by hyping the games!
Panelist 2: I don’t think he loved it live.
Panelist 1: I’ve got your pay-per-view concept. They should’ve been paying me every time I watched that mess.
Panelist 4: Listening to fingernails on a blackboard for 48 minutes would have been less painful. And I’m a Boston fan!
Moderator: Perhaps you’re too focused in on just that one series.
Panelist 2: Charlotte and New Jersey weren’t much better.
Panelist 1: Except that half the fans in Charlotte had the sense to stay home.
Moderator: Well, their team is leaving after this season.
Panelist 3: Maybe they could have their own slogan: “We love it dead.”
Panelist 4: Or “Masochists love it live.”
Panelist 2: What’s a masochist?
Panelist 4: You, for sitting through that [bleeping] Boston-Detroit series. Can you spell r-e-m-o-t-e?
Panelist 5: Yeah, I switched to the hockey playoffs because there was less hitting and they made more shots.
Panelist 6: NBA action is fan-tastic.
Panelist 5: The L.A.-San Antonio series has been fantastically ugly, too. With the way they’re banging on each other in the paint, it looks like when they dress fans up in those big inflated sumo suits for 1-on-1 at halftime.
Panelist 2: Plus you have the Shaq Factor.
Moderator: What’s that?
Panelist 2: The way the refs look out for Shaq. Like, here’s his favorite move: Shaq gets the ball down low. Shaq turns around. Shaq dips his shoulder. Shaq knocks over two guys like bowling pins. No call. Shaq shuffles his size 38 feet. No call. Shaq dunks.
Panelist 4: How about this for a new slogan? No rules, just right.
Panelist 1: Outback Steaks already owns that one.
Panelist 4: Well, it works better for the NBA.
Moderator: OK, we’re losing focus here.
Panelist 3: Y’all lost focus on the rules a long time ago. I counted five steps that Antoine Walker took on one play Sunday. Five! No call. Even the Detroit players yelled “Traveling!” to the refs—and NBA players never call traveling on each other, out of professional courtesy.
Panelist 4: I tried to count the number of legitimate fouls that didn’t get called in one minute on Sunday.
Moderator: What happened?
Panelist 4: I kept losing count.
Panelist 2: The whole strategy of playing defense seems to be to bump guys while they drive just enough to disrupt them. I used to think the refs were just morons.
Moderator: And?
Panelist 2: Now I think there’s too many fouls to whistle them all even if the refs weren’t morons.
Panelist 5: How much did you pay some Marketing Genius to come up with “Love It Live?” Hell, I can’t even tell if it is live on TV. It could be an endless tape loop, for all I know.
Moderator: How do you mean?
Panelist 5: Dude, it looks like there’s only about three basic plays. One, everybody clears out for the guard or small forward, and then he goes one on one and either shoots or passes outside. Two: everybody clears out for the center, they dump it down to him and then you wait five or six seconds for him to booty his way for a shot. The plot of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer is less predictable than this.
Moderator: What’s play No. 3?
Panelist 5: That’s the old whatever-the-coach-said-forget-it-and-make-something-up play.
Moderator: Are all of you this disillusioned?
Panelist 6: I love it live!
Moderator: All but No. 6?
Panelist 3: I still have hope because of the Kings and the Mavericks.
Panelist 4: Only series really worth watching right now.
Moderator: Why is that?
Panelist 2: Because they’re the only two teams that are any fun.
Panelist 1: They scored as many in one half the other day as in the whole Detroit-Boston game.
Panelist 3: Plus, it’s like a world basketball series. The Mavericks have the best German player, best Mexican player, best Canadian player and best Chinese player. And the Kings have a Turkish guy, two Yugos and then Scot Pollard, who looks like he’s from Pluto or something.
Panelist 4: They play old-school, fast-break basketball.
Panelist 5: They’re a little like watching the old Lakers and Celtics, or the Sixers with Dr. J. and World B. Free.
Panelist 2: You know those new Nike commercials with the old ABA footage and the big fros and the old goofy white guy playing the organ and George Clinton or Bootsy Collins or whoever that is jammin? The NBA is like that team: “We’re 10 and 72, but with the Mavs and Kings, we got the funk.”
Panelist 1: That’s your new slogan right there. “Keep the funk alive.”
Moderator: That’s an intriguing idea.
Panelist 3: Of course they’ll never do it. They’ve got only two teams in the whole league that can brings fans back, and they put them against each other so one will be gone. Hey, you suits behind the mirror, that’s so brilliant only a college boy could have thought of it.
Moderator: I told you, sir, no one is watching.
Panelist 2: I think that’s his point.
Panelist 6: I love this game!
