NBA BASKETBALL

NBA Basketball

NBA Basketball

Introduction

Founded in 1946, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is the top level of men's professional basketball in North America. As with most professional sport leagues, early NBA history is filled with numerous instances of franchise start-up and failure. The tenuous existence of NBA basketball was driven by a general lack of product awareness and the disadvantages of the markets in which NBA teams played (Hubbard, 2000).

Marketing Player Personalities

At the end of 1979, the NBA began to gain meaningful fan interest country-wide. This attention came as a result of two key players, Ervin “Magic” Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics. These two players drew attention away from the negative issues that had plagued the NBA through the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, fans began to focus on the spectacular play and high-level competition between these two players and their teams.

Johnson and Bird uniquely identified with a wide range of market segments. Specifically, Johnson and the Lakers were seen as the high-flying, glitzy, and glamorous team from Hollywood. Often, the Johnson-led Lakers was referred to as the “Showtime” Lakers, and the presence of high-profile actors and actresses at their games served to feed this persona.

In contrast, Bird's Celtics were seen as a hard-nosed, blue-collar team. Additionally, Bird was from a small Midwestern farm town, and generally appealed to basketball fans in America's Heartland. As a further distinction, Bird was Caucasian while Johnson was African-American.

The NBA realized these two contrasting, yet highly successful, styles of play would appeal to a wide variety of people. The league used these players, and teams, to begin growing a brand that had been suffering into the 1980s. The league ran advertising campaigns highlighting the matchups between the Lakers and Celtics. Additionally, Johnson's Lakers and Bird's Celtics met in the ...