NBA marks its 75th anniversary with celebratory film

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of The National Basketball Association (NBA)  formed on June 6, 1946, the league has rolled out a three-minute, star-studded film.  

The ad, created by New-York based Translation agency, features a young girl practicing her free throw when a bus driver (Michael B. Jordan) pulls up and asks her to come along. “It’s the NBA 75th,” he says. 

As the bus takes a stroll down Memory Lane, we see Magic Johnson watering his lawn and neighbor Larry Bird waving hello. There, the group comes across 14 active NBA players, 20 ex-players, seven mascots and one puppet — Lil Penny, the puppet who starred in a Weiden+Kennedy Nike campaign in the mid-1990s.

Other stars who appear in the ad include, Kevin Durant, LeBron James  Julius Erving, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Isaiah Thomas. 

The ad ends with a portrait of Kobe Bryant, who died in a plane crash in early 2020. Jordan declares, “The game don’t stop. It won’t stop.”