NBA – Talk of the Town
Are you with us?
Basketball in Abu Dhabi doesn't live in an arena. It lives in barbershops, on backstreet courts, along the Corniche at dusk.
The NBA came to the city with the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers, and asked us to make a film for the game. We went looking for the game’s roots instead – the version of basketball that was already there, played by people who’d claimed it as their own long before a fixture list said so.
We followed the ball into the places that hold it. A barber who talks hoops between cuts. A backstreet court worn smooth by feet that show up every evening, fixture or no fixture. The Corniche at the hour the light turns gold and the game turns social.
What we made isn’t a promo. It’s a record of a city’s relationship with a sport it didn’t wait to be given.
Proof that the biggest games don’t create a basketball culture – they walk into one that was already there.
Credits
Client
NBA
Creative Director
Kieran Hodges
Director
Toby Plummer
DOP
Kieran Hodges
Producer
Rory McLoughlin