FanHouse NBA Videos

Usually, I'm a big fan of "in the beginning" mixes because they show a star being born. This Chauncey Billups retrospective is almost the opposite of that. Sure, there are a few nice drives, and Chauncey's always been able to make it rain three's. But by and large, this does not look like a man who would one day lead a team to a championship. Maybe that tells us a lot about that Pistons bunch. Or that Billups' game today is about psychology and intelligence. Or how much of a true point guard he really is.

Okay, fine. I'm really just posting this for the haircut of Celtics-era Billups.

I try to be modest about my YouTube finds. Mostly because anyone with enough time on their hands could turn them up. But this one has me feeling like a master in my field: Darius "Myles" visiting a Black Studies class at Portland's
Grant High School.

It's not like the once-promising Miles, who these days surfaces mostly only as a punchline, says much of anything. We hear that he took up basketball after spending a year in juvy at age eleven, his wife has "like five degrees," and he's become a fan of black history as he's aged. But there are so many small details to savor here. Of all the Blazers, why get Miles to come speak to the kids? How could these kids be this blase about an NBA millionaire in their midst? How does he go the entire clip without imparting any guidance of any kind?

I have a friend who knew Miles through a mutual friend back in his AAU days. She described him as "really polite and shy, but impossible to understand." The couple of times Miles came by her house, he would eat whatever potato chips were around and try and hide in the corner. Glad to see that some things never change all that much.

As you may have noticed, we at the FanHouse spend a lot of time scouring YouTube for the finest in goofy NBA clips. But that doesn't mean we're not impressed by the recent accomplishment of Both Teams Played Hard, who put together a comprehensive collection of, well, a ton of great NBA commercials. Some of these are over-familiar, but the overall effect is hard to beat.

For a teaser, I've included the "Play it again, Grant" ESPN spot. Nothing too spectacular, but there are forty-nine more where that came from.

Courtesy of the experts over at The Basketball Jones, here's Thomas unleashing it all against the Hawks last night. These are some of the most unspeakably rad NBA highlights you'll ever see, and the irony of seeing Josh Smith victimized like this is not for the faint of mind. They'll make you embarrassed to have ever gawked at this earlier explosion of his.

Tyrus Thomas is actually starting to play well, but really, does that even matter?

Hard to tell if it's simple out of confidence or hesitation. Either way, here's the commercial that launched the sneaker business as we know it. Yeah, there was that Magic/Bird joint the year before, but it's got none of the high-concept flash that's defined the modern shoe game. It's two guys playing basketball. Big deal. Here, the stirrings are faint, but you definitely can see a certain kind of advertising getting born.

DaniBoxx has a ton of other classic Mike commercials uploaded, including this goofily epic Lil' Penny spot.

I realize I'm about to reiterate something Shoals has already said, but honestly, it's so damn true it bears repeating: TRJ22487 really is a YouTube king.

In the past 24 hours this man/myth has uploaded team introductions for the '82 NBA Finals, a tremendously dreadful Mellencamp-Celtics music video and this gem: a CBS recap of the youth and injuries that shaped the 1985-86 season.

Seeing as my late-afternoon brain is by no means capable of processing the sheer awesomeness of this video, I'll just throw a few things out here and let you take it away in the comments. The melodramatic narrative ("Bol became the NBA's greatest calculated gamble"), Karl Malone's flush on Olajuwon (?), Captain Marvel rehabilitating in the pool as Mr. Mister's "Broken Wings" starts up . . . um, should I keep going?

That little bit of awesome is one in a series of six videos that the American Airlines Center jumbotron team recently uploaded for the world to see. (Have I ever mentioned just how much I love YouTube? Well, I do.)

Along with the Five Deadly Venoms homage, the boys upstairs produced: The Dirkinator, Terry Potter, The Mavrix, Young Dirkenstein and Harris Bueller's Day Off. Yes. Very, very witty stuff.

Here's to hoping they do a Jerry StackHouse Party, with Austin Croshere as 'Kid' next.

(A million thanks to Wes at Mavs Moneyball for the tip ... again. He's spittin' nothin' but pure blog fire lately!)