What you are looking at here is a very strange local television ad that the New Orleans Pelicans made for local television, featuring Ryan Anderson as Overstated Man In Wig, Tyreke Evans as Extremely Permissive Salesman, and Anthony Davis as "The Special Man." There is a big explanation for why it exists and a small one, and neither of them matter because this ad is perfect.The broader explanation is that this sort of happy team-generated goofiness happens sometimes, if generally less weirdly or referentially, and never in (larger) markets where the combination of organizational grandiosity and the extreme fan self-regard invariably lends a sort of Respectable Luxury Vibe to the proceedings. The New York Yankees, the absolute acme of both of the aforementioned traits, advertise season ticket packages in ads scored with a French horn soundtrack that sounds like a Mike Francesa caller's idea of Handel. It's laughable, but more to the point it's pompous and boring, and it's why big smug cities can be pompous and boring.
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New Orleans is neither terribly big nor terribly smug, but it is both weird and distinctive in a way no other American city is; on balance, their sandwiches are also significantly better than anyone else's. New Orleans knows what it's about.More than that, New Orleans folk are up on and deeply into New Orleans in a way that, say, New Yorkers are not necessarily up on or deeply into New York. Which is why, as odd as it looks to those of us not in New Orleans, it is not really that weird that the Pelicans made an ad that intricately references a decades-old and fully batshit local television ad for Frankie and Johnny's, a local furniture store whose business model appears to be 1) we are run by a man who looks like a miniature Frank Vincent in a Dominique Wilkins wig and 2) we will absolutely extend credit to literally anyone. This is strange, but the Pelicans trusted that New Orleans people would get these New Orleans jokes.And that is how the New Orleans Pelicans—the NBA team from New Orleans, in every possible way—came to make the best and weirdest NBA advertisement of this or many other years. New Orleans is not like any other place, and that is something every other place should really try to work on.[H/T to Mike, and The New Orleans Advocate]