‘Michael Jordan’ And The Utah Flash: When Publicity Stunts Go Too Far
When Brandt Andersen, owner of the D-League’s Utah Flash, originally said he’d host a one-on-one Byron Russell vs. Michael Jordan game, I wrote that it seemed like nothing more than a publicity stunt at the time. One can hardly blame Andersen: he’s a D-League owner, and the economy isn’t exactly dictating families spend whatever extra cash they have on D-League basketball games.
So hype up a Jordan-Russell matchup, never say with 100 percent certainty Jordan isn’t going to show, pretend Jordan was in a restaurant yesterday — they even made a terribly fake YouTube video of him eating! — sell out the place with standing room only, and then … have the crowd furious at you when you totally punk them.
From Spencer Ryan Hall’s Twitter account:
“They brought out a [Michael Jordan] look alike. Wow, the crowd is furious. Had MJ showed up, it would have been one of the greatest moments ever. Instead, the crowd is booing and throwing back free shirts. Wow, this place went from electric to catatonic faster than an MJ free throw line jumper in the Delta Center. PS, the lookalike was wearing six inch lifts.“
Yeah. So a bunch of people bought tickets in hopes of seeing the real MJ, and they walked out a dude that was six-foot tall. And everyone got mad. Good work, guys!
Look: Again, I understand Andersen’s intentions here. And I’ll admit, when that now fake story of Jordan being in the restaurant was leaked, part of me thought maybe, just maybe something might go down. The fact that they were still perpetuating the lie the day of peeked my interest. Until, of course, Russell squashed it.
But when you essentially lie and fabricate an entire story about the greatest basketball player of all-time being in your Utah town, and get money from a bunch of people because of it, that’s not exactly the most ethical thing to do. That’s just mean. It’s one thing to campaign for Stephen Marbury to come play for your team, or have your mascot up on a billboard while you try and sell tickets, as Andersen has done. But it’s a whole other thing to construct this story about Jordan. This is still basketball; it’s not the WWE.
Yet, it worked. The fans came through the turnstiles. So in that sense, Andersen’s the winner. And we’re all losers for even thinking a matchup such as this was going to go down at a D-League game of all places.
UPDATE: On his blog, Andersen apologized to people who thought he went over the top.
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