Sunday, after dinner, I called my mother in Indiana. This time she had a question. She’d seen Anthony Edwards’ ad for his new Adidas shoe, where he hosts a late-night show that doesn’t exist, “Minnatlantasota”. He pokes fun at several stars. Jaylen Brown is “ol’ boy from Boston”. And my nephew had shown her what came next: Brown watching the ad live on Twitch, with V.J. Edgecombe, and answering.
She wanted to know who had won.
Let me tell you: I thought about it. In 2000, when I got to Charleroi with my bag, a centre said something to me at the warm-up. I didn’t understand French yet. I answered on the court, a box-out on the first rebound, clean, nothing more. He shook my hand at the end and we had a coffee at the club bar. It was over in forty minutes.
In this one, I told my mother, there is no court. There’s an ad on one side, a stream on the other. Nobody took a rebound. Nobody shook a hand. I told her that with my U10s on Sunday morning, we settle it before the end of practice, or the parents wait in the car park.
She asked if the shoe was any good. I said I didn’t know, that from the ad I remembered the show, the name “Minnatlantasota” and the nickname, but not the shoe.
She said: so Adidas won.
She’s right. She’s always right.
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.





