The third most viewed video on the NBA YouTube channel is not game footage or dunk highlights. It’s a commercial.
“Jingle Hoops” was a 30-second spot released in November 2013 to promote the NBA’s special holiday edition uniforms and December 25 game schedule. The video shows five NBA stars shooting balls into baskets with coordinated bells on them in a specific order to play the song “Jingle Bells.”
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The competition scored gold with the advertisement, which is immediately recognizable more than ten years later. The NBA even released a new animated version earlier this month in hopes of tapping into that nostalgia.
Part of the appeal of the original is how they pulled it off. There’s a lot of discussion on that topic in the comments on YouTube, and that’s exactly what the creators intended.
“We had a debate about whether it should feel like a shot or not,” said producer Benton Roman. “The disadvantage is that you don’t see it [players’] faces…but we decided it would feel more powerful if it felt like it was just one shot, that they actually did it.”
Did the players take 25 shots in a row in one take? No. But here’s how they did it.
The concept was created as a follow-up to the 2012 “Big Color” commercial, which featured five stars dribbling basketballs to the beat of “Carol of the Bells.” The league hired director Jonathan Klein, who was familiar with working with players, having done the famous Uncle Drew commercials starring Kyrie Irving. “We were tasked with raising the bar,” Klein said.
The producers created a “pre-viz,” which was essentially an animation showing which players would play which notes. They had to come up with a sequence that looked visually cool, with balls flying in different directions to catch the viewer’s attention. In addition, they had to avoid a repeat of an issue from the ‘Big Color’ ad, in which Dwyane Wade takes just seven dribbles, while his four peers take at least 26 dribbles each.
Finally, in the 44th version of the pre-viz, they came to an order and were ready to shoot.
In September, Steve Nash, Stephen Curry and James Harden recorded together in a Los Angeles studio, while Derrick Rose contributed in Chicago, Kevin Durant recorded in New York and LeBron James filmed the dunk that closes the video from Miami. “The biggest challenge was that they weren’t all together,” Klein said.
The players faced a row of five basketball hoops whose nets did indeed have bells tuned to specific tones. Each player wore an earpiece that told them which basket to turn to and when to shoot. They darted away, grabbed a new ball and waited for the next prompt.
Without the pressure of a game, the best players in the NBA rarely miss. “The skill is incredible,” says creative director Nick Klinkert. “And then competitiveness. They really didn’t like missing a single shot.”
Still, they missed every now and then. When shooting at three or four different hoops and from atypical angles, it was difficult not only to hit all the shots, but also to get the timing exactly correct. The most important thing, Benton emphasized, was that the players didn’t react to their mistakes.
The creators afterwards had a group of non-NBA players of varying heights stand in the same spot as the players and filmed them taking hundreds of shots. Using visual effects, they were then able to take a shot from an NBA player and use motion blur to convert the ball in the air to someone else’s shot that better matched the necessary timing.
Roman doesn’t remember whose shots were and weren’t replaced during the edit, but he remembers Rose performing exceptionally despite being statistically the group’s worst shooter in games. “He was probably the most involved,” Klein said. “He loved the concept and he was really into it.”
The jig is done, but the magic of the video is that it looks real: a few shots even rattle instead of swish. “We decided it didn’t have to be absolutely perfect. That would not be credible,” said Klinkert. “It’s about finding that balance, even if the song is off by half a beat. Things like that definitely came together in post and editing.
A big reason for the video’s enduring nature is the longevity of the featured superstars, all six of whom have won an NBA MVP award. Eleven years have passed, but James, Durant, Curry and Harden are still playing near All-Star levels, and “Jingle Hoops” remains one of the best-done sports commercials in recent memory.
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