Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Adventures in marketing (latest in a series)

The two best players in college basketball right now are supposed to be J.J. Redick of Duke and Adam Morrison of Gonzaga. Redick is officially listed as 6'4" although there have been whispers that he is closer to 6'2". Morrison is listed as 6'8".

All of which makes me find this cover photo from Sports Illustrated somewhat interesting.


The exact heights of basketball prospects-- like the ages of international baseball prodigies-- is the subject of much speculation by fans and deceit by agents and others. The official measurements taken at the Chicago pre-draft camp are as close as you get to a consistent, objective measurement. The 6'8" Gerald Green, for example, turned out to be 6'6" in his socks and a little over 6'7" in shoes.

It's hard to know what to make of this cover shot, which could be the result of lots of different real and photo-shopped alterations. That said, if this photo is undoctored and Morrison is really barely taller than Redick, then he, his agent and however many other people care about the large sums of money that depend on his eventual draft rank are fools for letting him pose for this picture in the first place. The big giant knock on Redick is that he is supposed to be too small, and slow, to defend NBA SGs for 40 minutes a night. If you're a SF prospect whose barely taller than the midget you might not want to trumpet that to the world.

Morrison is the pride of Spokane and the Supersonics, Blazers and Timberwolves are all supposed to be very high on him for the obvious marketing reasons. I'm starting to hope the Celtics land a top 3 pick so they could trade the rights to Morrison for a much lower pick and assets. Perhaps they could trade a top 3 pick and Raef to New York for a future Knicks #1 and Mo Taylor's expiring deal.

8 comments:

t.s. said...

Look at their respective arms. Morrison's shoulder is well above Redick's, and his elbow is well below. I'm not sure what it may mean about photo-shopping, but it's a little odd.

B said...

I also don't know nearly enough about photo-shopping to guess at what indicates something has been doctored or not. I also don't know enough about human anatomy to say how weird it would be for Morrison to just have long arms

t.s. said...

Kevin McHale had freakishly long arms. Michael Smith (and now I'm really dating myself) had freakishly short arms, as I recall. That would be the Michael Smith from BYU on whom the Celtics wasted a first-round pick in 1989.

t.s. said...

BTW, it appears that Smith is now broadcasting Clippers games.

maz said...

I think it's pretty clear that this is a photoshopped cover. First of all, I seriously doubt that Morrison and Redick were brought together for a photo shoot in the middle of the basketball season. Much more likely is that one or two photographers were sent to shoot them separately, and the cover was pasted together. I have no supporting evidence of this other than my gut instinct, and my hazy recollection of the SI article itself which I believe mentioned that Morrison and Redick had met only once in person, but were good online gaming buddies who often played Halo2 together. Sadly, I can't find the article online, so can't confirm this.

In any event, arm variances aside, it's pretty simple to do basic resizing and cut-and-pasting in Photoshop Elements, much less with the tools available to professional photojournalists. I can't imagine that there's anything more to this cover than that.

B said...

that makes sense

t.s. said...

Note, however, that this makes Morrison's arms even that much longer than Redick's. Maybe Morrison has freaky-long arms.

maz said...

True. But wouldn't one assume that most extremely tall people actually have unusually long arms and legs in order to be that much taller than the average person? One of the things that makes Shaq so unusual is that he looks like a completely proportional solidly built person -- he just happens to be 7 feet tall and 300 lbs. Most guys who are that size (or close) look like storks. Even if they're scaled down to relatively normal height, they would appear to be slender, long limbed people. Or maybe I'm crazy.