Three NBA players recently took part in a week-long tour of
China courtesy of shoe and sportswear manufacturer Li Ning: Shaquille O’Neal
(above), Baron Davis, and Jose Calderon. The tour showcased a campaign that
associated each player with a spirit animal. Yes, their spirit animal. And if
that isn’t awesome enough, once the spirit animal was successfully devined,
Beijing-based agency, Creatim, ratcheted up the awesome another notch by way of
the art direction shown above. Look again.

Shaq, not only jumping the shark, but jumping over and
dunking on the shark, while apparently playing ball on an offshore oil rig in
the South China Sea. Kudos to you Creatim creative director, Liu Fang. You have
created a twin stream of envy within me. Not only for the campaign and the
creativity–because in a million brainstorms I could not have come up with this
one–but also for the athletes themselves. Frankly, now I too want an awesome spirit
animal. And some rad airbrushing of myself with same. So I could get it
reproduced on the side of a 1974 Ford Econoline E100 Super Van. But I digress. Here’s
the simple piece of press about the campaign from Creatim.

In July 2009, Li Ning will hold Style Fighter 3+1 Basketball Challenge
and NBA Stars’ Meet in Beijing, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, Changsha and Chengdu.
Three different thematic basketball courts will be set up representing the
styles of Shaq O’Neal, Baron Davis and Jose Calderon respectively. Considering various
interest of young basketball fans, different competitions are designed for
them, including 3+1 contest, one-to-one contest, slam dunk competition, skill
competition, and so on. It is a good opportunity for the youth to learn from
the NBA stars.

Following some of these guys on Twitter during the trip was
really pretty fascinating. And given that Baron is a digital-minded fellow,
there’s also a pretty interesting Flickr stream for viewing too. But still, I
need an awesome spirit animal.

I really, really do.

Daniel Turman