San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
ICEMAN’S COOL POSTER STILL A HOT ITEM
Iconic Nike promotion tipped off a new era in sports advertising
Of course George Gervin still has the poster.
Spurs fans know it well. The 1978 Nike poster features a portrait of the Spurs great seated on a throne of ice blocks, a silver basketball under each hand to match his silver tracksuit, which has the word “ICE” on the breast. At the bottom of the poster, Gervin’s nickname, “ICEMAN,” appears in in bold, black letters beneath a Nike swoosh and the future Hall of Famer’s pristine white Nike high-tops.
It’s an image as sleek as Gervin’s signature finger roll. And even now, more than 40 years later, people still tell the 69-year-old Hall of Famer how much they loved seeing him on their bedroom and dorm room walls, often alongside the famous 1976 pinup of Farrah Fawcett.
So it’s no wonder the iconic poster still has a place in Gervin’s home — and still warms the Iceman’s heart.
“I appreciate them liking this. I appreciate them wanting this,” said Gervin, who was seated center court at a gym in his George Gervin Academy with a matted copy of the poster by his side. “That became part of who I am. The poster is another version of the finger roll. I’ll say it like that. I’m so thankful.”
There’s a lot more to the poster than just its coolness.
When Gervin shot the Nike promotion, the company and the NBA were far from the global juggernauts they are today; both were just starting to market their on-court products with off-court personality.
Then there’s the cheeky side to suffering for your art. Gervin almost froze his butt off for the job — he had no idea he’d be sitting on real blocks of ice for an all-day shoot.
And don’t forget the collectability. Prices for the
original poster are all over the court, depending on condition and whether Gervin signed it. But the real grail is a rare Spanish version that says “El Hombre de Hielo,” which Gervin suggested as a nod to San Antonio and South Texas Hispanic culture.
“I can’t find mine,” Gervin said. “I have my wife looking for it. I got it. She’s gonna find it.”
Gervin’s 15-year basketball career started in 1973 when he joined the ABA’s Virginia Squires midseason. Squires guard Fatty Taylor nicknamed the lanky Gervin “Iceberg Slim,” a nod to the former Chicago pimp who wrote a series of bestselling books about his street-hustling ways.
That nickname eventually morphed into “the Iceman” for Gervin’s cool composure and seemingly effortless jump shots, layups and, of course, finger rolls. He took the moniker and those talents to San Antonio in the middle of the 1973-74 season.
By 1978, Gervin had made a name for himself as a scoring dynamo. That year, he won the first of four scoring titles in dramatic fashion, dropping 63 points on the final game of the season to squeak past the Denver Nuggets’ David Thompson. Gervin finished the season with 27.22 points per game to Thompson’s 27.15.
About that time, Nike was still warming up to marketing its brand, not just its products. The sneaker company had struck gold the previous year with the slogan “There is no finish line.” Created by John Brown and Partners, Nike’s first-ever advertising agency, the ad campaign featured a
solitary runner and some prosaic lines about running but no actual Nike product.
The ad’s success inspired John Brown and art director Dennis Strickland to try a series of socalled “personality posters” that would feature the NBA players with Nike endorsement deals in unconventional settings and poses that played off their nicknames and personalities.
In addition to the Gervin poster, the series included Utah Jazz great Darrell “Dr. Dunkenstein” Griffith wearing a mad scientist lab coat and a “Supreme Court” poster featuring Gervin and other Nike hoops stars in judges’ robes.
Today, Gervin’s poster and those other Nike ads hang in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the nation’s only design museum.
Caitlin Condell, an associate curator at the museum, said Nike was doing something new: showcasing athletes as celebrities and playing off their fans’ knowledge of them with an insider’s sensibility. That’s now the standard in pro sports marketing.
“(The posters) in that series made the Nike brand synonymous with the NBA, with celebrity, with sports personalities,” Condell said. “That was sort of a target goal around this. And it
was incredibly successful.”
The Gervin poster is especially effective and evocative. Its wispy white background looks otherworldly, Condell said, while the basketball hoop behind Gervin practically doubles as a halo.
“I would certainly use the word ‘heavenly,’ ” she said.
Posing for that image, however, was anything but heavenly for Gervin.
He said he had no idea what the ad was going to be until he walked into an Oregon warehouse and saw guys hauling ice blocks to build his throne.
“I didn’t know none of it,” Gervin said. “(But) I was game for anything.”
Nike then handed him a silver tracksuit to wear while seated on the throne and some clear plastic to sit on — so the tracksuit wouldn’t get wet.
“If you really take a look at the poster and where I’m sitting, you can see the plastic,” he said.
Gervin sat for hundreds of photos that day, getting up every 10 minutes to thaw out.
“My butt paid the price,” he said with a laugh. “That was about the only thing that was a little difficult, to be able to sit there and then sit still on blocks of ice.”
About the only input Gervin gave for the ad was suggesting the Spanish version.
“It’s fitting for where I live, Mexican heritage,” he said. “I know that that’s what I wanted because of where we were (in San Antonio).”
It’s unclear how many Gervin posters Nike made in 1978. The Spanish one is all but impossible to find. The English version is more readily available. Recent eBay sales show it selling from about $18 for a ripped and wrinkled copy in poor condition to $895 for a signed original without pinholes or tape residue.
“It’s only worth what someone would pay for it,” said Paul Cavazos, owner of House of Cards and Collectibles in San Antonio.
Cavazos has never owned or sold a copy of the Gervin poster, but he is well aware of it and its popularity, especially in San Antonio.
“I would think this is the most iconic poster made by a Spurs player ever,” he said. “If I had it in the store, I don’t even know if I’d sell it, to be honest with you.”
Gervin said he’s seen smaller reprints of the poster, usually copies Spurs get for him to sign. And in 1996, when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the NBA set up a photo shoot of Gervin leaning over icy basketballs as an homage to his classic poster.
Next year, Gervin will be the subject of a new documentary by Mike Tollin, producer of the critically acclaimed Michael Jordan docuseries “The Last Dance.”
The Gervin documentary will cover his personal life and his many basketball achievements, which in addition to four scoring titles include 12 straight All-Star Games, nine of those in the NBA, and a place on the NBA’s 50th and 75th anniversary teams.
And it’s sure to include a certain poster that’s another timeless highlight in the Iceman’s career.
“I’m gratified. I’m humbled,” Gervin said. “I didn’t play ball for greatness. I played it because I loved it. So it becomes more (about) passion, what that poster (means) for me.”