Scottie Pippen played the best years of his career alongside perhaps the most marketable superstar in the history of sports. Michael Jordan had the most unbelievable global image, and products endorsed by him would fly off the shelves. Being in the shadow of MJ famously got to Pippen a fair bit, but one of his commercials is quite underrated and possibly funnier than anything MJ has ever done.
Pippen appeared in various big-name commercials alongside other stars like Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon, but his one-man show for Chicago’s Mr. Submarine possibly takes the cake for being brilliant. In the commercial, Pippen walks in next to an actual 6-foot sub before delivering a line stoically brimming with innuendo that only Pippen can deliver. Words can’t do justice to this masterpiece.
“This is one 6-footer I can’t handle one on one. Ladies, let’s have a party,” said Scottie.
On the face of it, the line is a reference to Pippen being one of the premier defenders of his generation but it has other connotations that make it very funny when considering how Pippen says the line. Watching him eat subs with the two cheerleaders after that while sitting on the ground then manages to make the commercial a bit more bizarre.
Advertising has improved leaps and bounds in the modern age, with everything becoming quite polished and going through various checks for propriety before being put on the air. The 80s and 90s were a different time though, and it made for some of the zaniest content that the history of advertising and marketing has to offer.
It’s hard to tell how Pippen himself feels about the commercial in hindsight if he even remembers the small 30-second video but these little things add so much color to the life of everyone’s favorite NBA superstars. The one thing that everyone would probably like to know though, is how many subs did they manage to sell with this epic commercial.
