ESPN NBA

Several months ago, everyone blogged about that exceptionally cool video of Steve Nash zipping around Manhattan playing sports.

It felt 100 times more fun or real than most video whose ultimate goal is to promote a brand. By being like that, it ended up making me like Nike even more. 

See, it's clever like that. They clearly gave the filmmaker leeway to do whatever they want. And you have to respect that.

They also gave the filmmaker a ton of time with Steve Nash. This was no two-hour commercial shoot. This feels closer to real. These people were all over Manhattan shooting all kind of different things. This took time.

How did the filmmakers get so much time with Nash, for this fairly underground video?

Turns out the filmmaker was Steve Nash. 

Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic writes:

Nash produced the 81-second piece and is the first Nike major sports athlete to do so (skateboarding and BMX athletes get similarly involved). Nash wrote it, pitched it, hired the director (Lola Schmabel) and produced his first piece on a $30,000 budget during his stay in New York City last summer.

It won't be his last filmmaking foray. Nash started a film production company with his cousin, director Ezra Holland, and plans to make independent-type films. ...

"At first, the idea was to shoot on different mediums -- camera phone, 8-millimeter, 16-millimeter (the eventual choice), security footage. My idea was the city was watching me. The genesis was a lot of people film me or take a picture of me in the city on cellphones. If it's such an appetite to see me do normal things, it was an idea to do something people like."

Childhood soccer clips, like a 3-year-old left-footed boot to open the film, were added with Nash's voiceover from an unscripted studio conversation. ...

Nash surprised the Nike brass with the quality after he felt they had provided a budget to placate his desire.

Nash has another video in the works, promoting the ecologically conscious Nikes that he has been wearing lately.