Mountain Dew Kickstart has partnered with the NBA to create a new promotion, and a perhaps unintended consequence might be some of the league’s stars joining forces to do more than promote an energy drink.
For years some NBA fans have bemoaned free agent players joining together on the same roster to form “super teams.” While whether or not players doing so is good for the league is a matter of opinion, the new Mountain Dew Kickstart Rising Stars program might have an effect on that dynamic.
Mountain Dew Kickstart is the official sponsor of the NBA’s new “Rising Stars” platform. It’s a commitment by both brands to raise awareness about up-and-coming stars in the league in several ways.
The roster, which includes a starting five, will have their off-court lives featured in a new content series produced by Turner. In addition, the rising stars will have relationships fostered with Dew’s squad of veteran superstars.
The Rising stars roster includes:
- Malcolm Brogdon
- Joel Embiid
- Kyle Kuzma
- Donovan Mitchell
- Dennis Smith Jr.
The veteran NBA superstars that these players will be spending time with include Kyrie Irving, CJ McCullom, Julius Randle and Russell Westbrook. While more details of exactly what the pairings will consist of and which players will be paired have yet to be released, it’s not hard to postulate what stronger relationships between players can lead to.
It’s also hard to argue that players teaming up on the court because of the relationships they built as part of the Rising Stars platform would be anything but a tremendous win for Kickstart. Put simply, Mountain Dew could milk that cow until it dries up from a marketing aspect. Any individual NBA team that the players would join together would gain similar benefits.
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Fans come down on different sides of whether forming “super teams” is good for the legacies of players. While there’s no guarantee that stronger relationships off the court will lead to pairings on the court, the story of how the relationships between these players develop will be worth watching in the content series.