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Kobe Bryant, Kirilenko, Okur are BIG in Turkey

2010/03/22 10:55 am 000 2 comments

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FIBA News

Kobe Bryant’s superstardom has no boundaries, as the Los Angeles Lakers star is HUGE in Turkey. Literally.

The soon to be launched World Championship Giants promotional campaign is starting to create quite a buzz.

(Discuss the 2010 World Championships of Basketball in our forum)

This week, Utah’s daily paper the Deseret News turned up to a EnergySolutions Arena, where Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur were taking part in a photo shoot wearing their countries’ colours. With the media not being given access to the venue, it was anybody’s guess what was going on inside.

And the players were not about to give the plot away. “Okur used his modelling moment to get out of talking to media, jokingly showing reporters his Turkey basketball jersey as he came out of the locker room when he’d normally chat with reporters” the subsequent article read.

But Kirilenko did share his thoughts on the upcoming Championship with what is one of Utah’s big two newspapers. “We’re looking forward to the world championship in Turkey,” he told the paper.

“It should be a very nice event. The U.S. team is always going to be favourite, but everybody (is) going to try to beat them.” Luckily, at FIBA we have a pretty good idea about what was going on inside.

The players were being pictured in front of green screens and will be inserted into images of some of Turkey’s most famous landmarks.

A sneak preview released some months ago shows a gargantuan Kobe Bryant dribbling above the Bosphorus as his wreaking havoc on the Galata Bridge. Other highlights of the campaign include Hedo Turkoglu shooting as he dwarfs the famous Hagia Sophia and Tony Parker standing like a colossus in a seaside bay off the beaches of Izmir.

Kirilenko and Okur join an already impressive list of international superstars taking part in the promo.

Indeed, the campaign, which you may well come across in newspapers, on TV and on billboards the world over, also features giants like Joel Anthony, Carlos Arroyo, Andrew Bogut, Pau Gasol, Ersan Illyasova, Andrei Kirilenko, Dirk Nowitzki, Mehmet Okur, Luis Scola and Anderson Varejao.

So, as the tournament draws nearer, keep your eyes open for the Giants of the game making the ground tremble somewhere near you.

Read the original article at FIBA.com.

2 Comments

Martin Loosen

2010/03/27
4:36 pm

There is obviously a hole lot more to research about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.
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2010/04/08
2:43 pm

So pleased to enjoy such a entertaining post that does not fall back on base posturing to get the topic fulfilled. Thanks for a great read.

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