The Ads And Commercials Torturing Viewers Of The NBA Playoffs, Ranked From Bad To Worst

We've got to talk about the commercials airing during the NBA Playoffs.

If you're not a basketball fan, you may not be familiar with the torture viewers have been subjected to over the past week every time there's a timeout or some other stoppage of play. However, you can almost certainly relate to the feeling of hating one commercial that seems to play over and over.

Perhaps it's a jingle that makes you Google how to get a lobotomy. Maybe it's awkward celebrities delivering a forced tagline that has you contemplating, "How necessary are my ears, really?"

Now imagine there are five of those airing all at the same time, one after the other, every commercial break, and you'll understand what's happening right now on TNT and ESPN. It's been one week and already fans are at their wits' end with the drek they've been forced to sit through during commercial breaks, and there's about to be six more weeks of NBA Playoffs.

So, to mitigate the pain through creating order, or perhaps in a futile effort to get this article in front of the eyeballs of some marketing executives, we've ranked the terrible NBA Playoff ads from bad to worst and included some reactions and memes from people fed up with them.

5. "Don't Let Me Go" – Apple

The key issue with this batch of commercials is that it seems everyone decided to release a carnivorous earwig in the form of a short musical snippet at the same time. "Don't Let Me Go" features a bunch of duplicate and bad photos on an iPhone singing "Don't let me goOOooOoOOoOo" in wild autotune. Depending on your stomach for autotune, it can come off as extremely obnoxious, and it's done just that for legions of playoff viewers.

4. "Hit That Pose / Take That Flick" – Google Pixel

In what is arguably still not the worst audio assault on this list, Google is advertising the photo editor on its Pixel smartphone with a rhythmic chant of "Hit that pose, take that flick, check yo' angle, post that [bleep]." The pounding mantra is made all the worse by the censorship, which is probably of the "S-word" but the rhyme scheme clearly makes it sound like the whole song is about a dude taking a picture of his junk. It's quite literally the type of audio that could be used as psychological torture, as evidenced by this tweet:

3. "NO FLEX, ZONE! THEY KNOOOOW BETTER" – Wingstop

Despite their aural crimes, neither "Don't Let Me Go" nor "Hit That Pose / Take That Flick" are as bad as Wingstop's "NO FLEX, ZONE!" commercial (and yes, it has to be typed in all caps). The real crime here is the stop-start chop the ad's done to the hook of Rae Sremmurd's "No Flex Zone." The hook itself is catchy but it's only meant to be heard so many times in three minutes. Perhaps Wingstop didn't realize that blaring "NO FLEX, ZONE!…. NO FLEX, ZONE!…. THEY KNOOOOW BETTER" 40 times in a two-and-a-half-hour time frame (multiplied exponentially over multiple games a day) would turn the audience against them and inspire a surge of unhinged rage.

After an entire NBA season listening to that GODAWFUL “NO FLEX, ZONE” WING STOP COMMERCIAL I MIGHT ACTUALLY LOSE MY F*CKING MIND. pic.twitter.com/fAIFRNiY4o

— Jesse Milian (@jmilian16) April 22, 2024

2. "The NBA Playoffs… It's A Thing!" – The NBA

The NBA is clearly trying to establish new faces for the league now that LeBron James is approximately 138 years old in basketball years, but their "Playoff mode… it's a thing!" ad has done the league's new crop of superstars no favors.

The central premise of the league's marquee promotion for its biggest stretch of the season is that "Playoff Mode" is a thing for NBA superstars, but all the players deny that there's any difference between their regular season and postseason forms. This devolves into Chris Rock's voice asking a player if "Playoff Mode" is "a thing" and the player says "It's not a thing" and then Chris Rock says "It's definitely a thing!" and then he asks another player if "Playoff Mode" is "a thing" and then the player says "It's not a thing" and Chris Rock says "It's definitely a thing!" and so on for a grueling minute.

The crop of stars the NBA picked certainly has some charisma issues, and furthermore, it's baffling why the NBA would have all their stars say they don't play even better in the playoffs, but worst of all, it's annoyed a huge swath of NBA fans.

1. "What A Pro Wants" – AT&T

The undisputed worst of the "bad NBA Playoffs ads" is the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander / Chet Holmgren 'What A Pro Wants' Commercial from AT&T, and it's not close.

Upon first viewing, it might seem a little awkward, but not too bad. Just two guys fumbling their way through Christina Aguilera's "What A Girl Wants." The 900th time you see it, every baffling creative decision that went into making this thing grates on the eyes and ears.

Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren are 25 and 21 years old, respectively, meaning they were "0" and "not born" when Christina Aguilera's "What A Girl Wants" was released in 1999. Holmgren has admitted to not knowing the words to the song when he went in to film the ad. Perhaps why the pair are a black hole of personality as they try to act their way through the premise that they regularly practice singing this song together. They also could use that practice, because they cannot sing.

This is not a knock on SGA or Holmgren, who have no material to work with in this ad, plus no one expects them to be able to sing. Maybe they could have been charming if they were karaoke-ing a song from their actual childhood, like Katy Perry's "Firework" or Adele's "Hello." Maybe it could have worked if they weren't reciting the lyrics back and forth in a stilted joke that it's not even clear they understand. But whatever cocktail of creative malpractice cooked up this ad has driven NBA fans up the wall.

“What a pro wants… what a pro needs” pic.twitter.com/2KfveKHSsS

— Nick Maraldo (@nickmaraldo) April 29, 2024

For the full history of the What A Pro Wants Ad, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.