What is so Great About Talcum Powder?

It's not just for your grandparents. Talcum powder has always been good for counteracting the stank in your shoes and the rash on your babies backside but why are more and more basketball players using it? Probably a few days after Michael Jordan started his pre-game ritual of tossing "chalk" in the air above the scorer's table, other players began to replicate this purely for its stylistic attributes, much like the tongue wag that helped everybody be like Mike. Nowadays though it seems like the tongue is passe and the chalk toss is really, really the thing you gotta do. And just to confirm that notion, Nike, in cooperation with Portland, Oregon based advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, created a beautiful black and white piece that is going to have everybody just doing it. Tossing up some talcum powder that is.

But why did Mike do it? For the extra grip on the ball the powder gave him by reducing the sweat and moisture on his hands, that's why. But why is Nike-Basketball's latest commercial spotlighting the chalk? Well for one thing Lebron James has taken to doing it, as well as Boston Celtics star Kevin Garnett. It also just looks cool, especially in black and white. Now, I wanna throw some chalk. I guess I still want to be like Mike. I wanna be, I wanna be. And with cameos by basketball players Greg Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, Daniel Gibson, Anderson Varejao, J.J. Hicks and hip-hop artist Lil Wayne it seems like everybody grew up wanting to be like Mike. The barber, the baker and the junior high girls basketball team, everybody throw some chalk.

Legend has it that Jordan, when he first started using talcum powder, didn't want anybody to "be like Mike" and created the fist bump as an alternative to the high five in the process. After throwing up the chalk he would walk down the line of opposing players offering up his fist for a "bump" instead of the traditional hand slap that would have rubbed off some of his magic powder on the other teams hands. And thus the fist bump was born and the tossing of the chalk became a regular pre-game display. So now you know where that came from. Not only do we owe signature athlete shoes to MJ but to him we also owe the fist bump. He's pretty much the man. Well it's a good story anyway and smartly, Nike also created a good story for the Zoom LeBron VI, and posted it alongside the commercial spot on nikebasketball.com. This is just good marketing all the way around and entertaining to boot, especially with the throwback hip hop track Candyman by the Cornershop holding it down.

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