The gentleman in the photo that you see above is Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. He plays forward for the Charlotte Bobcats, and as many of you know he helped Kentucky win a national championship in 2012. He does not — nor did he ever — play for Middle Tennessee, Illinois or Ohio State. But that hasn’t stopped Nike from acting like he did.
As Nation of Blue pointed out, Nike posted a series of artsy posters on Twitter on Sunday to congratulate teams who made it into the tournament. For several of them, they took a photo of Kidd-Gilchrist and tweaked it so it appeared he was wearing the corresponding team’s uniform.
And they even went as far as to invert the image to switch things up a bit while congratulating the Fighting Illini.
On some level, I get it. Kidd-Gilchrist played for a team that is the reining national champion in college basketball. The part that’s strange is Nike’s decision to put him in the uniform of other schools. If you’re going to use him as a symbol of intensity from a player who won it all, that’s fine. Let’s not try to play it off like the dude giving the battle cry is still playing college ball.
H/T Deadspin
Photos via Twitter/Nike Basketball
