Kevin Durant used to be nice, but not anymore. At some point this season, the second-best player in the NBA stopped being the silent choirboy fans respected, and Nike and Wieden+Kennedy anticipated the change for their recent “KD Is Not Nice” campaign. Call it truth in advertising, because for whatever reason, Durant has really started to embrace the roll of edgy superstar.

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-So, who’s the most paid ad exec? link

-Production company Caviar added director Alex Stapleton to its roster.

-How’s about a nice long rant about advertising and religion? link

-Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant moves from Sprint to Champs–well, at least for now– in a new sport for the latter brand.

-Do you want see a CLIO opening montage? Well, do you? link

-Anomaly developed and launched the new website for Renaissance Hotels. link

-Apparently, Google kills 250K search links a week. Wait, can we Google these stats?  link

-Here are your 2012 Bees Awards winners. link

A couple of tipsters were raving to us over the weekend about this new, five-minute ditty from The Marketing Arm for PepsiMax, which has garnered nearly 1.3 million views since its Friday debut. So, what happens when a college-turned-NBA star decides to go undercover and take part in a little game of street hoops in Bloomfield, New Jersey?

Well, look no further than the clip above starring NBA’s 2011-12 Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving, the former Duke standout and current Cleveland Cavaliers guard, who goes incognito and decides to do some hustling in a pickup game. If you feel like watching “Drew” really take off and talk smack in the process, just fast-forward to around the 2:00 mark. Or, just stick through the whole clip and see how Kyrie transformed into character for this PepsiMax piece, which, to be specific, was concepted/produced out of the Omnicom-owned Marketing Arm’s L.A. office. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll go figure out how Irving’s game compares to the pickup battle that Kevin Durant engaged in and destroyed last year. Credits for “Uncle Drew” after the jump.

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Nearly three months after picking up the baton for the wireless carrier from GS&P, “Team Sprint”–aka Digitas and Leo Burnett–have created their first work for the brand. In case you didn’t catch it during NBA All-Star weekend, the spot starred West starter/scoring machine Kevin Durant, the mobile game “Doodle Jump” and highlighted Sprint’s unlimited data plan. We already think the Durantula is a better actor than Shaq. Credits below:

Agency: Team Sprint, Digitas & Leo Burnett

Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle

Creative Director: Michael Boychuck, Kevin Drew Davis, Mark Moll

Executive Producer: Chris Rossiter

Producer: Bryan Litman

Account: Vanessa Mackey and Melissa Wolf

Production Company: Smuggler

Director: Randy Krallman

VFX/SPX: Mass Market

Editorial: Whitehouse Post

Editor: Matthew Wood

Director of Photography: Brian Newman

On Christmas Day, the NBA returned after a 5-month lockout put the entire 2011-2012 season in jeopardy. The league’s shortened 66-game season kicked off with some very exciting games on Sunday which included a Chicago Bulls last-second come-from-behind win at the L.A. Lakers, perennial losers the L.A. Clippers looking unstoppable with the addition of point guard Chris Paul, and the Miami Heat avenging last season’s championship series by drowning the Dallas Mavericks. Also, we had Kevin Durant‘s disgusting shoes for some reason.

Of course, advertisers couldn’t be happier that America’s second most-popular professional sports league is back. Aside from media buyers rejoicing that prime time sports will continue well into 2012 after the NFL season comes to a close, creative types are giving a nod to the NBA. Above, NBA commentators Bill Walton, Steve Kerr, Kenny Smith, Spero Dedes and Jon Berry star in a new spot for Google+ from GS+P. The spot is one of three highlighting Google+’s “Hangouts” feature (the other two were created internally by Google Creative Labs), a critically adored but oft-ignored feature of the social network that has lost considerable buzz since its launch five months ago. Aside from the “Big Red-Head” and his buddies doing a very nice job commenting on an backyard game of hoops, the campaign features a spot that uses “Hangouts” to watch the Muppets rock out to David Bowie and Queen’s classic collaboration, “Under Pressure.” Like The Muppets (currently in theaters), it’s well-worth a viewing.

Also, we would be remiss not to give some mention to TNT’s epic opening day promo, “Forever,” which was directed by Sedna Films’ Drew Watkins. The above spot delighted NBA fans across the county (Kiran and I included) by pairing today’s superstars with legends of the game. Above, you’ll see the impossible become a reality, including Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant running out on court together, Brandon Jennings playing alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Michael Jordan fist-bumping Derrick Rose to Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors’ track “Live Forever.” Considering how upset and jaded NBA fans got over the course of the lockout, it’s stunning that TNT of all things was able to remind us why we love this game so much.

Jayanta Jenkins, who you may remember as our “Hot Ad (W0)Man of the Day” at some point in 2008, has been promoted to global creative director on TBWA\Chiat\Day LA’s much-lauded Gatorade account. Last we remember, Jenkins was the creative director on the “G” spot from April featuring Serena Williams and Kevin Durant. His underlings will be Brent Anderson and Steve Howard, who were promoted from CDs to GCDs on the global and U.S. Gatorade account.

Jenkins joined Chiat LA after spending seven years as a senior AD at Wieden + Kennedy, where he worked on campaigns starring LeBron James as well as other Nike work. Prior to that, he served as an art director for nearly four years at the Martin Agency. As for new GCD Howard, he co-created the award-winning “Replay” work for Gatorade and worked on Nissan and Visa along with Anderson.

TBWA\Chiat\Day LA also hired Almap BBDO alums Renato Fernandez and Gustavo Sarkis as ACDs on Gatorade. Chiat LA’s CCO Rob Schwartz speaks from the heart of the appointments/promotions in a statement, saying,  “Brent, Steve and Jay are three of the smartest and most modern creatives in the business. Brent and Steve’s work, in particular on Gatorade Replay, is one of the most awarded ideas ever. Their passion and ideas for Gatorade and TBWA will continue to keep us on the cutting edge. It’s a testament to the bench strength of TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles when the people we’d typically search the world for are right here in Los Angeles.”

With a little help from the Godfather of Soul James Brown and a handful of athletes including Kevin Durant and Serena Williams, TBWA\Chiat\Day LA continues to push the philosophy and product line of Gatorade’s “G.” The agency once again resorts to the three-phase motif of “The Before, The During, The After” and shows that within the sugary energy drink spokesperson lies the heart of a badass. Camp G tells us that this latest campaign “metaphorically examines the story inside the athletes.” Whatever the case, at least they’ve made some strides since 2009. Credits after the jump…

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Well, at least one major agency’s awake during the holidays. Oklahoma City Thunder small forward/shooting guard Kevin Durant is a blossoming NBA superstar, and as the very young face of a fairly new team located in the middle of nowhere, Durant is looking more and more like the anti-Lebron James. Oddly enough, W+K and Nike seem to be playing up Durant’s “man of the people” persona in contrast to the brand’s recent campaigns featuring James.

Using Durant’s Oklahoma City neighbor and Thunder superfan Mathias Murphy to give a candid, low-budget look into the opinions and personality of the NBA talent, Nike and W+K have turned Murphy’s Twitter and YouTube profiles into an interactive fan forum. As seen above, Durant openly gives his neighbor an honest opinion on the Dallas Mavericks’ star Dirk Nowitzki in preparation for last night’s game (which the Thunder lost despite Nowitzki leaving in the second quarter with a knee injury).

Since the campaign launched in late October, Murphy’s YouTube has seen over 4.4 million views, he has over 10,000 followers on Twitter and the newest NBA Jam videogame features Durant and Murphy as an unlockable team, proving that having an NBA player as your next door neighbor can be an ideal living situation if he’s not a jerk.