When I play basketball, joy comes from winning, sure. But even more than than it comes from sharing some kind of understanding with teammates. It is a game of ten thousand understandings. If I draw a double-team, you head to the rim for an open layup. If I front the post on defense, you keep an eye out for a lob. If I'm guarding the unbelievably fast guy, you protect the paint.

And on and on. We go through these things. Often without even talking about them. And a lot of the time, all that leads to wins, which is great. 

But along the way, there is happiness in understanding each other, and being understood. That's teamwork. And there is great joy in teamwork.

I'm not stupid, though. I know that for a big fat chunk of players, most of whom are hopped up on young people hormones, the emotional pinnacle of playing basketball comes not from building something as a team, but from destroying opponents. Not from creating victories, but from vanquishing challengers. From making the big people who might scare you look and feel small.

That's a perfectly good use of basketball, too. If you need to humiliate people, this is a pretty safe way. And let's be honest, if I could dunk, I'd probably be more into that than I am. (Who doesn't have a demon or two to exorcize/exercise?)

Anyway, talk of posterizing, breaking ankles ... that's all about humiliation, and that's absolutely a part of basketball. A big part of it.

And when it comes to using basketball to humilate your opponent, there is a certain scale. Shooting a jumper over someone is maybe a one. Beating someone to the hoop for a layup might be a two. Dribbling through your legs as you do so could make that worth three, dribbling through their legs as you do might get you up to six. Sevens are garden variety dunks and blocks, while there is a special carve out somewhere around eight or nine for using your crossover to make the defender actually fall over. 

But up at the top of the humiliation hierarchy, right there with doing many of the above things with the game on the line, is an explosively humiliating move whose handy shorthand might not belong on this family-friendly website.

We can call it the I'm-jumping-so-high-as-I-dunk-over-you-that-my-crotch-is-in-your-face move.

A lot of basketball advertising taps into that humiliation aspect of the sport. I'm sure we could make 1,000 grad students busy finding out why.

But then we get to this recent Nike ad. (Sorta kinda via Deadspin.)

That's the new pinnacle, or trough, of humiliation-themed basketball advertising.

Click the link above, and you'll see that there are several print ads in the series, and they are undeniably striking. People will frame them. The production is top-notch.

But the main thing people will remember is the shot of one dunking man's junk in another player's face, with the big memorable headline: THAT AIN'T RIGHT.

The ads were created by Wieden + Kennedy. The comments on a Wieden + Kennedy blog (and here's where blogging is pretty interesting -- the creators of these ads are apparently reading and commenting) show a number of different reactions.

• Stephen: "Way to perpetuate homophobic stereotypes ... 'that ain't right' ... I'm sure some 15 year old gay kid who is struggling with his sexuality will see these and think great things about himself. What a positive message Nike!"
  
• Gitamba: "I seriously would hate to have been the guys who had to get some dudes um ... junk in my face over and over til they got the right shot."
• Aaron Eichorst: "They look great but why keep hitting that same ignorant drum that it's not 'right' to have your face next to some dude's junk. There are plenty of dudes that have to deal with this bigoted idea in a real way every day. Love the others though." 
• dontthinkso: "Thanks for helping the gay teen suicide rate climb, even if just by a little. Great work, geniuses."
• Alex: "I'm a copywriter. I get it. But it's still kind of lame to fall back on something so base to get a laugh. Especially when it's at the expense of a whole group of people to whom homophobia isn't a joke. A perfect example is the comment from Gitamba posted above. As an insider, I really do get it. And despite being gay myself, I still think it's kind of funny. Inappropriately funny. But funny, none-the-less. I just don't think it's socially responsible to feed into prejudice to sell a product."
• Brandon: "As a gay male and a black male, I find that some of the commenters are jumping the gun and crying wolf for an ad that I feel is in no way homophobic. Growing up, what made dunking on someone embarrassing was and is not a man's genitals in your face but the fact that you were slammed on. That's what this is about and I can't help but to feel that it is YOU (the negative commenters) that are ignorant by making such knee jerk reactions. I can't help but to feel that these comments are coming from people who don't play or enjoy basketball to get the point of reference."
  

There are many other thoughtful and not so thoughtful comments. 

Man, I have a whole jumble of thoughts. For instance:

• Homophobia is real, it is common, and it is damaging. All that is true in general in society, but especially around sports. There's a reason no current NBA player has ever come out of the closet. People should be aware of that and act accordingly. It's not funny.
  
• These are kick-ass ads, that have meaning and make basketball sense without injecting any homophobia into the conversation. Getting humiliated like that is "just wrong," in a basketball sense, without the male on male interpretation. Pretend the genders were scrambled in that ad -- a woman defender, or a woman dunker, or both. The same headline can work without the implication that the man on man contact is the gross part.
  

Knowing that there is a lot of homophobia out there, is advertising that might stoke those fires in poor taste?

I can't wait to live in a world where this ad would not be commonly interpreted as homophobic, but I'm not sure I do live there now. And in that setting, I guess this counts as ethically sloppy in my book. Or maybe intended to stoke some fires to draw some attention to itself. If I ran Wieden + Kennedy, or Nike, I wouldn't have green-lighted that headline with that image. But I'm not at all surprised that others did, and maybe the conversation that ensues makes us all a little more aware.