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Marvel comics inspired NBA team covers appeared on ESPN The Magazine's NBA preview edition in the first of the NBA-Marvel partnering efforts.  I'm guessing those covers were a success because the NBA and Marvel have just announced that they are launching a new line of clothing pairing  famous Marvel superheroes with famous NBA teams.  Imagine the Hulk and the Celtics (think green) and Spiderman and the Knicks (the webslinger prowls Gotham).  Since the pairing is only famous superheroes and famous teams, I imagine that means we won't be seeing the Memphis Grizzlies paired with a superhero anytime soon.

Without seeing the clothing line, it's a bit premature to speculate on the success of the venture.  However, Marvel characters are very popular now, fueled by the success of the recent run of Marvel movies: Spiderman (and sequels) , X-Men (and sequels), Wolverine and Iron Man I and II, with more: Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, on the way.   The saturation marketing movies seem to get coupled with the ever present NBA ought to guarantee success.  The clothing line just has to not be too ugly to succeed.

One other point about this partnership that we should not overlook is the deep and extensive partnership that the NBA has with Marvel's parent corporation, Disney.  You may recall that Disney is also the owner of ESPN and ABC, two of the NBA's longstanding broadcast partners, so this is just another exercise of corporate synergy at work.

You didn't think the NBA was going to let the NHL have the entire comics stand to itself did you?  Of course not.  The NBA, in conjunction with broadcast and digital partner ESPN and its corporate parent Disney, which now owns Marvel, has brought to the basketball and comics fans in all of us the Marvel inspired variant covers for each NBA team for its NBA preview edition of ESPN The Magazine.  Check it out here.


It's not exactly the same thing as creating superheroes for each city and building cartoons and comics around them as Marvel will be doing for the NHL, but, hey, everybody has to start somewhere.