Thirty years ago, Chris Farley and college basketball collided in an unforgettable way

Thirty years later, Christian Laettner isn’t sure he knew it was coming. He played in the NBA in 1994, his second season with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Maybe someone had informed his agent, but he doesn’t think so.

The former Duke star remembers seeing the commercial on ESPN one day. Chris Farley, then at the height of his “Saturday Night Live” glory, wearing Laettner’s No. 32 jersey, recreated his buzzer-beating shot against Kentucky, a signature moment in NCAA Tournament history.

“All I know is that it suddenly came out and it was hilarious and amazing,” Laettner said The Athletics.

Farley did three spots that aired on ESPN, all promoting college basketball, all remembered for the physical comedy and shenanigans that made Farley so beloved and famous.

In one spot was Michigan’s Farley Rumeal Robinson, who stood on the foul line and had to sink two free throws to win the 1989 national championship. “And he makes it look…” Farley says, before he shoots and misses, not once, not twice, but six times, and screams in famous Farley frustration (“GO IN!”) after each stone.

In another, he’s North Carolina’s Michael Jordan in the 1982 title game, but instead of sinking the winning jumper from the wing, Farley decides to take a step back (he was ahead of his time in this), rightly noting in the It came to an end that college basketball at the time did not have a three-point line.

But it’s the Laettner ad that is so fantastic, so funny, so Farley.

“Okay, I’m Christian Laettner,” the comedian begins, dressed in a sharp Duke uniform. “1992. Duke Kentucky. Kentucky is up by one, Christian has the ball. Two more seconds.”

Farley turns and faces five Kentucky defenders, life-size cutouts made of plywood. He dribbles and shoots a turnaround jumper, just like Laettner did that memorable afternoon in Philadelphia in the East Regional final.

No.

“From the glass!”

“Gets its own rebound!”

To miss.

“Loose ball!”

Farley ducks and knocks over a Kentucky cutaway. Finally, he makes a layup and raises his arms in celebration.

“The Duke wins! Game of the century,” Farley shouts. “And that is the way it happened! … Well almost.”

Actually, this is how it happened.

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In 1993, Glenn Cole worked at Wieden+Kennedy, an ambitious advertising agency based in Portland, Oregon. Although today a global agency, Wieden+Kennedy at the time devoted much of its resources to one client, Nike. It was known from ‘Bo Knows’ and from Mars Blackmon who told Jordan: ‘Money, it has to be the shoes.’

A copywriter, Cole, 24, was the youngest at the company. A former sprinter at the University of Oregon, he loved the creativity and storytelling advertising offered, especially at Wieden+Kennedy. He described himself in that environment as an “idiot who was an intern half a minute ago.” But his superiors had enough of him to assign him an ESPN campaign that entailed a simple task.

Promote college basketball.

“I have the keys to this kind of cool car. No one is looking at it,” Cole said, referring to all the attention the company paid to Nike. “I have an ESPN basketball campaign. I watch ‘Saturday Night Live’ a lot. And I was obsessed with Chris Farley.

Cole had an idea. A common basketball moment: playing solo on a playground. Draw. Clock is running out. 3…2…1.

Yet the shot rarely falls. The countdown is reset. No game-winning heroics, just a tarmac victory.

“And so I thought it would be funny to mess with that trope,” Cole said. “And then I thought, ‘Oh my God, Chris would be the perfect person to do that.’”

Farley was approaching thirty and was a rising star. The New York Daily News had called him the breakout performer of SNL’s final season, someone who had brought the same kind of “volcanic, magnetic energy” as Eddie Murphy and John Belushi before him. His talent and comedy began to transfer to the big screen. “Tommy Boy,” starring Farley and David Spade, was set to premiere in 1995.

Even better in this case: Farley was a sports fanatic. He grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and played hockey and football. He had played club rugby at Marquette. On SNL, he played pickup hoops with castmates on 76th Street Basketball Court in Riverside Park.

“Chris was a gifted physical comedian,” said Doug Robinson, Farley’s agent. “And a lot of people don’t know that Chris was a really great athlete. He moved very well. He loved sports. So if Chris was going to do physical comedy, he would be committed to whatever he did.

Cole flew to Los Angeles to pitch the concept to Farley. ESPN asked if he had a backup plan in case Farley declined. “Of course,” Cole said.

Actually, he didn’t.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is a gamble,’” says Beth Barrett, producer of the campaign. “It was a time when it wasn’t as common as it is today for celebrities, famous athletes, comedians and musicians to sell out in commercials. It was almost a bad thing to be in a commercial.”

Cole met Farley in Farley’s hotel suite. Farley wore a tweed suit that was shoddy in design. Cole presented his vision and Farley understood immediately. The comedian got off the couch and started reenacting the Laettner spot. He knocked over a vase, which immediately made Cole realize, “Oh, I need to get something for you to knock over.”

“Yeah, this sounds like a lot of fun,” Cole remembers Farley saying. “Let’s do it.”

The spots were recorded days later in a Los Angeles studio. Nowadays, a celebrity would probably show up with some sort of entourage. But Larry Frey, the campaign’s creative director, recalls at the time that Farley’s manager arrived early and Farley later quit on his own. Spade came over around lunchtime.

“He literally looked like a 10-year-old kid, and they just called recess,” Frey said. “Full of energy. Like,”Hey guys! I’m probably going to screw it up today.‘Super self-mockery. Super excited. And just get started with it.”

They shot the spots in Michigan and North Carolina first, mainly because Cole knew what Farley had planned for Laettner and didn’t want to risk his star getting hurt.

(In addition to the ads, Farley also shot a series of promos that never aired. In the film below, Farley holds two stuffed animals and pantomimes a conversation about an upcoming rivalry game. Of course, the mascots soon attack each other, and then Farley, and the promo ends with a signature Farley outburst.)

For the Laettner spot, Cole gave simple instructions.

“Look, I’m going to put you on the three-point line,” he remembered telling Farley. “We’re going to start this piece the way everyone remembers it in our collective memory. And then look, man, try to make the shot, but if you don’t, just hurry up and try to finish the play and surprise me.

Farley, released.

Farley at his best.

He charged through cutouts of former Kentucky standouts Deron Feldhaus, John Pelphrey and Travis Ford, knocking them to the ground.

“A whirlwind,” Barrett said.

Good ideas don’t always translate. Cole knew immediately that this was the case.

“With each one of them, right after the first shot of each spot (all three), I was like, ‘Ah, f…, this is going to be incredible,’” he said.

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In “The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts,” authors describe Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby this period as the highlight of Farley’s life.

The comedian struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, but after visiting rehab in Alabama he tried to stay clean. Farley was confident and confident, the authors wrote, but it was ultimately a losing battle. In 1997, Farley died of an overdose at the age of 33.

When Cole and Barrett look back on that day in Los Angeles, the experience is as striking as the final product. Farley had performed on camera as usual. (After each take, he asked, “Was that funny?”) But he was also personable and engaging for the eight hours he was there.

“We would hang out in the green room between setups and he would ask questions and be interested in other people,” Barrett said. “And just being a bit of a dork. It was just one of those experiences that were quite rare in advertising, where you really got to know someone at the end of the day. It was pretty amazing.”

Farley and Cole had worked so well together, bantering back and forth and exchanging ideas, that Farley had asked him if he would be interested in writing for him at SNL. Cole panicked and thought, ‘What if I can’t put out great stuff every week?” It was an incredible offer, but Cole loved what he did. He refused.

“As far as I can remember, that was my third advertising project, but it was the first where I felt like I was working with someone to make something better than I or he could make on their own,” says Cole, who is now co- founder and chairman at 72andSunny, a global advertising agency.

A year or two after the commercials aired, Laettner was walking on a plane, about to board a plane. He doesn’t remember which airport or where he was going, but as soon as he boarded he saw a familiar face sitting in first class. It was Farley.

Like most celebrities, Farley looked down and tried not to be noticed, but he made eye contact with Laettner. Farley stood up and the basketball star and comedian hugged and laughed.

“Great commercial,” Laettner told him.

(Top illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletics; photos and videos courtesy of Glenn Cole)