ESPN.com's Greg Wyshynski reported the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority will "create a commemorative SmarTrip card" in Capitals RW T.J. Oshie's honor if the Capitals "close out the series and win their first Stanley Cup." Oshie rode the Metro to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final, and "discovered he had insufficient funds on his SmarTrip card to exit." But Metro employees "recognized Oshie and led him through the turnstiles, and soon he was up the escalator and en route to" Capital One Arena. Oshie was "handed a card with sufficient funds by ESPN's Steve Levy during a 'SportsCenter' appearance Monday." Oshie and Capitals D Matt Niskanen also "rode the Metro to Capital One Arena before Game 3" (ESPN.com, 6/5).
GET BUCKETS: AD AGE's E.J. Schultz noted Pepsi is "running a new ad to tout a feature film" based on Celtics G Kyrie Irving's "Uncle Drew" character. "Uncle Drew," the movie, resulted from a deal between Pepsi, Lionsgate's Summit Entertainment and Temple Hill. The movie "opens June 29." Pepsi's ad "goes all-in on ginning up ticket sales." The spot features the Uncle Drew character "across multiple decades, sticking with the cola's recent ad approach of portraying the brand as a mainstay that has endured through multiple generations." The spot "ends with a movie plug." The movie "amounts to one of the biggest bets by Pepsi to leverage its intellectual property for commercial gain beyond directly plugging the soda" (ADAGE.com, 6/5).
HEDGING THEIR BET: LeBron James is featured on the cover of the 20th anniversary edition of "NBA 2K19," and ESPN's Rachel Nichols said there "must have been a lot of meetings to figure out how to do this" so if James potentially "changes teams this summer it won't be a dated cover." She added it "didn't go well for them" last year when Kyrie Irving, then with the Cavaliers, was traded to the Celtics before the season. ESPN's Brian Windhorst said 2K Sports "found a way" to make the cover "cool because what they actually put on the cover was all the things that LeBron writes on his shoes during games." But he added they "should hedge (because) we don't know where he's going to go, LeBron doesn't know" ("The Jump," ESPN, 6/5).
