(* Source: Jack Jensen *)
" It all started with a text message from a random number about two weeks ago. The message I received went something along the lines of, “Jack, this is Nike. There’s a 2-on-2 tournament during All-Star weekend. Winner gets $2,000. Do you want in?”
Since I received my first anonymous text a few weeks back, I’ve been contacted more than a few times by the Nike team (hovering around 20 or so estimated by my count). And they’ve all operated under a veil of near-complete anonymity. Every time I get a call or a text explaining a new step I have to complete, I am given the information and that’s it.
But that’s all I knew, until Monday that is, when I got a series of calls making sure I was going to be at my work to receive a “special package.” Cool, I like getting mail at work, makes me feel important. The package, or envelope, that arrived, contained a Nike-branded letter inside assigning me my first task.
On the front of the letter, it read, “Los Fearless Are The Chosen Elite.” And on the back, it gave an address and two simple directions:
We pull up to the street about 8:45pm Wednesday night and it is pitch black outside. The street we pull into is under a street overpass and leads us into a pit of cement nothingness. As we pass a few stray cats and discarded sleeping bags down the street ramp, a huge fellow in all black tells us to park under the pass.
I get out of my car and they sort of file all of us up against this steel-grated warehouse and tell me to pull out my ID card. There are 127 “Chosen Elite” standing around me, not counting myself. Then, the line starts to flow into said abandoned warehouse through a four-foot metal hobbit door into a room straight out of Saw. They hand me a metal dog tag, cross my name off a highlighted list and send me through. There are boxes and sheets of used plywood and plastic shipping crates strewn all over the building, with one semi-circle opening cleared out for us all to congregate. On the wall in front of us is a forty-foot projection screen displaying the “Los Fearless” tournament logo twitching back and forth.
We still have no clue what’s going on. No one does, not even the security detail, or so they claim.
Then the screen flickers on and there is a giant hooded figure in front of us.
He’s raspy, deep and telling us why we’re all here. That we players are the Chosen Elite to compete in the Los Fearless Tournament and that our dog tags are our lifeblood. When we lose on the court, we lose our dog tags. And the last duo standing will walk away with the cake for two-grand. The magic voice tells us our next instructions await us at the door.
Inside the envelope were instructions, which I quickly read over. I was told to pick out a couple of shirts and logos for the 'Los Fearless' tournament, and then some shoes for the team as well. Just in case the weather turns sour they also let me pick out some Nike sweatshirts with the logo as well. It shouldn't be a surprise that Nike is doing their best to weed out the fearless.
"