Candace Parker and Sue Bird talk testing their acting chops and trolling Steph Curry in CarMax commercials
- Candace Parker and Sue Bird tested their acting chops in another set of hilarious CarMax commercials.
- The WNBA superstars team up to rag on Golden State Warriors sharpshooter Stephen Curry.
Candace Parker and Sue Bird have two of the most impressive resumes in professional sports.
But now, the WNBA superstars are broadening their horizons with a new gig away from the court. The Chicago Sky forward and Seattle Storm point guard tested their acting chops in a set of hilarious new commercials for CarMax's "Call Your Shot" campaign.
Bird filmed a series of ads for the brand alongside Golden State Warriors sharpshooter Stephen Curry and ESPN NBA expert Adrian Wojnarowski earlier this year. But this time around, she teamed up with Parker - a fellow member of the recently-announced WNBA Top 25 Players of All Time list - to troll the two-time NBA MVP.
"Sue Bird and I go way back - I'm actually shooting with her today and it's been a lot of fun," Parker told Insider in September. "I enjoy the commercials, so when my agent told me about this, I was like, oh, that's hilarious. Like I knew immediately about it."
In the first ad released featuring both Parker and Bird, the duo highlights CarMax's 30-day Money Back Guarantee by bantering about the importance of not just liking your car, but loving it. An agent then explains that buyers have the opportunity to get a full refund if a vehicle is anything less than exceptional, adding that the guarantee applies "whether you rock with your first overall pick or your seventh."
That's when Curry - the seventh overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft - pulls up in a car and screeches to an abrupt stop next to the agent and the pair of first-overall picks in their respective WNBA Drafts.
"Wait, what's wrong with being the seventh pick?" he asks with a concerned look on his face.
"Nothing, Steph," Bird says as Parker shakes her head. "That's the point."
"Come on, man," Curry says disappointedly, then drives off.
Parker - who led her hometown Chicago Sky to the franchise's first-ever WNBA title earlier this month - told Insider that she appreciates how all three of them were able to "poke fun at one another [and] poke fun at yourself" during filming.
"We kinda can't take each other too serious, right?" she said with a chuckle.
But Parker also noted that, despite the ad's humor and fun delivery, "it's so important" to see the brands uplifting the WNBA and its players the way CarMax has. She also applauded Curry for how he's "really empowered and uplifted women's sports and has been very vocal about it."
"That's what's so great about these commercials," Bird told Insider. "You have a corporate sponsor in CarMax who is seeing the greatness in a player like Candace Parker and... a player like myself, and they're investing in that. They're putting that in the forefront."
"How you change a lot of the obstacles that the WNBA has to overcome, it's partnerships like this that help you change them," she continued. "And that's really the deeper goal. And that's the deeper gain. Like I said, we can talk about the humor."
"We can talk about how fun it is, about the great reaction that people are having, but I think that deeper gain is really the most important piece."