ANTHONY EDWARDS PLAYS SPADES WITH F1'S POINTS LEADER

A Sunday morning bar in a small town outside Monza is not where anyone expects to find an NBA All Star and Formula 1's points leader. Anthony Edwards posted a peace sign and an ant emoji, tagged Kimi Antonelli, and said nothing else. The caption did not need to say more, because Adidas had already built the whole story around the two of them the night before the Italian Grand Prix.

Adidas Italia's new short film, The Ants, sends Antonelli and Edwards into that small town bar to play cards against two local regulars who have no idea two athletes worth a combined global following in the hundreds of millions just sat down across from them.

Two Retirees Never Saw The Cameras Coming

The film is set on a Sunday morning in a town near Monza, hours before the Italian Grand Prix weekend gets loud. Antonelli and Edwards sit down across from two veteran regulars at the bar, and a customized deck marks the two athletes as the aces of their respective sports before a single hand is dealt.

Production came from Alkemy Plus for Adidas Italia, and the games are not random. The table plays briscola, the trick taking card game tied to Italian popular culture, and Spades, the game Edwards has talked about being genuinely into for years. Two sports, two card games, one table, and neither guest treats it as a photo op.

This Was Antonelli's Idea, Not The Brand's

Kimi Antonelli wanted to meet Anthony Edwards before Adidas built a campaign around it. Reporting on the film describes the idea originating from Antonelli's own curiosity about Edwards, not a brand brief looking for a crossover, with Edwards' well known card game habit supplying the other half of the concept once the two sides connected.

That distinction matters because Adidas has run Anthony Edwards through global campaigns for two years, from the Derek Cianfrance directed 2024 YouGotThis launch to a Bad Bunny and Patrick Mahomes lineup ahead of the 2026 World Cup, and most of those pair him with athletes he was assigned to meet. A fair skeptic would point out that every brand claims its crossover was the athlete's idea, and there is no way to fact check a private text thread. But the film still lands on a detail sponsors rarely bother inventing, that Edwards' actual card game hobby is what got written into the script, not a generic activity a marketing deck would default to.

Anthony Edwards Does Not Take Spades Lightly

Anthony Edwards has said in past interviews that card games, Spades specifically, are a real hobby, not a talking point invented for a script. That detail is why Adidas cast Spades opposite briscola instead of any generic tabletop game, betting that Edwards playing something he actually cares about reads on camera in a way scripted banter does not.

Edwards has carried Adidas through several fashion facing moments this year too. His Superstar Unity Orange with Edison Chen's CLOT dropped July 25 for the third chapter of The Moonshot campaign, and Finally Offline has tracked him across the brand's YouGotThis rollout since 2024. The Ants is the first time that Adidas relationship has been handed to a scene with no product shot at all, just a card table.

Fifty Nine Points Separate Antonelli From Russell

Kimi Antonelli enters the Monza weekend leading the 2026 Formula 1 drivers' standings by 59 points over Mercedes teammate George Russell, with 4 wins, 3 pole positions and 8 podiums on the season after the Dutch Grand Prix. He became the youngest championship leader in F1 history in March, at 19 years and 216 days old after winning in Japan, beating the record Lewis Hamilton set in 2007, the same Hamilton whose Mercedes seat Antonelli inherited when he moved to Ferrari.

Antonelli was born in Bologna, roughly ninety minutes from Monza, which makes this Grand Prix close to a home race for the son of former racing driver Marco Antonelli. He arrives at it as the man other drivers are chasing rather than the teenager who skipped F3 entirely to reach Mercedes in a single year.

This is not the first time this summer Edwards has attached himself to a global sport moment outside basketball. In July, Anthony Edwards presented the ceremonial match ball before Argentina's World Cup round of 16 game in his hometown of Atlanta, then posted for Messi after Argentina's comeback win. Ant keeps showing up at the exact moment another sport's biggest star is peaking, and Adidas keeps being the brand smart enough to film it.