John Salley has appeared onscreen opposite Will Smith, Whoopie Goldberg and Richard Dreyfuss. But his most recent role involves someone bigger than the three of those actors combined: Susie the elephant.

Salley, the former basketball star, teamed up with Susie to shoot a commercial to help fight the AIDS pandemic. The commercial has been airing on VH1 and was produced in partnership with the Global Fund.

“(VH1) did a documentary on crystal meth and I saw another one on child abuse and another one on child molestation. When I saw India Arie in an interview, when I found out how big the problem of HIV is, I went up to them and said I want to be involved,” Salley told andPOP recently while in Toronto for the International AIDS Conference.

In the commercial, the elephant, wearing a sign that says, “AIDS,” walks into a room and is ignored, a reference to the saying, “there’s an elephant in the room and nobody’s talking about it.” Salley hopes people will see the commercial and discuss AIDS, a topic that, as the commercial points out, is often regarded as taboo.

His involvement with the commercial certainly won’t be his last acting gig. He recently pitched an idea to Denis Leary for his show “Rescue Me,” which Leary used and hired Salley as a guest star.

He is also hoping to produce some films when he gets time off from his hosting duties on “The Best Damn Sports Show.”

But movies and television are not his only focus. Salley was recently named commissioner of the ABA.

“We’re planning on changing the whole league and making a real minor league, not trying to compete with the NBA but trying to be a proven ground for developing young players and being in communities that don’t have NBA basketball around the world,” Salley said.

And a little known fact about Salley, the former Toronto Raptor and Detroit Piston: he used to be the manager of Canadian hip-hop artist k-os.

“I should still be managing him.”