Lebron gets owned by college sophomore than confiscates tape

StreetDreams21

I got Soul
It should be *then* in the title

Found this pic....
18e359fd46456e73e12e3a774877325cc5c.jpg



It was assumed he was called "King James" because he reigns on the basketball court. But maybe LeBron James earned that nickname due to his tyrannical ways (in dealing with embarrassment).

On Monday, Jordan Crawford, a sophomore at Xavier (by way of Indiana), reportedly dunked on LeBron during a pick-up game at the LeBron James Skills Academy. Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com wrote that one high school player said, "it was bad". (We can only assume he meant "bad" in the Michael Jackson sort of way.)

LeBron must have agreed, because he had Nike officials confiscate the two videos that were taken of the dunk. (Parrish blames Nike, but reading between the lines it seems like the censorship was orchestrated by LeBron himself.)

Ryan Miller, a freelance photographer who was working at the camp that day, told CBSSports.com:
"LeBron called [Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynn Merritt] over and told him something," Miller said. "That's how I knew his name was Lynn. LeBron said, 'Hey, Lynn. Come here.'"

A few minutes later, the tape was confiscated.

Connecting the dots, it seems clear that LeBron didn't want video leaking out of him getting dunked on by a college sophomore, so he told a Nike official to get the tape. It was an understandable reflex move (gotta protect the image), but it also unnecessarily makes a mountain out of a molehill.

The Crawford dunk would have been a temporary embarrassment for LeBron. Let's say the video was put on YouTube. It blows up for a bit, dominates blogs for 36 hours, everyone has a good chuckle and then it's forgotten about.

But by censoring the tape, LeBron turns the dunk into a legend. On video, it's just a dunk. Without video, the jam can reach mythic proportions. Because nobody can see it, the story of the dunk will grow in stature with each telling. Today, it was a simple two-handed slam. In a few days, it will be a 360-degree windmill. By the time Crawford makes his Xavier debut in October, he will have jumped off LeBron's shoulders, flipped in the air, slammed the ball home with his left pinkie and then handed LeBron $3.99 for his dry cleaning.

Without the video, we'll never know. Although, given his past history, I think it's safe to say that LeBron probably walked off the court without shaking Crawford's hand.

By many eyewitness accounts, there was a major two-handed dunk thrown down by Xavier's Jordan Crawford on Monday, during a pickup game at the LeBron James Skills Academy in Akron, Ohio. Not a big deal, really, because highlight-worthy dunks happen in summer pickup games all the time, especially when there's nothing at stake and the defense can at times be non-existent.

This one, however, was a big deal. And not just because the dunk in question happened on the head of LeBron James himself, but because we will likely never be able to see it -- thanks to a rep from Nike allegedly confiscating video of the incident shortly after it took place.




Nike basketball senior director Lynn Merritt confiscated tapes from two photographers – one being freelancer Ryan Miller - filming Monday night's games in which James played with the college players for the LeBron James Skills Academy.​


Miller had been filming for about 15 minutes - which included footage of the high school players - and was approached almost immediately after Crawford's dunk over The King.​
Presumably, the decision was made that by allowing this video to get out and appear on YouTube, it would somehow be damaging to LeBron's reputation, which is obviously something that the people of Nike don't want to have happen. But by making sure no one will ever see the clip by confiscating tapes, they honestly could not have done a worse job of handling the situation.

First of all, who cares if someone gets dunked on in some summer pickup game, even if it is the reigning MVP of the league? It's not like everyone is going all out in these things, and while a dunk like that might hype up the reputation of a relative unknown like Crawford, it's going to have an effect of absolutely zero in the way people perceive LeBron James.

Second, and likely of more importance to the folks at Nike, is the fact that this story has spread like wildfire over the internet. It's already popped up on several major sports blogs, and Twitter is blowing up on the subject, with people sending around old video clips of LeBron getting dunked on, and even making their own Nike-themed posters of the now infamous event.

Bad move, Nike. And let's not forget, this comes after an unexpected playoff exit, and a controversy about sportsmanship when LeBron didn't shake hands with the Magic players or speak to the media until two days later.

By letting this video out, a relatively small number of people would have seen it, and that would have been that. By preventing it from seeing the light of day, Nike is adding to the increasing perception that LeBron is a prima donna, who is interested in nothing more than self-promotion.

I'm pretty sure that's the exact opposite of the message that the company wants to send.

What a ****ing sore loser.
 
You guys should be happy, this again just tells me he will definetly be in NY come 2010.

A man who protects his interests to this degree and knows Nike will want nothing more than him in NYC, game over Cleveland.

LeBron is a hate him and love him kind of guy. You love him because of what he can do but you have to hate him even a little for stuff like this.

There is a reason why Kings have a throne and LeBron's will be MSG because to him it is the biggest there is. His ego, the big market salary, the nike deal increase and for him to be able to say he took NY back to the top by his very presence?

Yeah this is a done deal.
 
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