by Matt Rainone, Account Manager
I’m sure you’ve all heard about it by now. This past week, The King was dethroned. No, I’m not talking about the King of Pop. I’m talking about Lebron, “King James”. This past Monday during a pickup game at the LeBron James Skills Academy, he was dunked on by Jordan. The worst part is that the Jordan to which I’m referring was not MJ, the original #23. LeBron was posterized by Jordan Crawford, a sophomore from Xavier.
If you’re not keen on the lingo, let’s put it this way; whilst Mr. Crawford flew through the air to slam the ball through the rim, an unfortunate Mr. James got in the way. Physics, by way of Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, tells us that once an object is put into motion, it will not stop until another object exerts force upon it. According to reports, LeBron James, though King of the hardwood, could not prevail over the laws of physics.
You may notice that I said “according to reports” and there lies the very reason for this post. There is no video of the occurrence. Blasphemy! What is this, the dark ages? There’s a video of EVERYTHING that’s happened since 2004. There’s probably a video of me reading this blog post! Well, let me rephrase my last statement; there was a video, two in fact. However, after a brief chat with the King, they were both confiscated by Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynn Merritt.
Since the event, the blogging, marketing and sports world have been abuzz. Fraud! Evil Nike Conglomerate! they cry. It would appear that instead of letting the video of an act that probably happens 3-4 times in a normal NBA game make the usual 2-3 week journey through the internet before we all got bored of it, Nike chose to do PR tactic number one; sweep it under the rug. Now they’ve created something far worse – the PR cover-up nightmare. Much to no one’s surprise, in the days of blogs, microblogs, and nanoblogs (I may have made the last one up, but I’m sure Apple’s working on it as we speak), chances are it’s going to come back to bite you. See Airlines, United.
So, what to do? Well, I’m going out on a limb here and am HOPING that both Nike and LeBron have enough marketing and brand savvy (after all, LeBron IS a brand) to turn this current nightmare into a dream opportunity. Maybe they can use that video to their advantage, it already has more buzz surrounding it than most celebrity sex tapes. Maybe Nike was just borrowing the video to convert it to HD, make LeBron’s teeth look a little whiter as Jordan Crawford was flying past them, and are going to release it on YouTube next week. Maybe they’ll even add cool sound or video effects like a starburst when Crawford throws down. Eh, maybe not.
Here’s what I would do if I were Nike. LeBron’s your poster boy, he’s arguably the best, or at least will be. But he’s young. He’s made it to the Conference Finals, the Championship, only to come up short. He’s still got work to do, he needs to get better. There’s your off-season campaign. Show the dunk, show it twice, slow motion, the whole deal. Show a grainy close-up of LeBron’s face after it happens, the shame. Then cut to LeBron training, lifting weights, shooting free throws, hell, show him puking his guts out after running 50 full-court wind sprints. Show that he’s still a kid, still human, and still can get better. Excite us about that, Nike – he’s great, but he’s still has the opportunity to get better. That’s enough to give you chills.
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