| 09 July 2009
What the hell? It seems as if LeBron James is going out of his way to take a ballpeen hammer to his reputation. Ever since the game 2 winner he hit... followed up by the loss in the Eastern Conference Finals where he refused to shake hands with the victorious Orlando Magic, snubbing the media post the same event: LBJ's been going out of his way to do some damage to his... *ahem*... "legacy".
Game 2, LeBron James hits a huge shot, winning the game with an incredible 3. But when he declared "That's a shot that you will see for a long time, you know?"... well my skin began crawling. It was actually gratifying to see the Cavs lose in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The tantrum post the ECF was pretty poor. And was in direct contrast to what Dwight Howard did when his Magic lost to the Lakers in the Finals (Dwight grabbed Jameer Nelson, and sat and watched the Lakers celebrate on the Magic's home turf - to toughen up). Still, a lot of people excused it and stated that it's "just his will to win". Ok... fine.Then followed that up with some pretty stupid t-shirts... but hey, they're just t-shirts.
But now? It would seem that during one of LeBron's skills camps, a Xavier sophomore named Jordan Crawford dunked on James. Which of itself is fine... if not a little embarrassing. But hey, it happens.
But the way with which LeBron James and Nike officials acted post that is downright disgusting. LeBron went over to one of them post getting posterized (and by all accounts, it was just that), and pretty soon the two pieces of video footage were confiscated.
Ego gone mad.
Nike are putting a spin move on it now, claiming that all their basketball camps are a "closed-to-media" event, and they were just following procedure. If this were so, why did LeBron need to draw attention to the videos, and why couldn't he just put on his big cheesy grin and let the kid have his limelight?
It could've been a chance for LeBron to show some humility. Instead, it's just more of the same divattitude.
I'm actually surprised that LBJ didn't ask David Stern for the footage on this...
Get a grip LeBron, it's a game.
And you know what?
No matter how big a global icon you become, you're not bigger than it.
