Some Perspective On The LeBron James/Nike Flap

As the media often does — and as I was completely and totally guilty of this week — there was a bit of sensationalism when it came to the commentary on Nike’s actions at the LeBron James Skills Academy earlier in the week.

Sure, it looked bad. Sure, it made LeBron out to be a bit of a spoiled brat. Sure, Nike skirted some vague rules our way to justify their actions. My stance on the whole situation hasn’t changed: It was a weak move.

Yet, I think there are some other things that need to be taken into consideration here for why Nike did what they did, ones that loosely tie to the Jordan Crawford dunk, but also have little to do with that exact play.

And leave it to the preeminent basketball blogger, TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott, to bring it all home for us.

What he didn’t know, and what he couldn’t have known, is what veteran reporters confirm is generally understood: When NBA players scrimmage in the summer, it’s off the record.

[ ... ]

LeBron James had fairly serious surgery on his face shortly after the NBA season, and it’s likely James is not in top basketball condition. People who were there suggest that if James indeed instigated the confiscation, it may have had more to do with his conditioning than the dunk.

So you take these two points into consideration, and maybe the dunk was just the final straw for LeBron. He was already a little curious about cameras being there in the first place, as scrimmages are usually off the record. And as Ryan Miller has said, LeBron played terribly in some of the games. Once Jordan Crawford popped up over him for a dunk, he may have thought, “OK, that’s going to be all over YouTube, and it shouldn’t have been really filmed in the first place.”

Does this justify what he allegedly did? Eh, not really. But it adds a bit more context to the story, for what it’s worth.

Posted at 8:32 am
on July 10th, 2009
Tags: Cleveland Cavaliers, Jordan Crawford, LeBron James, NBA, Nike