At one point, I was enraptured with this LeBron James/Jordan Crawford/Nike dunk story. Here was the Greatest Basketball Player On Earth allegedly having Nike confiscate video of himself getting dunked on because of his precious little image, and the fact that these summer pickup games aren’t usually fair game to the media. It helped that I’m a big Jordan Crawford fan, too.

But now that video of it is out, and we know how much each tape went for, that should be that right? Unless LeBron comes out with a statement, the life of this story has pretty much ended.

But wait! There’s more!

Nike is giving back the confiscated tapes to the two credentialed journalists. Curious timing, eh? Again, the excuse is as such: the confiscation had nothing to do with the actual play, but the media policy of not filming pickup games. (Which, remember, wasn’t a written policy at this camp; the pickup game was going on during a time when filming was permitted.)

There’s still a logic hole here, though: if they are sticking by it’s against policy, then why are they giving the tapes back? And now of all times, after other videos have been released?  The timing on this, again, is all too curious. It looks like a bit of a backpedaling at this point.

One interesting part of this: Nike claims only one of the tapes has the dunk on it. And since it’s from a credentialed videographer, it should be from a courtside angle and of better quality than the other two.

So, we’ll have that to look forward to. But as we already know, the dunk wasn’t that great.

At long last, we may indeed be seeing Jordan Crawford’s dunk on LeBron James. TMZ reports this lovely July morning that they are in possession of said confiscated video and  they’re going to show it on TMZ TV tonight. It will go up uncut on their Web site at 6:45 PM EST, too. You can go read their pun-filled, exclamation-point-ridden blog post about it here.

For now, we have this amazing screen capture from them:

WHOA! HOW WILD IS THAT!??!

Two things:

1) Jordan Crawford gets his day in the sun, though it might serve as an actual letdown to the masses. This thing was built up so much, it is likely to disappoint us all. That does not mean we won’t watch it, though.

2) Rumor has it LeBron doesn’t even look that bad in it, which I guess makes him look even worse? That it wasn’t even that deflating for him and they decided to can the video anyway?

Whatever. No matter what this dunk actually looks like, it’s finally out. And LeBron, even though these types of scrimmages are usually off limits to cameras, still looks like the bad guy.

UPDATE: Darren Rovell talked to Ryan Miller, one of the shooters who got his tape confiscated, and he’s saying this was likely from a third shooter, because it’s not from an angle him or the other guy were shooting the court from. The screen capture is pretty low quality, so the speculation is it might have been off a cell phone.

UPDATE TWO: The video is up, and it’s grainy and you can’t really tell what’s happening. Great!

UPDATE THREE: Ebaum Nation has a higher quality video of the dunk. Still not that great.

Basketball players — especially famous ones — hold camps for younger kids. It’s a way to make money and spread the love of the game down a generation. LeBron James’ basketball camp, however, paved the way for an embarrassing marketing moment in Nike history as Jordan Crawford dunked on him ( by now you know the story). Well, some brash youngster at Kobe Bryant’s basketball camp recently told the Mamba that it was “game over” if he went to James’ camp. The four-time world champion’s response was superb:

“You ain’t dunking on me at my camp” for those of you without speakers. And Kobe’s fine to say this; HG at You Been Blinded suggests that this line is potentially a jab at Bron and his sponsor, and, um, well, yeah. It is. But is there anything wrong with that, even given Kobe’s relationship with Nike? Absolutely not — his dig is certainly more directed towards James (who should have done/should do something to get the tape out to the public) than it is to the shoe company. And besides, Kobe even has an out: he’s WAY too smart to let anyone end up dunking on him at his own camp; Bron should have made sure the same thing could be said about him.

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.

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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.

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The Nike brass have spoken. And they’re saying exactly what they told the two videographers when they originally confiscated the tapes: the camp has a no videotaping policy.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“Nike has been operating basketball camps for the benefit of young athletes for decades and has longstanding policies in place regarding what events are open and closed to media coverage,” Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said.

“Unfortunately, for the first time in four years, two journalists did not respect our ‘no videotaping’ policy at an after-hours pick-up game Monday evening following the LeBron James Skills Academy.”

This is all well and good, except it’s not really true. Ryan Miller, one of the dudes that got his tape taken, had this to say in a statement on his syracuse.com blog:

I arrived at the camp on Monday afternoon and immediately checked in with media relations to ask the rules and regulations regarding filming interviews and players at the camp because I didn’t want to violate any policies or film in areas of the gym that were not permitted. They told me to stick to the sideline and baseline, and that all of the sessions/games were open for taping.

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I just noticed the Nike spokesperson’s quote about an “after-hours” pick-up game.

The game was not after-hours, it was during the regularly scheduled “College Workout #3″ portion of the LeBron James Skills Academy. That session ran from 8:30-10:15 on Monday night and the filming took place during that designated time slot.

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Because it’s basically a matter of National Security at this point …

1) This video has to come out at some point, right? Some lackey at Nike accidentally getting his paws on it Burn After Reading style? Or would the Nike reps be so ridiculous as to actually destroy the tapes right away, making sure nothing of that sort happens? If that’s the case, then we’ll obviously never see this dunk.

2) OK, so let’s suppose the video is still circulating. The smart move would be for them to bring it to light, make LeBron have some fun with it, maybe get Jordan Crawford involved somehow (though, of course, you can’t profit off college athletes!), and turn a negative into a positive quickly. As long as LBJ can laugh it off, admit he was being over-protective, and let that be that, I think he comes out looking OK. Not great, but certainly better than before.

3) If this tape no longer exists, it’s a lose for everyone. Lose for LeBron and Nike, because they don’t get to spin this story in their favor. Lose for us, because we don’t get to see the dunk. Lose for Crawford, because he doesn’t get to thump his chest out a bit.

4) There’s another possibility here. LeBron and Co. will come out with some excuse, an excuse that is fairly plausible — Oh, we took it because we wanted to package it nice for Crawford! We took it because you can’t film college and pro athletes together, even though we told you earlier you could! — and some people will buy it, and some people won’t, and then it probably comes out, or maybe it doesn’t, and then we (mostly) all forget about it, and we (mostly) all find something else with which to occupy our time.

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My favorite story of the week — which just beats out Ron Artest’s Michael Jackson tribute song — is Jordan Crawford’s dunk over LeBron James at LeBron’s Skills Academy in Akron.

I like this tale for a few reasons: 1) Before transferring to Xavier last offseason, Crawford was one of my favorite players on Indiana. 2) Whenever a college kid bests the greatest basketball player in the world, it’s interesting. It’s sort of like my Jimmy Fallon theory, or the guy that beat LBJ in horse. 3) LeBron could use a humbling every now and again. 4) Crawford is saying it’s the highlight of his young career.

When I read about this early yesterday, there was no word whether video was taken of the moment. But, I figured there was a good chance of this, because there’s usually some sort of camera going at this type of event.

Turns out there were two cameras that captured Crawford’s two-hand slam over the King. But Nike doesn’t want you to see their precious poster boy in a vulnerable position. So they confiscated the tapes.

From Gary Parrish at CBS Sports:

Turns out, there were at least two cameras rolling Monday night when Crawford dunked on James during a pick-up game here at the LeBron James Skills Academy. It was a two-handed jam, the kind that would’ve circulated quickly on YouTube. But Nike officials eliminated that possibility shortly after the dunk happened by allegedly confiscating tapes from various cameramen.

Freelance photographer Ryan Miller was one of the cameramen shooting the game.

He told CBSSports.com that Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynn Merritt took his tape.

“He just said, ‘We have to take your tape,’” Miller said. “They took it from other guys, too.”

Worth noting is that there is no policy against filming at the LeBron James Skills Academy, and Miller said he had been filming all day without incident. Nobody ever told him to stop. Nobody ever said there was a problem … until after Crawford dunked on James.

“LeBron called Lynn over and told him something,” Miller said. “That’s how I knew his name was Lynn. LeBron said, ‘Hey, Lynn. Come here.’”

Minutes later, Miller said Merritt demanded his tape.

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