LeBron, Nike Suppressed Video of Kid Dunking on Him
The most famous dunk you'll never see
By JOSH ALPER
Updated 11:28 AM PDT, Wed, Jul 8, 2009
On Tuesday, Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com posted an item after arriving at LeBron James Skill Academy basketball camp.
According to the collection of NBA scouts and other folks here, Xavier's Jordan Crawford dunked on James pretty good. So I had to find out whether it was true.
"It happened, and it was bad," said Michael Gilchrist, the top player in the Class of 2011. "That was something to see."
And a million browsers headed in the direction of YouTube to find evidence of the 6-foot-4, 195-pound sophmore posterzing the King. They came up empty, however, and that doesn't seem like it will change anytime soon. Parrish updated his blog later on Tuesday night and ended the search for what would have been this week's hottest viral video.
It seems James ordered Nike employees to confiscate the tapes of two cameramen filming the camp. With that move, surely meant to conceal an embarrassing moment, James ensured that the story would take on a life far beyond the few days that video bounced around the internet.
Think about it. If someone tells you that James got dunked on and shows you a video, you watch it a couple of times and move on with your day. It's nothing we haven't seen before, after all:
If the dunk was so bad that James was worried about footage of it getting out, however, that makes it much worse. If someone tells you that Crawford stopped in mid-air, gave James a wet willie and then bounced the ball off his head with so much force that it entered a low-Earth orbit, you might as well believe it because it had to be so mortifying that seeing the light of day would take James from the basketball stratosphere to the D-League, right?
Even if it was as embarrassing as Tom Chambers' crotch in Mark Jackson's face, James would have gotten over it in short order. Now Crawford is a legend, though, and James has added another chapter to the book that paints him as a really bad loser who can't handle when things don't go his way.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Jul 8, 2009 9:05 AM PDT on NBC New York
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