I gave “The King” a pass when he bailed on postgame handshakes and even when he skipped the post game press conference because I can relate to the disappointment that comes with losing (13-47 career record at Furman).  But I cannot begin to tell you how disappointing it was for me to read this story.

If somehow you haven’t heard about the latest LeBron story aka “LebronGate”,  you can read about it here.

To me this highlights one of the biggest problems in basketball today.  NBA basketball is obsessed with showmanship and dunking is everything.  I’m guessing you’ve heard this one before but last time I checked, a dunk is only worth 2 points.

By covering up this dunk, Nike and LeBron James are sending out a terrible message to the next generation of basketball players.  These players are already being corrupted by AAU but thats another story entirely.  Now you have arguably the best (second best?) basketball player on the planet ordering the destruction of tapes of him playing help defense and getting dunked on.

LeBron can’t be that insecure right? Oh wait…Check out his summer attire.

The thing is, I’ve played with teammates that would literally run away from a possible dunker.  I don’t know if anything makes me more mad on the basketball court.  If you do what you are supposed to and play help defense, you are going to get dunked on. It is a fact.  Grow up and get over it.  I’m personally in between the camp that thinks you should try to body slam somebody before they put you on a poster and the camp that avoids a poster by running out of bounds.  I’ve probably been dunked on 5 times.  I’m not saying that you should be proud of getting dunked on.  You just have to tip your hat to the guy that dunked on you and worry about the next play.

If you aren’t willing to play help defense and risk getting dunked on, I don’t want you on my team.

The only way LeBron can save face in this situation is if the turn the tapes into one of their Witness commercials and somehow communicate the fact that it is OK to play help defense and get dunked on.

And oh yeah, WHY IN THE WORLD did the guy videoing stay after he caught the dunk on tape. Was he expecting to film something bigger than LeBron getting dunked on by a college kid?????