How Will Nike Capitilize On THIS?

Back in the late 1960's and early 1970's, athletes began a new type of training session where they lifted weights to increase strength. Now you can't drive from here to there without seeing a gym in most cities.

At one point, yoga was this bizarre new "exercise" that was only for hippies and new age types who would try to read your palm or talk to you about your chakras. Now, Sue from accounting can't make it to happy hour because she is going to a yoga session.

Now one of the new trends peaking out of the sporting world is barefoot running. Anica Wong of the Denver Post followed several runners who swear that letting the glabrous bottoms of your feet touch the ground while running will make you stronger and healthier than wearing shoes.

The style still has plenty of opponents. One podiatrist says that going from wearing shoes to running barefoot can actually be worse for your feet. Since most of us grew up with shoes, only a small percentage of people have feet that can properly adjust to barefoot running.

Proponents of barefoot running say "poppycock!" They say learning to run in a new style is no different than weight lifting in that you just need to ease yourself into it. They say that with proper training, a runner will find the feet relax and the body will change the way it strikes the ground sans shoes.

There are some mystics who will talk about running the way ancient man ran and how you become one with mother earth, ideas which I don't think middle America is ready to discuss, but many of the arguments are made with logic and practical application.

Barefoot running isn't quite sweeping the nation yet, but there have been other trends that are now part of everyday life. Will people begin tossing their Nike's into the trash, or will the shoe giant manage to corner to market on the "barefoot shoe"? Only time will tell.

Feeding The Beast

Did you ever see the movie Desperado? It's a movie about Antonio Banderas wondering around Mexico with long hair and a guitar/gun case, talking in a sexy voice to all the ladies.

During one opening scene, Steve Buscemi walks into a Mexican bar full of thugs and unfortunate humans. He launches into a detailed story about this mysterious man who walked into a similar bar a few towns away and killed every single miscreant in there. By the end of the story, every patron in the bar is hanging on Buscemi's words about this larger than life destroyer of bad men. The man is just Antonio Banderas, but the story that proceeded him had every man shaking in their boots at this mysterious man's abilities.

That is the direction this story about Jordan Crawford dunking over LeBron James is headed. The play was probably just a simple instance of LeBron getting a slow jump at Crawford. This was a camp after all, it's not like this was an NBA playoff game. It wasn't even a regular season game. I bet if I saw the footage of Crawford's dunk, my reaction would be: "huh".

But now that Nike and James have confiscated the tape, they have played right into the jaws that is the 24 hour sports news channel. With a constant need to fill time, the unknown is actually more coveted than the known by the ESPN's of the world. Thanks to the mysterious aspect now attached to it, this alleged dunk has taken on a life of it's own.



Maybe if the attention keeps getting bestowed onto him, Crawford might actually jump several spots up on the NBA draft charts. All because of a pickup dunk that no one can see.

Even Kobe Bryant is getting some face time thanks to his NBA rival:



And it's all because of the great LeBron cover up. My God Nike, you people should know this stuff. In the media world, when a fire starts, you let it burn itself out quickly. Instead you've just given the thing an entire off-season worth of speculation which happens to be it's favorite food.

It's not a good off-season to be the King.

Big Brother Is Apparently Watching

We just celebrated Independence Day, but apparently Nike thinks we live in China (which makes sense I guess since that part of the world is where most Nike products are made.)

According to Gary Parrish of CBSsportsline, LeBron James got posterized on the wrong side of a wicked dunk by Xavier's Jordan Crawford at the LeBron James Skills Academy. Basically, the King got dunked on in his own castle.

Hey, this stuff happens. There are a lot of talented basketball players out there and it's only a matter of time before you get shown up on a play. It's not like Crawford did it over and over again. It was one amazing feat where Crawford reached his apogee and made a highlight play over one of the top players in the game. One that I'm sure lots of basketball fans would love to relive on youtube.

Too bad. Nike confiscated the tape.

According to Parrish, as soon as the play went down, Nike officials at the camp went about quickly demanding all the video from the cameramen. No one will ever see that play.

I hope to God I'm missing some part of this story.

If this story turns out to be true, I will NEVER buy another Nike product ever again. I hope everyone follows suit so Nike executives can "Witness" the company taking a complete bath.

And LeBron doesn't get out of this either. It's easy to just assume LeBron was busy and had no idea what was going on with the video issue, but this is LeBron's academy and he will eventually get wind of this story. He could ask Nike to go ahead and release the video....if he had any balls.

But this is a man who claims he wouldn't shake hands after his team lost to the Orlando Magic because he's a winner. He's obviously not used to being shown up and perhaps his inflated ego can't handle someone actually being better than him for even a play. He's always been the best so that's how it has to be.

If this video isn't released or isn't at least resolved, I will root for the complete failure of Nike and will probably root against LeBron for the rest of his career, fair or not. I've had it up to my neck with King James' ego and nothing would be more wonderful than to watch that man get humbled in the face of a ringless NBA career.

Then again, I've always rooted against Kobe and we see how well that turned out.....can you just release the damn video, Nike? That way I can put down my revolutionary flag and go on about my life.