LeBron James just can’t help but create headlines each and every day, even if one concerns an infamous story from 10 years ago. On Wednesday, Uproxx released a retrospective article with Jordan Crawford, a basketball player with the Sichuan Blue Whales in the Chinese Basketball Association.
This piece looked back on a moment from 2009 in which Crawford dunked on James during a camp basketball game. The entire sequence of events was captured on video, but the footage was confiscated by a Nike representative.
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According to Crawford, Nike reps were joking with the college players before the game about a $500 bounty for anyone who could manage to dunk on James. Well, Crawford did just that but never received his money. Granted, the proof was also confiscated because “videotaping of after-hours pickup games at the camp is not allowed,” which made his prospects of getting paid wane just a bit.
Granted, Ryan Miller, who filmed the video, said that he had been capturing footage all day without any complaints from the Nike representatives. It was only after Crawford’s dunk that the tape was confiscated.
Back in 2009, Crawford was a 20-year-old college student at Xavier. He was on a mission to make his name known after sitting out a transfer year following his arrival from Indiana. Crawford was invited to Nike’s Deron Williams Skills Academy, where he was able to showcase his skills and earn a trip to another important camp: the LeBron James Skills Academy.
It was at this Academy that Crawford made history, albeit briefly. As it turns out, having a sophomore in college dunk on James was fairly big news, even in the age before Twitter and Instagram were present.
So it was, a few minutes into a first-to-seven run, that Crawford got the ball off an inbound play and drove hard around his defender and into the paint. LeBron was under the basket — Crawford wasn’t his man — and as the college kid exploded to the rack, the reigning NBA MVP tried to contest. Crawford was too quick. LeBron was a half-second too late.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” Crawford said in the article, “until I got back to my room that night and people who weren’t even there were already hitting me on my phone.”
How times have changed. If this dunk took place in 2019, it would have been one of the top trending stories on Twitter. In 2009, however, the only footage available was captured by journalists that were on hand for the game.
What’s truly fascinating is that Nike allegedly didn’t pay up after Crawford dunked on their star athlete. This isn’t a great look overall for the shoe giant.
