http://www.esquire.com/the-side/lebron- ... ics-102710
As his Nike commercials get better and better — Wieden & Kennedy's latest bit of pimpery (above) is nothing short of brilliant; if they had done spots for Jeffrey Dahmer, we'd all be murderous cannibals today — the basketball player wearing LeBron's uniform stays stuck in a familiar place, a land where words mean more than deeds and all the bad things are either someone else's fault or no one's.
I spoke with an older man yesterday, a former NBA star who has known LeBron for many years. "He became what he always was," he said when I asked about last year's choke job against the Celtics and the way James's free agency played out. "If you were raising a child, would you always give that child everything he wanted?"
The Cavaliers surely raised LeBron James that way, and I've seen more than enough of Gloria James, his mother, to know that the only boundaries imposed upon him were the lines on a basketball court. In Miami, he has Dwyane Wade at his side — and Wade, unlike LeBron, is a grown man. Maybe that will make a positive difference.
