LeBron James: Old School Figure or New Media Failure?

We're living an age of unprecedented access to celebrities. With the advent of Twitter, we are exposed to their thoughts, unfiltered and without a PR representative in the middle. The NBA has arguably been the community to embrace Twitter the most rapidly, with much of the league getting involved by following Shaq's example and interacting with fans and journalists alike. We've seen Kevin Love break news of his coach's firing, Shaquille O'Neal give away tickets online, a race to 50,000 between Chris Bosh and Charlie Villanueva (a really really irritating race if you follow Bosh), and folks like Dwight Howard build up a following by providing unfettered access to their stream of consciousness.

LeBron James, however, has not followed the path of his peers like D. Wade and has yet to really utilize the kind of proximity that social media can provide him to his fans. This really should not surprise us though, since he has entered the league he has obsessively controlled his image and thus his marketability to sponsors. The difference between LeBron James and most NBA players, even those taken from high school, is that his NBA status has been extremely obvious since early high school at the latest. He was King James by the time he came into the league and his junior year he graced the Sports Illustrated cover in an article where GM's insisted they'd trade anything for him at that point. The dude has had plenty of time to prepare his image and you better believe he's been thoughtful about how he's perceived from the get-go.

James has surrounded himself with high school friends who have ultimately ended up being yes men. He has a great relationship with Jay-Z, who is one of the more secretive rappers about his personal life. Where Kobe and MJ had one singular goal in their lives: to win, LBJ's main goal is to be a billionaire. Even winning is secondary for him. In terms of media presence, I feel he's more Machiavellian and less trustworthy than Kobe. His appearances are more obviously calculated and low risk. The most I've ever read about his personal interactions has been with sponsors. Even Kobe's teammates, like Smush Parker and Derek Fisher, have been in the press with things to say about the Black Mamba, good or bad. I've never heard anyone say anything either way about LeBron as a teammate or a human being. But we sure know a lot about LeBron James the marketing gimmick.

It's interesting to watch this strategy backfire because LeBron James has a very good on-court persona, but we don't know enough about him personally to put his off-court mistakes in context. Clearly he's very competitive, but it's hard to place where he lies on that continuum. After Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, LeBron stomped out of the arena without shaking hands. Later, he justified his behavior because he didn't want to shake hands after a loss. LeBron the sore loser, eh? Not only did he spark a media firestorm, he also started a whole new round of LeBron to NYC in 2010 rumors by wearing a Yankees hat in his interviews where he defended himself. Very subtle, LeBron.

More recently, LeBron confiscated videotape of him being "posterized" at his camp by Jordan Crawford, a sophomore at Xavier. After the dunk, he whispered in the ear of the Nike representatives, who literally stole the videotapes from the cameras to protect their investment. Of course, the story got out and people hated on LeBron for it. Why wouldn't we? Getting posterized, to an intelligent basketball fan, is usually not a shame. It means you're rotating and covering a man at the last second and get caught. It means you're putting your body in the line of duty to draw a charge. It means you're trying on defense. Anyways, the longer we waited to see even a Zapruder version of this tape, the more our imaginations went wild. Blogs posted pictures of VC over Frederic Weis in anticipation when TMZ declared it would release the video yesterday.



Guess what happened when the video leaked? See for yourself, it wasn't even the slightest bit embarrassing. LeBron didn't even get dunked on really. He was a little late to contest the shot. I get it, you're supposed to be the best basketball player in the world, but the cover-up was the only shameful job by LeBron. The video was going to get out, either by cell phone camera or by some device you didn't know was there. It turns out there were TWO additional sets of footage, not just one. And now LeBron not only looks like a narcissistic brat, but the PR backlash and subsequent imaginary posterizations in our head were way worse than what might have happened if he'd just shrugged it off. Even MJ shrugged it off when he lost in one on one to a mutual fund CEO, what else could he do?

I guess I'm looking for the moral of the story for our fair hero LeBron. I think what all this shows is a permanent paradigm shift in the media/celebrity relationship. Think about the Erin Andrews video that horribly surfaced this week, the Stephon Marbury Q&A on Ustream, the Kobe Bryant cell phone video ("Trade Bynum y'all"), and the Kevin Love tweet. There's no privacy anymore in public. Anytime you are in the view of other people, they could be recording you, they will blog about it, and you can't escape the consequences. The Worldwide Leader has had a huge part in the shift from coverage of sports to coverage of athletes as TMZ-style celebrities (unless you're Ben Roethlisberger apparently), but it's not all ESPN. Technology has fundamentally shifted interactions and humanized athletes in a way few of us dreamed was possible. In the new media, you can't hide, you just can't. Instead, you have to embrace it and control your image the best you can. Brand yourself on Twitter.

James would love it to be old-school. Think about the amazing image that MJ enjoyed, despite his personal shortcomings (that's another post all-together). Michael Jordan is truly the Beatles of the NBA, the right star at the right time who's image has since blown up out of proportion and has made him untouchable. He made the league and was its star in ways that no one else ever could be because he transformed the NBA. It's too established as a league now, it doesn't need another Jordan. Similarly, there will never be a collection of sneakers as influential as the Air Jordans. He's just an impossible standard to live up to. LeBron will never win 6 championships in a league with such parity (and such a crappy team), which he has to come to terms with. He also needs to understand the new media and what that means about controlling his image.

I have to think you're a likable dude Lebron, but please do us all a favor and show us that humanity. Embrace technology and the media, use it to your advantage. We've seen how it works out when you try to fight it. We'll all be witnesses, like it or not.