Eric Taylor wrote:
LTrain23 wrote:
LeBron makes more in endorsements than Peyton Manning, AROD, and Derek Jeter do combined.
He does this playin in Cleveland. The others are the face of the NFL and two of the Yankees biggest stars.
LeBron is also the loyalist dude I've seen.
He's staying.
Link??
How the hell do you know he's going to stay? Are you his personal friend?
Yes.
And link for what? The endorsements?
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=adande_ja&page=lebronbigapple-081126
The two biggest NBA myths around are that LeBron James needs to be in New York and that the league needs the Knicks to be good.
Anyone who still believes you can make it only in Manhattan probably still calls remote controls "clickers." This isn't the Walter Cronkite era, when we got our news from men sitting at desks in New York. These aren't the old Don Draper days, when everything we thought we knew and needed was generated by the ad shops on Madison Avenue.
LeBron, playing in little old Cleveland, stands to make more in endorsement money this year than New York Yankees superstars Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter will combined. And they play for the Yankees. LeBron could win eight championships with the Knicks and they still wouldn't rule that city the way the Yankees do. Oh, and you could add Peyton Manning's $13 million to Jeter and A-Rod's $14 million and it still won't match LeBron's $28 million in off-court money this year.
But let's dispense with the notion that he has to go there, that it's the next step in his career and any other location between there and Los Angeles is a waste of his time. Patrick Ewing got to New York a year after MJ went to the Midwest … and you don't see people wearing Ewing's silhouette on their shoes.
LeBron made the cover of Sports Illustrated and played games on ESPN when he was a high schooler in Akron. In Cleveland, he's been on the cover of Fortune, Time and Vogue (maybe he should have rethought that last one). He has hosted "Saturday Night Live."
You don't need to go to the media anymore. The media come to you, even if it means parking a satellite truck at your curb. Just ask Joe the Plumber. In the world of YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, anyone with a digital camera and a high-speed Internet connection is the media. In fact, LeBron's best work can be found on the Web, in that sublime scene where Smooth LeBron romances Nicole Scherzinger with a pair of high-tops.
If LeBron goes to New York, he won't get any famouser. I'm forced to use a made-up word because the Knicks are a made-up mythology, somehow considered to be among the elite franchises even though the Rockets have won just as many championships in 21 fewer years of existence. The Warriors, Trail Blazers and Heat have won more recently than the Knicks. The Bullets and Sonics have won more recently, too, only they're not the Bullets and Sonics anymore.
Now Eric Taylor, you can STFU.
