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LeBron benefits by taking high road
Jul 26, 2009
LeBron Benefits By Taking High Road
By Tim Bella
How did we get here?
It’s something not of the moment, but rather, pinpointing what was the moment. Whether it’s deciphering the time during dinner you declared a lucid argument for your stance on President Obama’s plan to overhaul health care or going beer-for-beer with a buddy on $1-beer night while having a constructive conversation about the downturn of Emilio Estevez’s career post-Mighty Ducks, the process toward the moment happens sooner or later. (Granted, you may have a hangover thanks to Joshua Jackson’s coming-of-age performance as Charlie Conway, but I digress.)
More than likely, LeBron James isn’t too concerned about the health-care standoff at this point and by no mean is he concerned with Gordon Bombay’s once-in-a-generation hair.
What is on his mind is pretty apparent: The King isn’t infallible. From the embarrassing playoff exit to Orlando and HandshakeGate to the mishandling the Jordan Crawford tape and taking it to a Zapruder-like interest level, James and Co. didn’t need any extra bad PR. And what they got next was somewhat of a reprieve and surprisingly, it didn’t involve puppets.
Turns out, LeBron James once smoked marijuana in high school.
According to Shooting Stars, a book co-written by James and H.G. Bissinger detailing James’ final two years of high school slated for a September release, James revealed he had smoked marijuana with teammates one night at a hotel during his junior year.
And this is where we are.
See, this is all part of the moment for LeBron. He is here at this point in time for everything we want and hope for him to achieve just as much for what he has accomplished.
Whether Nike and Team LeBron was ready for the admission or not, it has perhaps further humanized and connected the public to a figure maybe some people didn’t understand or want to embrace with as much immediacy as others did – even feeling it was an issue of too much, too soon.
“Obviously, the story is centered around LeBron, and from what I read they’re trying to spin the admission as some sort of release from the pressures of being a kid everyone is watching,” said Dan Levy, host of On The DL, a popular, daily sports podcast. “That’s fine if that’s their spin. But he was a kid. He didn’t have millions of dollars. He didn’t have endorsement deals (we think) that paid him to be a spokesman.”
So a junior in high school – not the corporate brand reportedly getting paid $28 million a year in endorsements alone – smoked some weed? What would be the equivalent of that? A Cincinnati Bengal getting arrested? Bill Engvall making an unwatchable TV program? Me crying whenever Clarence Clemons has his solo during “Jungleland”? You get the idea.
I’m not condoning what James or any other high-schooler may do when handed a bong, joint or brownie, but the numbers don’t lie. More than a third of 2008 high-school seniors have used marijuana in one form or another as about 83 percent of them say it is readily available, according to the most recent Monitoring the Future survey on adolescent drug use.
And if you didn’t know it already, the idea that elite athletes at that age are above the law and invulnerable is quite common, said Mitch Earleywine, author of Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence.
“The notion that these beliefs would then lead to minimizing the risks of drugs, which would facilitate subsequent use, also has a lot of intuitive appeal,” said Earleywine, an associate professor of clinical psychology at SUNY Albany.
The Bissinger book would lead readers to draw conclusions and make decisions on their own concerning how frequent the marijuana usage was for James, he said.
In a society where we forgive people for missteps during their teenage years, it is better for a public figure like James to come out with admissions and preempt an issue before it leaks out, said Darin David, an account director for Millsport, a Dallas-based sports marketing and sponsorship agency. And though the circumstances are different, ask Michael Phelps about how important preempting an issue can be in the long run.
“Probably will have very little effect, if that’s all to it,” David said. “It seems like a good PR plan, especially if it’s something pretty minor. You might as well go ahead and not hide it. He can turn it around into a positive by saying, ‘Hey, I made some mistakes when I was in high school, but I’ve changed my ways and I’m drug-free,’ so it can be a real positive in the long run if they play it the right way.”
With the moment having been pinpointed, what’s left for James is to remember it, figure out how he got here and continue to grow and improve from it. Maybe this is all leading up toward something greater, maybe it’s not.
If anything, we are reminded that even the kings are human and that’s as good of PR as LeBron or any brand figure could have asked for.
