It was refreshing to see King James get his aggressiveness back. Seeing LBJ drive the baseline and rising up for a one-handed thunderous slam, destroying his opponent, leaving his defender laying face-down on the hardwood reminds us of just how talented and ferocious a player James really is.
Unfortunately for the Miami Heat, the monster slam in question came a few weeks after the NBA Finals have already ended and the person dunked on wasn’t Dirk Nowitzki, but rather a 17 year old camper that paid upwards of $300+ to get some prime time instruction from the 2 time MVP at a New Jersey based hoops clinic.
During some down time at the Nothing But Net Basketball Camp, held at Stockton College near Atlantic City,NJ, Lebron and some campers were involved in a highly thrilling game of Knock-out. After Lebron misses some open 3 point shots(insert your own comments here), he then sprints up the baseline in an attempt to finish off a dunk before 17 year old Evan Mahone of Michigan could convert his own lay-up, and eliminate James a tad bit earlier than a former NBA scoring champ probably should.
Immediately after the youngster converts his 2 points ahead of James, and before he can brag to his buddies about getting the best of Lebron, James swoops in and floors the unlucky camper on his way back to ground level, while Mahone was attempting to retrieve his ball within the painted area.
While the kid was clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time, standing within a few feet of the rim as the game is still going on, Lebron could have made a better decision(no pun intended) than to dunk in traffic during a 17 and under hoops clinic.
While there’s no doubting on my part that James had no ill will in his dunk attempt, he could have shown a tad more compassion right after knocking down the paying customer by immediately checking to see if he was alright. As you will see in the video, James does eventually go over, albeit 5-10 seconds later, and give a helping hand to Mahone, who was still composing himself on the hardwood.
Mahone did take home some valuable souvenirs along with a great story to tell back home as both Lebron and Chris Paul, who was also in attendance, gave the lucky camper an autographed pair of game worn Nikes. Look on the bright side Lebron, at least this time you didn’t get dunked on, and this time the footage was made widely available.
If you think last off-season was considered the Summer of Lebron, get ready for an even bigger onslaught of Lebron based content as he undoubtedly will have to live down his rather un-inspiring performance in the 2011 NBA Finals for upwards of another year and a half with recently imposed NBA lock-out possibly wiping out the entire ’11-’12 season.
Check out Lebron Destroying a Camper:
Allen Moll has been a lifelong NBA and NCAA College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously, and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen also provides content to Bleacherreport.com, Upperdeckblog.com, in addition to being a tenured NBA and NCAA columnist for TheHoopDoctors.com.
