Internet 1.0: LeBron Being A Big Baby Confiscating A Video Of Being Dunked On At His Camp; Jordan Crawford Finally Talks About It And Says He's Owed $500

Everything about this is Internet 1.0. We have an Ebaum video. The video itself being 10 years old and the story of Jordan Crawford dunking directly on LeBron’s head at LeBron’s camp. It’s one of those Internet stories that everyone over the age of like 26 remembers. Well, Crawford is finally ready to talk about it.

Instead, because of a never-substantiated decision involving at least one Nike rep and possibly LeBron himself, what was presumably the best video angle of the dunk was confiscated from the freelance videographer who shot it. Word of that confiscation got out, and eventually, a good-enough angle of the dunk on someone else’s camera was released. The resulting narrative painted LeBron as thin-skinned, and Crawford as a folk hero with hops.

For his part, Crawford thinks it was the presence and reaction of so many high school campers that inspired attempts to erase the evidence. “I think that made it a big deal right away,” he says. What he remembers clearly is the delayed snowball of reactions over the coming days and weeks, from the fellow camper who told him “you need a Twitter right now” to the response when he got back to campus at Xavier.

That’s the crazy thing about this video. Twitter wasn’t a thing yet. I’m pretty sure the only person on Twitter at this time was Brendan Clancy. We were still a few years away from Twitter really blowing up and becoming a thing. We weren’t even close to Instagram being a thing. Everyone heard of this story from word of mouth and then finding the video. That’s how you knew it was a big deal.

I still remember hearing the rumor that LeBron took the video down. Typical LeBron. This was the moment that people really started to turn on him. He went from this young guy who was good to this egomaniac that had to remove a video of being dunked on. That made the story go even more viral.

But, wait. There’s more. Crawford says he’s still owed $500!

Crawford admits to some curiosity about the fate of that original video, but it’s not the only trophy from that night that he’d like to claim. He remembers Nike reps joking with the college players before the game about a $500 bounty for anyone who could manage to dunk on the camp’s namesake.

Crawford laughs as he delivers the punchline: “They never gave me my $500.”

LeBron needs to do what’s right and pay the man his money. Should probably add some interest on there as well. Oh and do the right thing and release the tape and put it all back over the Internet. Actually, the more I think about it scratch it. This is one of those stories that everyone remembers for having to really search the web to find.

Part of me misses those days. The ones where you heard a story word of mouth and couldn’t just hop on Twitter or Instagram. You had to search random sites to find it. That’s where we cut our teeth in this world. The days of working to find something online. Nostalgia at its finest.