Imagine your kid coming home late, again. Imagine him shutting the door a little loudly, again. Imagine him saying those words that make you cringe, again.
"So ... got a little money for tennis shoes."
Imagine shaking your head. Imagine the urge to tell him about how you wore U.S. Keds at $3.95 a pair. Imagine gripping your wallet with two hands and not letting go.
Then imagine your kid is LeBron James, kajillionaire.
Imagine he isn't asking for your 90 dollars. Imagine he's telling you about his 90-million. Imagine him pouring cold water on your face to revive you, then repeating the number.
Ninety ... million ... dollars.
Not only that but, hey, free shoes for both feet!
Yep, when it comes to getting a job for the summer, you have to hand it to LeBron, don't you? This certainly beats bagging groceries.
Personally, I'm all in favor of instant millionaires. Yep, if you're going to be a millionaire, instantly is the way to do it. It is a point I have stressed, rather loudly, to the kids who orbit my television set.
It was amazement then, mixed with a tiny bit of envy, that was my first reaction upon hearing Nike had taken the gross national product of Peru and dropped it, quite literally, at James' feet.
James, as you might know, is a teen prodigy who, to use technical terms, hasn't done diddly. No titles outside Ohio, no college team, no pro team. And 90 ... million ... dollars.
Break it down. That's $45-million per foot. That's $9-million per piggy. If Nike were to clear $100 profit per shoe (which would be a sticker price of, what, $102?) it would have to sell an extra 900,000 shoes it wouldn't ordinarily sell.
The more you think about the James contract, however, the less you grin. It always happens that way with Nike and the other major shoe companies, who have grown into the dark power in the background of sports over the past decade.
For instance, in a game of passion, did Nike increase or lessen the chance of James reaching stardom?
Isn't this a tad high for entry level work?
With the price of basketball shoes looking more like a mortgage all the time, how much is Nike going to have to charge for Air LeBrons to make up for $90-million?
How did the sides arrive at that number? Was, say, $86-million just not enough?
For all those people working inthe Asian sweatshops, does this blow the chance to get that raise to $1.75 per day?
Does an Air LeBron come in an extra wide?
If James is only pretty good, if he's, say, Antoine Walker, will this be the dumbest marketing idea since New Coke?
Can any shoe by LeBron possibly be more popular than those blue Penny Hardaway Foamposites?
Does Freddy Adu, the 13-year-old soccer whiz kid who just agreed to a $1-million deal with Nike, need a new agent or what?
Finally, when LeBron is 25 and the contract runs out, can he get a raise? Especially if he has, like, done something?
Look, I don't want to give off the impression that I'm suspicious of Nike executives, that I think they're behind the curtain dressed in purple robes, pulling the strings of their athletes, telling them where to go and what to think and what to say. That's silly. Nike executives would never wear purple.
It was only a few years ago when someone asked Alonzo Mourning whether he worked for the Charlotte Hornets, his NBA team of the moment, or Nike. Mourning's response? "Nike is my boss," he said. And doesn't that still make you shudder?
It was because of Nike that Michael Jordan once used the American flag as a prop, draping it over his shoulders during the gold-medal ceremony of the 1992 Olympics to cover the name of Reebok, which had provided the U.S. team with uniforms.
Over the past few years, there have been whispers that a major shoe company has directed this player to one of its sponsored colleges, that another has kept that coach away from its nonsponsored college. The most common sight in college basketball is a coach wearing the little company pledge pin on his lapel, just to let the world know if he's a Nike guy or a Reebok guy.
Give Nike this much. It certainly has had a fine shopping week. It added James, and signed Carmello Anthony for something like a quarter of James' price, and it added Adu for a measly mil. The price of stock is up, and times are good and, at last check, everyone still was wearing shoes.
Still, there is something that doesn't feel quite right about this, something that feels as if James has sold a part of himself to Nike.
One of the problems of the NBA, of sports in general, is that players get too much too soon, long before they have earned it. It would have been easier to see Nike go after Kobe Bryant, who is seeking a shoe deal, or even Anthony, who at least won a college title.
It's a difficult enough jump from high school phenomenon to pro star. Nike has just made it tougher. At one end, it has added the pressure that comes with instant riches. At the other, it has made failure more comfortable.
Also, it has made a nation wonder this:
If it weren't for James and Jordan and Tiger and all the other stars and colleges that Nike pays, how much would a pair of sneakers really cost?
