OPEN COURT: Roll with it

Imagine you’re in the midst of one of the most embarrassing moments of your life.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re 10 seconds into what is sure to be a brutal business presentation. Your opening joke just bombed, and everyone is glaring at you. You laugh nervously, swallow hard, and try to make it through the rest of your speech without hitting anymore speed bumps.

But your speech doesn’t get much better. Worst of all, some random intern you don’t know is filming the entire thing. If you could get your hands on that tape, everything would be OK.

But in reality, the speech wasn’t all that bad. Sure, it wasn’t your finest moment, but you’ll be fine. Hardly anyone will remember it in a few days.

That’s the thing about embarrassing moments. They’re never as bad as you remember them.

But if you made a scene and tried to steal the tape so there’d be no record of your speech, then you’d end up looking like a paranoid weirdo. If Woodward and Bernstein taught us anything, it’s that the cover-up is worse than the crime.

Perhaps if LeBron James had a deeper knowledge of the Watergate scandal, he wouldn’t have hijacked Ryan Miller’s footage.

Miller, a freelance cameraman working for CBSSports.com to cover the LeBron James Skills Academy, shot Xavier sophomore (and former Sean Miller recruit!) Jordan Crawford driving into the lane and throwing down a thunderous two-handed tomahawk jam over the King. Joel Steiner at NBADraft.net wrote: “The gym erupted with ‘oohs and aahs’ from the 80 high school campers still in attendance.”

It seems as if those 80 or so campers will be the only “witnesses” to this event.

Shortly after the game, Miller was called over by Nike Basketball senior director Lynn Merritt, who had just finished a brief conversation with James.

“LeBron came over and told him something. ... LeBron said, ‘Hey, Lynn, come here,” Miller told the New York Daily News. “He just said, ‘We have to take your tape.’ They took it from other guys, too.”

I understand that it can be embarrassing to get dunked on at your own skills academy — especially if you’re the reigning NBA MVP and the kid doing the dunking is an unknown sophomore at an Atlantic-10 school. But these things happen during a basketball game. Guys get dunked on all the time; no big deal.

And yeah, the clip would likely hit the Internet and everyone would see it. The YouTube traffic would hit seven figures in a day.

But then people would forget about it.

Remember last summer, when that anonymous British basketball star crossed over New Jersey Nets’ star Devin Harris and made him look foolish? Probably not, because Harris didn’t make a big deal about it. The clip is out there, but Harris has laughed it off. Incidentally, he had his best season as a pro last year.

Make no mistake; this cover-up will linger much longer than the video’s shelf-life would’ve. T-shirt company Zazzle.com quickly printed up shirts saying “I dunked on LeBron (but he stole the video).” And you better believe he’ll hear about this at nearly every road game next season.

What’s especially strange about the entire incident is that James has always appeared to have a terrific sense of humor about himself. He poked fun at himself on “Saturday Night Live” and is always the ringleader of all the zany antics we see during Cavs’ games.

Instead of having a good sense of humor about the moment and allowing Crawford to have his moment in the sun, James and Nike channeled Richard Nixon and censored the footage. That’s incredibly bizarre — especially when you’re entire ad campaign is predicated on having fans all over the world witness everything that you do.

I suppose we’re only supposed to witness what he wants us to see.

There’s an easy fix to all of this. Nike needs to take that clip and create a commercial around it. What better way to get everybody talking?

nprevenas@gvnews.com | 547-9747