We at Complex love the fact that casual Friday is more like casual everyday. There’s something about the suit-and-tie steez that just doesn’t go well in our office. But there are times where you just can’t avoid getting formal—even King James can’t dodge dressing up on certain occasions.
Last week at an NYC Gucci party, Lebron traded in his signature ball shorts and jersey for a more refined Mr. Rogers x Steve Urkel x Japanese interior designer look (and that’s a compliment). Word to Drizzy Drake, this is one outfit we’ll remember forever. Read on to see how to recreate this look, even if you’re not ballin’ with a capital “B”…..
Drake-mania continued this week with the release of the Hype Williams-directed visual for “Forever,” the first single off of the soundtrack for the LeBron James documentary, More Than a Game. When we first heard Drizzy was going to shoot a video for the heavyweight-rap track, we couldn’t wait to see just what kind of crazy, game-changing shit him, Kanye, Weezy, and Eminem were going to pull. Unfortunately all we got was a bunch of flashing lights, a few cameos, and a tribute to Bron Bron…We might have judged a little early.
Whatever your verdict on the video is, the fact remains that these four artists are some of the most exciting dudes in music, with their own distinctive styles to match—Kanye with his high-fashion steez, Wayne at the height of his rockstar phase, Eminem with the “I’m going on a jog” look, and Drake with his “I like high-priced designers” look. If you’re looking to swag-jack any rappers, these might be the four to start with. Below, we break down and recreate each rapper’s look. Stick with us—as long as you keep reading, we’ll keep you stylish forever.
Yesterday came the news that LeBron James is set to make his feature film debut in a comedy called Fantasy Basketball Camp where he’ll play a character called…”LeBron James” who…hosts a fantasy camp only to get caught up in the personal lives of his campers. Filming is set to start next summer, and while the flick sounds like a flop of Divac-ian proportions, as long as it doesn’t interfere with LBJ’s training for his Knick debut (Hello Cleveland!), it’s all good with us.
But LeBron’s not the totally blatant marketing “synergy” out-of-leftfield casting choice you might think he is—it turns out dude’s been working on his acting chops for years (and not just acting bitchmade). To get an idea of how King James might do as a leading man, we took a look back at the highs and lows of his career as a thespian…
Last Friday, Complex got a chance to meet with LeBron James and the Nike Basketball crew in Akron, Ohio to preview the new LeBron James Air Max VII and to get a little history lesson on the King. Nike product launches are unparalleled, and in addition to unveiling the sneaker, we got a chance to check out LeBron’s high school, St. Vincent-St. Mary and some special colorways of the sneaker which release this coming October.
Hit the jump for images of the LeBron James footwear history installation, located in Akron, images of LE versions of the Lebron 7, photos from the preview event hosted by Kenan Thompson and a snap of Lebron’s tricked-out Challenger…
First Jay comes out for a surprise performance at the BET Awards (Puff looked like he wanted to sing along if only he didn’t have an Autotune album dropping in 3 months), then he drops the world premiere of the “D.O.A.” video on us during the After Party. The Anthony Mandler-directed clip has everything you’d expect from a back-to-basics Hov banger: shit being blown up, a card game with Harvey Keitel and some one-on-one with LeBron. Oh, wow…wow!
LeBron James should soak his sore loser in an hot epsom salt bath.
According to LeBron James, you can’t be a sore loser as long as you’re really, really competitive (or if, by nature, you’re a winner—who just happened to lose). Got that, kids? Despite what may have looked like poor sportsmanship, His Highness “King James” was just being really competitive when he walked off the court Saturday night without shaking hands after the Orlando Magic beat his Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals. He was merely competing with Magic star center Dwight Howard, a buddy with whom he won an Olympic gold medal in Beijing last summer, by not offering him so much as an awkward ass slap in passing. That was just his will to compete showing when he slipped out of Orlando’s Amway Arena without giving reporters a post-game interview. And if you buy that, we’ve got a Kobe vs. LeBron ad campaign to sell you too.
James is one of the NBA’s biggest stars, so his juvenility stands out, but he’s far from the only grown man in the league to act like a snot-nosed eight-year-old with doo-doo stains on his shorts when things don’t go his way. Not that we blame dudes. All that youth league shit about being a good sport is just to keep the child-on-child homicide rates down. And besides, when you’ve got millions, you can afford to act like you weren’t raised right. In honor of King James’s snub of the Magic, Complex remembers a few of the NBA’s sorest losers over the years…
David Stern to Kobe and LeBron: Please don’t turn your backs on me!
Like Shaq shooting free throws, NBA Commissioner David Stern is shitting a brick. All season long, it’s seemed a foregone conclusion that the renewal of the Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry last year would be followed by a marquee match-up of the league’s two biggest stars, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, in the 2009 NBA Finals. The Commish was no doubt creaming in his suit pants just thinking about it. The same goes for the folks at Nike and Vitamin Water, who’ve been churning out ads playing up the superstar showdown. That’s a lot of cream, and now somebody’s going to need to mop it all up, because Carmelo Anthony’s Denver Nuggets are knocking Kobe around in the Western Conference Finals like they want to pay him back for that Colorado rape trial and Dwight Howard’s Orlando Magic have pushed the Cavs to the brink of elimination in the East and made it look like King James got his crown from Burger King.
With a Cavaliers-Lakers Finals in doubt, the NBA suddenly has to scramble to sell alternative match-ups that are about as sexy as Chyna with a raging case of (manly) female gonorrhea. Though we enjoy seeing Puppetmaster Stern squirm when the magnets in the balls and his team of crooked refs fail to determine the outcomes of series, Complex wants other sports fans to know that all is not lost! Check out 5 awesome story lines that a commercial announcer could play up in an overly dramatic voice should LeBron or Kobe or both fail to make it to the trophy round. Keep the cream alive!
You probably, uh, caught wind of the recent clip of Lebron James farting on the Cavs bench (followed by Anderson Varejao’s comical reaction). We all knew LBJ was a little gassy'this wasn’t his first time breaking wind in public'but cut him a break. Sports are a high-impact activity and intense physical exertion can often lead to flatuence (word to queefing!).
King James is hardly the only athletic farter. We dug around in the archives to compile the greatest farting moments in sports history. Don’t get gassed!
Far be it for us to be the harbinger of economic doom, but the NBA may be headed for some tough times. In fact, let super-agent David Falk tell it: “I think [fixing the NBA system is] going to be very, very extreme, because I think the times are extreme.” Salaries are out of control, teams are losing money and the imminent end of the current collective-bargaining agreement is putting the 2010-11 NBA season in jeopardy. Sorry, but ain’t no Krypto-Nate stopping that.
So, what’s the solution? The NBA will always have its loyalists, but we have a suggestion that should be familiar to anybody who’s suffered through a declining relationship: Distance yourself now before the heartbreak, and start seeing other people. Or, in this case, another league. Yup, the NHL. Yup, ice hockey. Look, we understand that most of you are indifferent about, if not openly hostile to, following the NHL, but the time is right to give the league another chance. Read on for our top 5 reasons why it may be time to jump ship on the NBA…
U.S.A Basketball Day / Photos: Bradley Carbone
The NBA superstars that will represent the U.S.A this summer in Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics assembled in NYC today for a daylong Nike-sponsored event (they were showing off the gear that Nike cooked up for the summer games) that included a boat ride around the East River and their first introduction to the public at Rockefeller Center.
Joined by the league's M.V.P Kobe Bryant, basketball's best players like Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwayne Wade cracked jokes in between serious Q&As, where they stressed that they’re focused solely on bringing home Olympic gold to the United States'something that hasn't been done since 2000. Complex snapped some flicks of the squad throughout the day, and zeroed in on some of the footwear they'll be wearing this August, like the newly-introduced Jordan Olympia and Lebron's special make-up Olympic joints. See the pics after the jump.
Far be it for us to be the harbinger of economic doom, but the NBA may be headed for some tough times. In fact, let super-agent David Falk 
