Cavaliers parody Knicks owner, president in video for LeBron »
By Frank Isola
The 15-minute animated movie the Cavaliers showed LeBron James on Saturday parodied everything from Pat Riley's hair to James Dolan's reputation as an overbearing boss.
According to a person familiar with the movie that the Cavs organization used in their presentation to James on Saturday, there is a scene where an owner named James Colan continues to reprimand a basketball general manager named Denny Welsh for speaking out of turn.
"Be quiet," Colan says repeatedly, "you're not authorized to speak."
The Knicks also tried to entertain James with a video on Thursday featuring Sopranos stars James Gandolfini and Edie Falco reprising their roles as New Jersey's favorite mafia couple. The Cavs, however, tapped into James' favorite show "Family Guy" as a way to convince the free agent to re-sign.
Bill Collage, a screen writer whose list of credits include the feature length motion picture "Accepted," teamed with Adam Cooper and director Brian Gilbert to produce the short film.
The animated picture shows James walking through his own life and even running into billionaire Warren Buffett, who tells LeBron that he made his fortune in Omaha and not in New York or Los Angeles.
The Buffett character apparently tells James: "You don't choose home, home chooses you." The theme of the movie was that by staying in Cleveland, LeBron will become the savior of greater Cleveland.
It ends with a modern day LeBron visiting a 75-year-old LeBron, who tells the young man: "You've always made the right choices…and this time will be no different."
Now, I don't know if this keeps LeBron in Cleveland, but it's certainly funny. The film is said to cost approximately $300,000, which only adds to the madness that is free agency 2010.
The behavior of everyone - players, teams and media - is a little out of whack. It keeps the NBA in the headlines, but you wonder how many people have been turned off by what has transpired for the past week.
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