FanHouse Jordan Crawford

Video of LeBron James getting dunked on by Jordan Crawford finally hit the web on Wednesday, to the shock and awe of absolutely no one. But the dunk itself became the secondary story, as two separate clips of it were released just minutes apart on two different websites.

TMZ was promoting the fact that they had secured the clip, but ended up releasing it about four hours earlier than they had planned. That's because a previously unheralded site -- ebaumnation.com -- had secured the rights to a higher-quality video, and was set to go live with it themselves.

As you might imagine, the right to be first with a video like this is going to cost something. Here's how much these two sites reportedly paid for the honor.

TMZ blasted word this morning the celebrity news site had gotten its pincers on video of the infamous Jordan Crawford dunk over LeBron James that James and Nike had been reportedly trying to disappear. After some fanfare, TMZ posted the clip.

Moments later, Ebaumnation.com posted a much higher quality (and embeddable!) clip of the dunk. Enjoy it after the jump.

---

---

The case of the confiscated video of LeBron James getting dunked on by Jordan Crawford simply won't die. No, the real, high-quality video hasn't turned up (or been released by the folks at Nike), but TMZ claims to have obtained some grainy, Zapruder-esque cell phone video of the incident, which they promise to release to the clamoring masses this afternoon on their website at 6:45 PM ET.

(UPDATE: Video is up, and can be seen here.)

At his point, the video is likely to be a huge disappointment, even if the participants and the now infamous play could be seen clearly. But as you'll see in the following screen grab, it's questionable whether or not we'll be able to determine with certainty whether these players are actually James and Crawford, or if this was in fact "the dunk."

In other words? Don't get your hopes up.

By now, you've surely heard about the college kid, Jordan Crawford, who dunked on LeBron James at the reigning MVP's very own skills academy. The dunk happened in a pickup game, and wasn't really national news until the folks at Nike decided that video of the highlight play would never see the light of day.

The great thing about elite athletes is, they will never let each other live something like this down. Dwyane Wade said in a radio interview that Kobe Bryant advised him to keep giving LeBron the business about this, but in the following clip, you can hear Kobe himself joke about it, while speaking to some kids at his basketball camp.

Dwyane Wade appeared on Dan Patrick's radio show this morning, and Patrick brought up the subject of LeBron James' embarrassing posterization by Xavier's Jordan Crawford and the even more embarrassing confiscation of video proof of said dunk.

Wade revealed that Kobe Bryant alerted the Heat star to the controversy, and called on Wade and others to "give [LeBron] stuff" about it.

Unless you live under the last rock that didn't come with Tweetdeck pre-installed, you've certainly heard about Jordan Crawford's alleged dunk over LeBron James, which ended up with Nike confiscating the tapes in the shoe giant's corporate version of Witness Protection.

Fortunately, Crawford's midnight madness dunk at Indiana (where he played for a season before transferring to Xavier last year), is available on YouTube. Watch Crawford soar over a rack of balls plainly trained to play defense by ex-Duke point guard Greg Paulus.

Now if Crawford would only be so kind as to dunk over LeBron in everything starring Kevin James.

Jordan Crawford supposedly dunked on LeBron James a couple of days ago. And, after the dunk was filmed, Nike senior director Lynn Merritt supposedly, ahem, requested the tape of LeBron being dunked on, presumably because having a global icon embarrassed by a college student is bad for his brand. Or something of that nature.

Fox Sports' Jeff Goodman was able to catch up with Crawford and discuss the controversy surrounding the dunk, since, according to some sources, LeBron wasn't giving "100%" on the play.

By many eyewitness accounts, there was a major two-handed dunk thrown down by Xavier's Jordan Crawford on Monday, during a pickup game at the LeBron James Skills Academy in Akron, Ohio. Not a big deal, really, because highlight-worthy dunks happen in summer pickup games all the time, especially when there's nothing at stake and the defense can at times be non-existent.

This one, however, was a big deal. And not just because the dunk in question happened on the head of LeBron James himself, but because we will likely never be able to see it -- thanks to a rep from Nike allegedly confiscating video of the incident shortly after it took place.

---

---

Former Indiana player Jordan Crawford has announced he is transferring to Xavier. Crawford, the brother of former Kentucky guard Joe, averaged 9.7 ppg as a freshman in Bloomington last year.

Jordan Crawford is expected to appeal for immediate eligibility at Xavier, citing the unusual circumstances of Indiana's predicament as cause for lenience. He leaves IU in good academic standing but ostensibly chose to depart because the program was so decimated by the events of the past year. Other players recently have been granted waivers of the year-in-residence rule, including Tennessee's Tyler Smith (from Iowa) and Georgetown's Julian Vaughn (from Florida State); those two cases involved medical issues with family members that made moving to schools closer to home important.

I highly doubt the NCAA will grant him immediate eligibility. I'm sure that they will force him to sit one season for leaving that smoking mess at Indiana ... but it should be worth it for Crawford.

Xavier is excited to have him and have had a nice history of transfers of late. They brought it Drew Lavender from Oklahoma and been highly successful. They also did well with Brian Thornton (Vanderbilt) and currently has C.J. Anderson (Manhattan) and Jamel McLean (Tulsa) on the roster.

When Eric Gordon took a hard foul earlier this week against Tennessee State, Kelvin Sampson and the Hoosier faithful were pretty sure he'd be fine and available to play on Saturday against rival Kentucky. They were wrong. After barely being able to move around during Friday practice, it was decided that Gordon would sit out.

The Hoosiers didn't need him anyway.

You may not remember this after being dazzled by the freshman Gordon so far this season, but the Hoosiers are a pretty good team without him, and they reminded us all of that fact with their 70-51 win over Kentucky in Bloomington on Saturday afternoon. It was only Indiana's third win in their last 14 games against Kentucky in the annual border war.

In Gordon's place, and fresh off of a suspension, Jordan Crawford got his first career start opposite his brother, Joe Crawford, of Kentucky. Jordan scored 20 points to lead Indiana, most of which came in a key stretch to end the first half. With D.J. White on the bench in foul trouble, Crawford led the Hoosiers on a 15-5 run to take control of the game. He also hit four free throws in the final 30 seconds of the half to give Indiana a 37-25 advantage at the break.

The Hoosiers only built on to their lead from there, but more importantly, Jordan earned his status as his parents favorite son.

Speaking of D.J. White, he had a pretty decent effort as well, scoring 16 points and grabbing 13 rebounds. He also surpassed the 1,000 point milestone in his college career.

As for Gordon's status, the team expects him to be back for their next game against Western Carolina on December 15th. The week off should be plenty of time for his back and hip to heal.