Friday afternoon just as I was getting ready to leave work, I got wind of a rumor floating around that LeBron James was making a stop by Lexington to visit the Joe Craft Center. It wasn’t clear whether the rumors were legit or not…until about an hour later when John Calipari substantiated the rumors with a series of Tweets:

Ok its official. The King was in the practice facility. LeBron James stopped to say hello on the way to an event in Mississippi.

The building was going crazy. The players were excited to see him! LeBron works as hard as any pro and is a good man.

My goal is to coach both LeBron Jr and Bryce, his sons…(probably for one year!!!)

Since that official confirmation was given, the UK world has been buzzing about the visit by LeBron and its significance.

From a branding standpoint, it’s obviously a big deal to have the best basketball player in the world (at least in my opinion, I hate Kobe) more closely associated with the UK program than any other. I’m not sure exactly what LeBron’s travel itenirary looked like, but people don’t just stop by Lexington for no reason when they are on the way down to Mississippi.

Let’s face it, the UK brand has simply not been relevant on the national stage since 2005 at the most recent. The recruits that UK now targets were but 6-8 years the last time UK won a title or made a Final Four. Programs like Kansas, North Carolina, and UCLA have had a great deal more recent success, and most kids just don’t have a strong concept of history beyond what they remember.

What better way to jumpstart a program’s image without even playing a game than having one of the most famous athletes in the world unofficially adopt that program?

I think everybody understands that this is a big deal and why, but the question I’ve been asking myself recently is “why?” I don’t think LeBron and Coach Cal genuinely liking eachother is an act, but this feels way too deliberate to just be some sort of weird bromance. I don’t have any sort of inside information on this, but thinking about this rationally points me to three main related elements that are making this relationship go:

Worldwide Wes

Cringe all you want ‘Cats fans, but John Calipari and the infamous William Wesley are thick as thieves. There is no evidence that says Cal’s relationship with Wes has led to any wrongdoing in the eyes of the NCAA, but I don’t think anybody could argue that Calipari’s friendship with the man that GQ speculated may be the most powerful in sports has not benefitted him.

I think this another instance where Worldwide Wes is an asset for Calipari. The Akron Beacon-Journal published an article about 4 years ago detailing Wesley’s relationship with LeBron James: “Wesley, 40, has become a close associate of Cavaliers star LeBron James and helped James decide to sever ties with former agent Aaron Goodwin last month.”

So, Calipari and James have a close relationship with Wesley in common. Wesley has enough influence over both to steer them toward people and steer them away from people. I think it’s pretty clear that William Wesley is acting as a matchmaker of sorts between Calipari and James.

Wesley sees that LeBron and Calipari both stand to gain by building a rapport, so he’s pushing them together.  Per usual, it figures that Wesley stands to gain as well, it just that no one is sure how. However, the next reason for the LeBron-Cal relationship may give some insight into that.

Nike

What else to LeBron James and John Calipari have in common?

LeBron is Nike’s flagship in professional basketball. No matter how many titles Kobe wins or how hard he tries, he will never be as likable or funny as LeBron, so he’s not taking over that title any time soon.

Now that John Calipari has come to UK and put together one of the more ridiculous recruiting classes in recent memory, conveniently at the same time that ESPN has taken over the rights to broadcast SEC basketball, UK has become the most marketable brand in college basketball. Consequently, UK is positioned to take over as Nike’s flagship at the college level, which is why they are in the process of developing new unis for next season.

Those two things make John Calipari and UK a logical match for LeBron James. Also, don’t you forget that Nike founder Phil Knight (another guy who has an argument as most powerful man in sports) calls William Wesley a close personal confidant (that’s where Wes likely stands to gain).

If you think Nike is just an onlooker as LeBron and Cal have gotten close, you’re fooling yourself. They are acutely aware of what’s going and have likely taken an active facilitating role in making in happen.

John Calipari

John Calipari is probably the best recruiter in the game. He’s in the business of making relationships and that’s what recruiting is all about. Calipari’s interactions with LeBron are not ‘recruiting’ in a strict sense of the word, but that’s exactly what he’s doing, and he knows it.

He knows what it means for the UK brand to have LeBron at the Craft Center. He knows what it means for a 17 year old top recruit who follows him on Twitter to see a picture of LeBron and Calipari together when he posts one.

Everything about LeBron and Calipari is deliberate and everyone involved knows it. I encourage you to just sit back and enjoy what it can do for UK.

One more quick note before I wrap things up is that top 2010 point guard Josh Selby has decided to decommit from Bruce Pearl and the Tennessee Volunteers and reopen his recruitment. Some of the rumors around the decision have said that part of the motivation was that Selby wants to play at a Nike school.  Another interesting part of this is that Selby’s mother met with Worldwide Wes at the LBJ Skills Academy, as reported by Gary Parrish.

UK fits the bill, as does Memphis (where Selby’s cousin Will Barton has committed, but Parrish says their relationship is not particularly strong), and Jeff Goodman writes that “Kentucky immediately becomes the front-runner for his services”.

UK already has plenty of point guard targets for the upcoming class (Brandon Knight, Kyrie Irving, and Joe Jackson to name a few), but you can immediately add Selby to the list. I didn’t profile Selby when I broke down UK’s point guard targets for 2010, so look for a bio on Selby in the coming days.