A student with a camera and no money made the front page of The New York Times.

The stakes

I was a copywriting student at the Creative Circus. No audience. No budget. No business asking anyone for anything.

LeBron James hit free agency on 1 July 2010. Northeast Ohio is home, and it hadn’t won a major title in over fifty years. Nobody was outspending Miami. Cleveland’s only currency was how much it cared.

The move

Twenty-three challenges. His jersey number. Jordan’s too.

I waxed my chest. I took twenty-three slaps to the face. Then I built a website for exactly one reader: InLeBronWeTrust.com.

The pitch was never “please stay.” It was “look what we’ll do for you, and we’re not even good at this.” Devotion is boring. Devotion that hurts is a story.

The proof

That’s the jump page. The A1 it started on isn’t in the archive. It won’t be faked.

Front page, A1 not recovered · July 2010

The receipts

The credit

Mine, and everybody who let me hit them or wax them on camera.

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