"Everything is earned." | New Nike ad honors LeBron James, the Cavaliers and Cleveland http://t.co/8fujDQ7nvz pic.twitter.com/z4BVtv0cmz — WKYC Channel 3 News (@wkyc) June 21, 2015

Generally when you're a gigantic billion dollar company, you would prefer to affiliate yourself with winners.

However, when you pay LeBron James a ton of money and he loses in the NBA Finals, you can still make it work.

New Nike LeBron ad pic.twitter.com/p5Of0avA1u — Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) June 21, 2015

That font IS pretty small, so we've got the full text here for you:

Imagine if Lebron came home to Cleveland. Imagine if the team struggled early but finished the regular season strong. Imagine if their big man went down, but they still found a way to power through the Eastern Conference. Imagine if they faced the top seed in the Finals. Imagine if they pushed Game 1 to overtime but lost another star to injury. Imagine if everyone counted them out. Imagine if they shocked the world and took the next two games. Imagine if fatigue caught up with them, and they lost Games 4 and 5. Imagine if they defied odds, logic and the basketball gods to come back and win the series in 7. Except this isn't Hollywood. It's Cleveland. Nothing is given. Everything is earned.

James put his body on the line and did everything he could, but it was to no avail. For Nike, one of James’ biggest sponsors, though, the story was easy to spin into a simple, yet very effective ad.

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