LeBron James and advertising.

LeBron James, many people assert, is one of the greatest, if not the greatest basketball player ever to put on a pair of too-long shorts. The man is a physical freak. At 6'8" and 250 pounds, he's often the strongest and the fastest guy on the floor. In the parlance of the game: "He's faster than anyone bigger and bigger than anyone faster."

The fly in James' ointment, is this: he's never won a championship. He seems to disappear at crunch time. In the 4th quarter of the championship series he is now playing in, he has scored few points, garnered few rebounds. And his team now is in a must win situation in the finals, trailing three games to two.

We work with plenty of advertising LeBron Jameses everyday. They are present when the sun is shining and the pressure is off. They are loud, prominent and full of opinions. However when crunch time happens, these people can be found cowering in a corner, absent of ideas.

There are one or two tests of the efficacy of a creative person. 1) Do they have the stamina to outlast a crappy client and not give in? 2) Do they come through when they're on a pitch?