When baseball was having a tough time getting its fans back post-strike, two of its biggest sluggers, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire played home-run derby against opposing pitching staffs all summer to restore it. Now a few weeks after Bill Simmons outed the NBA's financial distress and league-wide turmoil, James and Wade are having a game of horse against NBA defenses.

LeBron had three straight triple-doubles, followed by a 50-point game, so Wade has a 50-point game that nearly includes one, though it did go to triple-overtime.

Seriously though - while I doubt the two are actually on drugs - it wouldn't surprise me if |STAR|something|STAR| was up. Dre' already alluded to the change of the hand-checking rules, and that's part of it. But these guys are taking it to a whole extra level than when he wrote that column two months ago.

Maybe these two players are just that great, and their teams also lack complementary stars (Kobe has Gasol, and neither James nor Wade has anyone close to Gasol's caliber), but David Stern couldn't dream up a better marketing plan. Which is exactly how it seemed for Selig in the summer of '98.