Once upon a time, music videos were things people actually looked forward to. For those of you under the age of 25, this probably sounds like a “When I was your age, movies were only a nickel and they put music on compact discs that you’d play in your Walkman. They held no more than 18 songs!” kind of talk. But there was seriously a time in which MTV, VH1 and BET were showing music videos that people wanted to see.

They enjoyed the music and the spectacle of how it was being presented. Directors of music videos were almost as well-known as the artists themselves and you could often find a certain level of cinematic flair in each one. Now, we’re relegated to the latest subtle masquerade of our own Josie and the Pussycats moment as we get bombarded with questionable music, celebrity cameos to distract us from the questionable music and a lot of good looking people to make us think this wasn’t a complete waste of three minutes. Everything has moved to VH1 and MTV showing crappy reality show after crappy reality show and whatever the hell BET does (when Bruce Bruce stopped appearing on BET, I hit the eject button).

In today’s world of music videos, celebrity cameos might be the most interesting part of the whole extravaganza. Primarily in the Hip Hop community, we often see professional athletes filling these appearances. Sometimes, it’s as simple as the bewilderment of seeing Danica Patrick and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. getting ready to race luxury vehicles in the middle of a Jay-Z video. Other times, we get to see DeJuan Blair auto-tuning his way through a tribute to a friend of his that has passed away like the following video (H/T – Project Spurs):

I think we can all agree that these cameos are nothing negative in any way.

But when Brandon Roy ends up in a music video made by old friends of his and that music video is seemingly promoting the non-medicinal usage of marijuana, that seems like something that would probably raise some eyebrows. Check out the video first and foremost:

What’s weird about this is you literally see Brandon Roy for no more than 10-12 seconds in the video and that’s if you count all of the times in which he’s barely viewable in the background. I noticed Jamal Crawford in this video a lot more than I did Roy. I couldn’t even tell you what the lyrics said in the video because when I watched it, I was trying to find where Brandon Roy was so prominently involved and I kept thinking either Cali or Cavalli (I don’t know which one is which, although I’m sure there is a bitchin’ MySpace page that could sort it out for me) was actually O.J. Mayo. I didn’t even notice there was weed in the video because I kept wondering if Mike Conley was going to stroll on into the shot.

Nevertheless, Brandon felt the need to get out ahead of the story – or at worst, take a leisurely jog with it side-by-side – to make sure he stayed with his history of being a stand-up type of role model for his fans and kids everywhere. Brandon admits that he didn’t go about this experience the proper way and does so without making excuses. He takes full responsibility for not finding out what he was becoming a part of during this process of helping out some old friends. And even though it seems completely unnecessary for him to do so because he’s not really ALL THAT big in the video, he still made sure to disassociate himself from the video.

Isn’t this why we love guys like Brandon Roy? He’s just a good guy. He screwed up (sort-of but not really) in getting involved with this video and instead of doing the typical pro athlete thing of making excuses and trying to save face, he came out on his own to make sure he owned up to what he did and explain why it was wrong. This is what we want from the stars of the NBA. In a time in which the headliners are out just trying to make headlines no matter what it does to their image (Let’s face it, LeBron — you’ve basically become the Paris Hilton of the NBA), seeing a guy act in this respect because it’s just the right thing to do is pretty damn refreshing.

Personally, when I watched the video for the first time I didn’t think much of it. I definitely didn’t think Roy was committing career suicide or letting down the fans of the Blazers. I was more concerned with trying to figure what this guy was all about:

However, it’s good to know we can trust Brandon Roy to be a positive influence despite extremely minor hiccups here and there.

Don’t beat yourself up about this, Brandon.

Some things don’t necessarily have to add up for reality to make sense.

Take the Step Up movie franchise for instance.

I bet when you read that sentence you went to IMDB and searched for “Step Up” just to make sure there wasn’t an entirely different movie than the first one that popped into your head. And the first one that popped into your head was the dance movie starring the inexplicable Channing Tatum. Amazingly, THAT’S the movie franchise I’m talking about.

The third installment of this epic dance club trilogy opens up today in movie theaters nation wide and it was filmed entirely in 3D. That’s right. They made a dance movie in 3D. What’s even more incredible than the fact that this 3D dance movie was passed through every single step of the movie making process is the success of the movie franchise.

According to IMDB, the first and second Step Up movies were budgeted for a combined $35 million (estimated) and together they grossed over $120 million in the US alone. While I’m sure the movies themselves are plenty entertaining and they have die hard fans who would be quick to take you to task for not giving these beacons of entertainment a chance, it doesn’t make it any less surprising that the franchise without any big names (the three Channing Tatum fans are going to be furious with me) could be set to drop a third in-theater release.

And that’s where you sort of have to take a leap of faith with the movies. Even though it doesn’t make much quantifiable sense, maybe they’re just that good. Sometimes you can’t explain phenomena such as this and that’s where I’ll disagree with a brilliant basketball mind by saying Carmelo Anthony is one of the NBA’s elite.

Fellow HP brother and basketball genius Tom Haberstroh wrote a very good breakdown (ESPN Insider) of Carmelo Anthony, explaining why he shouldn’t be amongst the elite in the game. Tom makes a very compelling argument with statistical evidence that is nearly impossible to refute. But this is the time in which traditional basketball thinking and the world of advanced stats slam into each other like a couple of evenly matched sumo wrestlers.

“In the end, Anthony’s game demonstrates why it’s important to strip away the biases that color our perceptions of elite players. In Anthony’s case, the excessive shot volume, his team’s stat-padding tempo and the lack of a true 3-point game makes his 28.2 ppg seem far less impressive than his sparkling reputation would suggest.

If anything, it’s time we moved on from per-game statistics to evaluate our players. Millions of dollars are wasted every year basing player value on the archaic statistics that teams used half a century ago. And someone will surely overpay Anthony and offer him a max contract — just look at the deals Joe Johnson and Rudy Gay got.”

After explaining many reasons of why Carmelo Anthony falls short due to his seemingly one-dimensional game and why his offense might be more smoke and mirrors than fire and whatever the opposite or more tangible version of mirrors is, Tom throws down the advanced versus basic stats gauntlet. People who claim that Tom is just a “stat geek that needs to actually watch the games” clearly don’t understand what he’s saying or the reason he’s saying it. The evidence is correct.

But can it also be false? Outside of scoring, Carmelo doesn’t do anything at an elite level. He’s a marginal rebounder at best, a suspect defender and a guy that doesn’t create for his teammates nearly as much as he probably could and should. He throws out good but not outstanding PER numbers every season. His shooting numbers are good but not special. And yet at the same time, I can’t help but think he is a legitimate elite player in the NBA.

If you ask me (and I’m assuming you are in an indirect way if you read through nearly 300 words about Step Up before you got to the point of this post), the way Carmelo Anthony scores is what makes him elite. I don’t disagree with Tom’s points about the pace and shooting numbers making his gaudy points per game numbers look better than they actually are. But with the way he performs in the fourth quarter it’s hard for me to ignore just how good he is.

Over the past three seasons, Carmelo Anthony has been one of the better clutch scorers in the NBA. Yes, his shooting numbers have been up and down in terms of the percentage he’s made in these situations but he still puts up more points than just about anybody when it counts (thanks, 82games.com):

- In the 2007-08 season, Carmelo Anthony ranked just 20^th (36.3) in the NBA in points per 48 clutch minutes while shooting 42% from the field, 12.5% from three and 81% from the free throw line. But he got to the free throw line in these situations better than all but 14 players in the NBA at 17.6 free throw attempts per 48 clutch minutes.

- In the 2008-09 season, Carmelo Anthony was sort of unstoppable when it counted the most. Only Kobe Bryant and LeBron James scored a higher volume of clutch points with Carmelo finishing third in the league with 54.4 points per 48 clutch minutes. He shot absurd percentages of 56.5% from the field, 58.3% from three and 82% from the free throw line. He also got to the free throw line more than anybody with 24 attempts per 48 clutch minutes.

- This past season, Carmelo fell back down to Earth in terms of clutch shooting percentages. He made just 42.7% from the field, 14.3% from three and improved his free throw shooting to 87%. But he still finished fourth in the league in clutch points per 48 with 47.0 and second in clutch free throw attempts per 48 with 21.7 per.

While the percentages fluctuate quite a bit from year to year and the 08-09 efficiency from three-point range seems to be a complete anomaly, the fact that he scores when his team needs it the most can’t be overlooked just because he’s “not elite” during other parts of the game. Carmelo is an elite crunch time scorer and he’s been the best player on one of the best teams in the league over the past three years. He’s put his Nuggets in the conversation for one of the challengers to the mighty Lakers in each of the past three seasons in an impossibly tough Western Conference.

What’s funny to me is that nobody would question Kevin Durant being an elite player in the NBA right now. And when you look at the numbers of what he did compared to what Carmelo Anthony did, there isn’t a HUGE difference in the final output.

(Click chart to enlarge)

(Click chart to enlarge)

Aside from a PER, offensive rating and win shares, the numbers are pretty even all across the board. Durant’s TS% is also much higher than Carmelo’s but considering Durant just put together a historic season at the free throw line, I don’t think you can really use that against Anthony all that much. Win shares and offensive rating are fairly damning but I still don’t believe that it disproves Carmelo being an elite player in this league.

Look to the fourth quarter of the last three seasons and you’ll see that Anthony has been far superior to Durant in clutch scoring. Yes, Durant is still so young and doing all of this at the equivalent of being a NBA toddler but it doesn’t change the fact that Carmelo bests him in a very important area despite taking a backseat to the current popular opinion of who is better between the two.

And for the first time in a long time, the primitive argument of “watch the games” may hold a ladle of water for this discussion. There’s no doubt when you watch a close Nuggets game in the fourth quarter that Carmelo Anthony is an elite player. He cuts through defenses by hitting face-up jumpers, pull-up jumpers and even gets into the paint to create some contact before creating some scoring. He’s not perfect by any means in these situations but he’s still one of the best there is in the NBA.

Maybe Carmelo Anthony isn’t in the elite class of LeBron, Kobe, Wade and Durant. Okay, he’s definitely not in their class. But he can still be an elite player in this league in the same way that Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Deron Williams are for their respective teams. They impact games in ways that other players in the NBA simply can’t consistently do.

Step Up is an important part of the current movie industry in the same way Carmelo Anthony is an elite player in this league. Just because you look at the entire body of work and come away unimpressed doesn’t mean that the box office numbers are irrelevant.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to defend myself to Channing Tatum’s family fans.

30 years from now, this will be absolute commonplace.

Free Agency decisions will have major motion pictures as a platform for announcement and you’ll be able to vote for which team the player signs with a dedicated button on your Blackberry Explosion. We’ll be able to look back to this week as the first step to the entertainment of sports becoming the business and enterprise that we always knew was fueling said entertainment. It will take the American Idol model that has infiltrated bestowing the honors of All-Star selections, All-Star MVP selection, NBA Dunk Champions and even single votes for MVP and windmill it into our 4D televisions.

LeBron James has gone from making a free agency decision that will move him one step closer to blazing his own trail to championship glory and turned it into a charitable LeBronathon Variety Show. And honestly, I don’t know that you could expect anything else.

Bill Simmons and a reader from LeBron’s home state predicted this in November. “The LeBrachelor” – as Bill Simmons deemed it – is now scheduled to be aired Thursday night at 9 p.m. EST time and should be a ratings bonanza. This is sure to set the critics reeling and the message boards erupting with vitriol. However, was it really something none of us should have expected?

The business of sharing information and breaking news has changed dramatically in the last decade. We no longer wait for the morning paper. We have blogs breaking stories, major media outlets confirming them and all the while everybody already new the stories because a reporter had leaked the same information on Twitter. The next natural progression of this was going to be TV shows dedicated to spilling the beans while either lining the pockets of the athletes and entities involved or unnecessarily setting the stage for a charitable donation that could have easily been made in an anonymous setting or some type of ribbon cutting ceremony.

“ESPN was in talks with James a couple of months ago about filming his planned free agency ‘tour’,” Cleveland Plain Dealer beat reporter Brian Windhorst stated on Twitter after the one-hour special announcement. “But talks ended after Celtics loss.”

So this is what we’ve come to as a society?

LeBron James gets his own primetime show to announce a decision of where he wants to make his next $100 million. He’s going to milk this for all it’s worth. And you know what? We’re going to lap it up because it means something if you care about the game of basketball. Basketball personnel building is no longer considered to be a sacred thing. It used to be respected as a behind-the-doors type of masquerade in which only the most cunning pioneers of the front office truly knew what was going on.

And now?

They’re making freaking movies about it. The front office no longer has any say in how the information is concealed. Agents would occasionally play their hand in the local newspapers and force the front office guys to call their bluff. Now, the agents really don’t have much say in regards to what their clients do with their side of the meetings. Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are treating the proceedings as a film school project. Their lackies are Tweeting for them as everyone else paces nervously back-and-forth, hoping for their once revered bargaining mystique amongst doesn’t get exposed for petty gerrymandering and job insecurities.

The media no longer has any of the power. Instead of beating national and fellow beat writers to the news, they’re trying to get to it before the players involved announce it. Posses and camps and that one cousin with the lazy eye who needed to work for his night club loan are shaping how the information, business model and player image is being distributed. Agents have no power. Reporters have no true leads. And front offices are left wondering if the research firm they hired put together a good enough presentation and if the Photoshop’d photo of the free agent in their jersey was sharp enough.

I don’t think it mutually exclusive to the LeBrons, Wades, and Stoudemires of the world. Soon, even guys like Matt Barnes and Steve Novak are going to be teasing us with which team they’re about to sign on with through cryptic messages that can only be decoded if Nic Cage and his horrible wig can steal Millard Fillmore’s property deed and cover it in vinegar before sundown.

Many of you are going to be pissed and upset at the idea of LeBron holding his own national signing day on ESPN as he prepares to enter his eighth season in the NBA. You’re going to complain about hype, ratings and advertising dollars. I’d advise against that.

Instead, relish this moment and just sit back and enjoy it. This is the start of a new era in breaking news – a new form of journalism in which players hold every bit of power and leave the rest of us waiting with great anticipation.

And when Ira Newble comes out on a tricycle, juggling contracts and the number across the screen asks you to make a donation call, be sure to pick up the phone. LeBron will be waiting for your credit card information so he can tell you he’s not signing with your favorite team.