LeBron James is a generational basketball player.

When it’s all said and done, he will likely be in the same conversation as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and the other all-time greats.

So how do you compensate the elite?

It’s hard to figure out. And it looks like the Heat has gotten it wrong. Very, very, very wrong.

Thankfully, the good folks at CableTV.com sent over some startling stats and a fancy infographic outlining the economic impact (positive and negative) of LeBron to his teams in Cleveland and Miami.

•  LeBron James is the 13th highest paid player in the NBA. Players ahead of him include Gilbert Arenas, Brandon Roy, and Elton Brand.

• The year after gaining LeBron, the Miami Heat saw a 99% increase in the their local TV ratings on Sun Sports Network.

• From 2010 (Before The Decision) to 2012 (After The Decision), the franchise value of the Miami Heat increased by $93 million (from $364 million to $457 million).

LeBron James Is Underpaid – An infographic by the team at CableTV.com

There has been a lot of conversation in the sports world this week about fans.

One Miami Heat fan displayed on a sign his strong displeasure that Heat star LeBron James was a healthy scratch against the Wizards on Wednesday night, after he had spent over $1,000 to get to the game in DC.

Professional sports leagues have a tricky balancing act.

First and foremost, they are businesses designed to make money. That’s the league, the teams, and, to some level, even the players.

However, they must also present a credible level of competition to legitimize their games.

The Heat/Wizards issue is this: fans paid full price tickets and got a discount-level Miami squad.

Boxing promoters are famous for the line “card subject to change” included on all advertising surrounding their shows, since injuries, contract issues and even drug suspensions can alter the bouts.

Washington Post columnist Mike Wise wrote this week that the Heat earned the right to rest their stars to get them prepared for the playoffs.

And this is the fuzzy intersection of business and competition.

There are 82 regular season games on the schedule. Fans buy a seat at the game – there are no guarantees in advance of who will be playing for each team or that the team they are rooting for will win, or even play well. You buy a ticket for the game experience.

From a competition aspect, you play to win games, but the games you want to win are the championship games, not regular season games, especially after you have clinched a postseason berth.

However, when players sit out games to rest, you risk losing the business from your fans, who may decide to spend money on a nice dinner or another sport or the movies instead of paying for a ticket to see your scrubs.

Miami, from a competitive standpoint, only cares about winning a championship. Nothing else matters.

In theory, the business side could suffer from a star player not playing in some games here and there. But the impact is most likely negligible. In fact, winning a championship would erase all of the potential bad vibes, making it worth the risk.

Other great moments from fans this week:

WWE Monday Night Raw crowd (as previously discussed here)

This Seattle Mariners fan caught a foul ball in his BEER CUP! And then chugged the beer to get the ball out!

Information is power.

Crowdsourcing democratizes information.

So what happens when crowdsourced information collides with an angry crowd?

This:

Carlos Marmol, a struggling pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. had salt rubbed in his wounds shortly after losing his high-profile job in the bullpen as the team’s closer when his Wikipedia page referred to him as “arguably the worst pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball.”

The editorialized line was quickly removed, but not before it made headlines.

The facts say that while Marmol may not be a Hall of Famer, he is no scrub. He has 116 career saves, with an 81.6% conversion rate.

By comparison, Jim Johnson of the Orioles, who saved 51 games last year and is widely regarded as one of the top closers in baseball right now, has a career save percentage of 79.6%. And Tampa’s Fernando Rodney, another feared closer, boasts a 77.1% save rate.

So Marmol is clearly not the worst pitcher ever. Not even close.

But he is off to a bad start this year for one of the hallmark teams of Major League Baseball, so his struggles get compounded – and it manifested in Wikipedia.

Is this sort of high-profile pranking – Wiki-Terrorism – the wave of the future?

With a platform so open, there have likely been millions of errors, both unintentional and malevolent, over the years on Wikipedia. But the Marmol situation is garnering major attention.

Will we view this a as prank akin to drawing devil horns on a poster of someone you don’t like? Or will this eventually be classified as libel?

To me, there is a clear difference between (a) writing a blog post on your site calling Marmol the worst pitcher ever and (b) carjacking his Wikipedia page to reflect those opinions.

Also, if you’re a fan of the Cubs, you should WANT Marmol to find his groove and be successful for your team, right?

What’s your take? Was this a harmless prank or did it go too far?

Back in 2010, my friend Jason Mollica wrote here about why Major League Baseball’s Opening Day is awesome.

To me, it’s a fresh start, a renewal – where the past is just that and the future is about to be written.

What can we learn from Opening Day as marketers?

Beginnings Are Marketable.

Answer me this question: Do you start more books or finish more books?

Or this one: How many fitness plans have you begun…and then gave up on halfway through?

Getting people excited for an event is a big part of the marketer’s challenge.

Nearly every Major League Baseball team sells out on Opening Day.

Sustaining Interest Is Hard

There is a surefire way to sustain interest over the course of a long season: winning.

Looking at the 2012 year-to-year attendance gains, most of the teams with the greatest gains were winning teams. My favorite team, the Baltimore Orioles, had the sharpest uptick, as they unexpectedly just kept winning all season, despite nobody predicting it would happen.

The books you finished and the fitness plans and regimens you continue are the most successful – they kept your interest or led to clear results.

So while we are spending today considering the future, perhaps the best strategy for marketers may be a long-term one. Think about where you ultimately want to be – and while the launch of a campaign is a watershed moment, it’s not the only part of it.

Think about ways not just to get people excited for one trip, visit or event – but how to build loyalty that keeps them coming back multiple times.

And while you do that, I’ll be enjoying the start of the baseball season and hoping my Orioles keep the wins coming.

And now for something completely different.

(It doesn’t matter what you were reading before, because this post is guaranteed to be ridiculously different. Or your money back.)

In what may be the greatest bathroom innovation since the flushable toilet (or, more likely, the hands-free hand dryer), a British company called Captive Media has launched a “urinal gaming system.”

I said this would be different.

The system will be installed at Coca-Cola Park, the home stadium of the minor league baseball Lehigh Valley IronPigs.

[There is definitely a joke somewhere about Coca-Cola and urine, but I like their products far too much to write one.]

They tout the system as “hands-free” gaming, which is sort of true, I guess.

Captive Media installed their system in UK venues in 2012 and this is their first…streaming location…in the United States.

Minor league sports teams have a rich history of stunts. Heck, I’ve worked on some crazy ones. They have a unique challenge of filling a stadium each game without controlling the on-field product at all. Minor League Baseball rosters are controlled by their parent organization, and most independent leagues have an ever-revolving roster.

Some minor league basketball and football teams I worked with had huge roster turnover each day.

But placing some sort of innovative, permanent feature inside the stadium is a great idea to invest in. I’m certain more people now know about the IronPigs than ever before. And are more interested in how they can have more fun in the bathroom.

It’s March Madness, so I’m sure you’re thinking about the brackets.

But are you thinking about the environmental impact of the NCAA basketball tournaments?

Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is.

While the ESPNs, CBSSports and Yahoos of the world let you input your picks and win cold, hard cash, the Booz Allen Carbon Footprint Analysis bracket system allows you to tinker with the estimated impact of both the men’s and women’s tournament in terms of greenhouse gases.

Some interesting findings from their bracketing tool:

• The bracket with Louisville winning the tournament would have the smallest carbon footprint in the men’s tournament
• The bracket with St. Mary’s winning the tournament would have the largest carbon footprint in the men’s tournament
• The bracket with Maryland winning the tournament would have the smallest carbon footprint in the women’s tournament
• The bracket with UCLA winning the tournament would have the largest carbon footprint impact in the women’s tournament

My men’s tournament bracket created a fairly large impact – nearly enough to match 10,000 single family homes, about 20% more than the Louisville “winning” bracket mentioned above. So, if you’re an environmentalist, feel free to root against a Georgetown vs.  Gonzaga final :–).

In all seriousness, kudos to the team at Booz Allen that created and developed this interesting way to blend the fun of March Madness with the always-critical issue of caring for our environment.

When so many brands are clamoring for our attention to sell pizza, cars and other fun things, it’s refreshing to see the tournament’s chatter leveraged for something much more productive.

You can read more about the initiative here and fill out your brackets here.