Nike ad imagines James, Cavs winning title: 'Except this isn't Hollywood. It's Cleveland'

LeBron James is still a little bummed out about the way things ended for his Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors.

But Nike - James' longtime myth-maker and golden goose - has presented his remarkable journey to within two games of a title in his first season back in Cleveland as something out of a fairy tale.

Or a John Lennon song.

The big difference, the wordy ad points out in conclusion, is that James' story is playing out in blue-collar Cleveland, rather than the glitzy paragon of artifice that is Hollywood.

It's seemingly meant as a callback to James' assertion - in the essay he penned with Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins announcing his return last summer - that in Cleveland things are earned, rather than given. But it's hard not to read it as a dig - no matter how unwitting - at the city that hasn't been home to a championship in any of the major pro sports since 1964.

Seriously, it's been over 50 years. Imagine that.