Welcome to our mostly weekly video competition feature, Friday Face-Off, in which we pit two or more videos against each other for the purpose of determining which is the greatest video on the entire Internet that week. Most of the time they’ll involve animals or violence, which are both awesome. Feel free to submit videos to BurnsyWL@gmail.com and if your video wins, you’ll get a With Leather t-shirt like the one that Derrick Bateman wore on WWE NXT.

I’m going to start this week’s Friday Face-Off with a little open message to marketing teams for pro sports franchises: I know that it’s a very common practice – and generally just easy – to take popular viral videos and create team promotional materials out of them. For instance, if a ref makes a bad call, cue the Dramatic Chipmunk, or offer fans free t-shirts if they show up and put on a preseason pep rally flash mob. And that’s fine, because you don’t get paid much and people are easily amused, so it benefits everyone. Just keep stuff timely…

… Which segues nicely into the first video of today – Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki giving a dramatic reading of the Britney Spears hit, “Oops, I did it again.” It’s not the timeliest idea, but I’ll give the Mavs some credit – it’s still pretty damn funny. But does it stand up against some of the Internet’s greatest celebrity dramatic readings? You decide after the jump.

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This not-terribly-exciting video of LeBron James wandering up a high-dive at a Barcelona pool and not being able to dive for several minutes because people are watching him and expecting him to do well is making the rounds on the Internet, and yes, it is both a lesson in overcoming fear and an easy-to-explain example of King James failing in the clutch. It takes him like two minutes to do a weak cannonball, and he only does that when an announcer goads him on and plays a rap song about LeBron James. This is all well and good, but a lot of people are missing the point.

Why does it take LeBron so long to jump? It has nothing to do with fourth-quarter performance: He is Jonathan Brandis. In fact, it was his most Brandis-like excursion since that time he talked to Dolphins.

No, he didn’t kill himself.

In The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, Brandis is a member of the swim team. He has to jump off the high-dive, but he’s got a fear of heights, so every time he goes up there he stalls and imagines he’s about to plummet to his death in Niagara Falls. He ends up running away to an old bookstore and finding The NeverEnding Story, and upon reading it is whisked away to the land of Fantasia where he must team up with a weird man-bird to defeat the evil sorceress Xayide and her magical army of mechanical giants. After a bunch of Wizard Of Oz and Star Wars-like things happen, Brandis conquers his fear of heights and dives off a cliff to return home.

My working theory here is that LeBron faced a similar experience, and took two minutes to jump because he was off somewhere in his imagination wishing Xayide (or “the media”) had a heart. It’s a nerdy reference, sure, but tell me he isn’t always hanging out with Chris Bosh (weird man-bird) and trying to defeat mechanical giants (Dirk Nowitzki). We don’t get to see what happens when he climbs back out of the pool, but I’m gonna guess that when he surfaced he was in Akron.

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In the thrilling sequel to LeBron James dunking on an 11-year old in a game of “Knockout”, teammate Dwyane Wade takes on a bunch of kids at D. Wade All-Star Basketball Camp at the very same game and loses the NBA Championship because he can’t sink free throws. I’m sorry, that’s an old sentence. Loses Knockout because he can’t sink free throws. Wade blocks shots, yells, and even tries to throw his ball at a child’s before losing in dramatic fashion.

Of course, LeBron’s video didn’t have an affable interview at the end to put everything into context and show that he was just screwing around to make a bunch of kids happy, so I’m going post this video in good spirits and keep imagining James was having flashbacks to every time he’s ever been in the playoffs when he was dunking on that sixth grader.

Dirk Nowitzki should put up YouTube videos of him draining fadeaway jumpers over a bunch of elementary school students just to rub it in. Come on, Funny or Die, do your job.

[h/t Hair of the Dog Sports Blog]

Okay, maybe not, but how awesome would Catholicism be if you had to dodge one of Dirk’s sh:tty picks to get to the altar?

The Summer of Love continues for Dallas Mavericks one-footed basketball monster Dirk Nowitzki. In the last month we’ve seen him trounce the Miami Heat in Miami to win an NBA Championship, single-handedly down an $80,000 bottle of champagne, put his Dirk in LeBron James’ mouth, become an honorary Ohioan, deliver a Top Ten List on the “Late Show with David Letterman” and throw out an eephus pitch at a Texas Rangers game. Now he gets to return home to Germany, where the Black Eyed Peas are always playing in the background and everybody f**king adores him.

A reported 11,000 people gathered for the Dirk Nowitzki Hero’s Welcome, which featured a personal parade, Dirk waving at everybody from a balcony like he’s Eva Peron, and a karaoke rendition of “We Are the Champions”. Good job, LeBron, you played like Shemp in the fourth quarter and now ALL OF GERMANY is the champion. Check out the video below, with a pointy helmet tip to Pegasus News.

I, for one, welcome our new basketball overlords.

The best part of watching Dirk Nowitzki throw out the first pitch at a Texas Rangers (via this video, courtesy of The Last Angry Fan) game isn’t his massive jorts that could house a family of five or his general gangliness, but the idea that Nowitzki cannot comprehend balls that travel in a straight line. A bounce pass goes down, then up. A shot goes up, then down. In Dirk’s case, extremely high up, then down. A baseball is supposed to go from your hand to the catcher’s glove in a point A to point B exchange. Dirk’s brain can’t process that, and he just throws it at the sky.

But hey, it wasn’t that bad (when you compare it to John Wall or Mariah Carey, at least) and Dirk could’ve thrown the ball at Nolan Ryan’s junk and gotten a standing ovation from any group of 10 or more in Texas. The Rangers went on to defeat LeBron James and the New York Mets 105-95.

(The pitching was really, really bad.)

Contained in this video:

1. The Dallas Mavericks on the “Late Show with David Letterman” reading a top-10 list about the best parts of winning an NBA Championship.

2. David Letterman with his head down, solemnly reading his script like he’d rather somewhere cleaning the chin grease out of Jay Leno’s 1922 LaFayette. (Also, Dave trying to remember names of basketball teams)

3. Dallas Mavericks players who speak English as a second language trying to deliver wordy punchlines from the writers of “Late Show with David Letterman”.

4. A funny appearance from Caron Butler, who is still my favorite Dallas Maverick because of how good I am with him in NBA Jam.

5. Mark Cuban’s impossibly straight upper row of teeth

Not contained in this video:

1. Any discussion about Jason Terry getting traded to Which Wich? for a large Pepperoni Pizzawich© and a bag of Lay’s potato chips. They could’ve at least included that pimply-faced kid who hands me a water cup and stands forlornly behind his tip jar. Since when did Nike make Which Wich basketball jerseys, and where can I order one?

2. Randy Orton running in at any point and RKO’ing Mark Cuban, which is the only time I’ve ever notably enjoyed Mark Cuban.

3. Conan O’Brien (just saying)

4. DeShawn Stevenson. “Wandering around drunk in an apartment complex while pondering funny new dick t-shirts” would’ve been a great number eleven.