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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So this guy took a dive from 35 feet into a kiddie pool that was only filled with 12 inches of cold water. [they measured it!] Denver’s very own “Professor Splash” set a world record dive, his sixth.

“The pain lasts for a minute, but the glory lasts for a lifetime.”

I don’t know how impressed I should be with this. That’s a long GD way to fall, but it would be so much better if he jumped into a glass of water. Or maybe some ranch dip and celery. Holy crap, I love celery. It’s my second-favorite thing to eat with a groove. –FanDome.

I don’t care who you are or how much you hate cruelty to other people or how many trees you hugged last week. If a fat guy takes a running start of the end of a dock, YOU ARE WATCHING. And this fellow, with whom I’m unfamiliar, decides to indulge his friends and, thanks to the power of technology: the world. But did we mention that this is in the dead of winter and that the lake might be…frozen?

Oh. They mentioned the frozen part in the headline. Thanks for nothing, College Humor.

It’s been a couple days since we’ve posted video of somebody injuring their face, so here ya go. Enjoy this. Diving board face plants are far too rare. Divers just don’t have the same naked idiocy as skateboarders, I guess.

True story: When I was a lifeguard in high school, I used to have some moderate diving skills. Not too many, just enough to get myself injured. I still have a scar on top of my head from when I Louganis’d a flip with a full twist. I got out of the pool and blood was gushing out of my head and down my face. Trust me, if you ever want people to freak out, definitely go with the blood-running-down-your-face look. Then open up your eyes real wide and laugh maniacally. And carry an axe. I really regret not having an axe that day.

[Don Chavez]

Greg Robertson, an Australian diver spear-fishing off the continent’s southern coast, landed an unexpectedly large catch — himself!  (How did I do?  I’m practicing writing ledes for UK tabloids.) No, but seriously, he shot a two-meter spear directly into his groin.

[T]he 25 year old was pushed onto the speargun, which had been washed out of his hands by a wave.  The two metre long spear pierced his inside upper thigh, just millimetres from his genitals and femoral artery, and lodged several centimetres under the skin…

“The spear’s barbed on the end, so it’s locked in there. He got up and said ‘It’s in me, it’s in me!” [a witness said.]

That’s what she said!  Hey, I got a two-meter spear gun for your groin right here! At least, uh, I think I do.  I’m not so good at metric conversion.  Inches and meters are about the same, right?

[Deuce of Davenport]

Most swimming pools have "no diving" signs for anything shallower than 4 feet of water.  And that's assuming you're jumping in from the edge of the pool.  This guy dove into 12 inches of water from a three-story platform, setting a world record of some sort.  "Stupidest stunt not resulting in paralyzing spinal injury" would be my guess.

[Sports by Brooks]