LeBron James saves the day with video footage of World Cup ‘streaker’

Can you believe there was actually a time when a lot of us viewed LeBron James as a villain?

Not anymore, especially after this past weekend.

First, he gets us all in a warm-and-fuzzy mood Friday morning by announcing his homecoming to the Cleveland Cavaliers, truly a feel-good story (unless you happen to be a Miami Heat fan).

By Sunday, James had found his way to the World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro, where he happened to capture the second-most exciting part of the whole game (next to Mario Goetze’s game-winning goal for Germany in extra time, of course) on his smartphone and posted it to Instagram (warning: there’s some profanity).

That was important because the televised broadcast of the game had conveniently switched to a shot of the Christ the Redeemer statue when a man ran onto the pitch, blew kisses to the crowd and tried to plant one on German player Benedikt Howedes.

The so-called streaker -- who actually was fully clothed but with his shirt pulled around his neck to reveal the words “natural born prankster” scrawled across his chest -- turned out to be Russian Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, a comedian whose YouTube prank videos have gotten millions of views. But Internet star or not, Zdorovetskiy was taken down and dragged away by several security guards.

Of course, others in attendance have also posted video footage of the incident. But we prefer to get our information from the best (and most kindhearted) basketball player in the world. All hail King James!

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