Lebron James Mel GibsonMel Gibson's hateful, utterly insane (and possibly criminal) rant against his baby mama Oksana Grigorieva and LeBron James's extraordinarily poor handling of his move from Cleveland to Miami are self-inflected missteps of completely different natures and magnitudes.

They both, however, may have done irreparable damage to each man's "brand."

Mel Gibson's name was more or less mud even before the Grigorieva tapes broke. Which is why one can argue that LeBon's unwitting heel turn has actually been more damaging. (Just a week ago James was an extremely popular figure; now he's getting booed in public.)

Or maybe not. And that is why we debate.

Read on for the arguments for whether Mel Gibson or Lebron James just suffered the most epic of brand fails.

Who has done more damage to his reputation in the past week?
Lebron James -- suddenly, Kobe Bryant seems classy667 (45.2%)
Mel Gibson -- suddenly, Tom Cruise seems well-adjusted808 (54.8%)


Lebron JamesLeBron James
If LeBron wants to go down to Miami and carry Dwyane Wade's jock around, fair enough. Just because someone is great at basketball doesn't mean he needs to be consumed by the urge to be the greatest -- like Michael Jordan was and Kobe Bryant seems to be.

However, the way in which James separated from his hometown of Cleveland -- giving them the bad news in a ridiculous hour-long ego-mercial on ESPN -- was in supremely bad taste. Sure, it's just sports, but we can't think of a similarly classless premeditated act by a public figure. Ever.

Furthermore, when James, attired in a goofy checked shirt, awkwardly blurted out that he was "taking his talents to South Beach," we thought, This guy is a dork.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being a dork. It's just dorks aren't known for their ability to sell shoes and sports drinks.

Chance of recovery: In most NBA arenas, the "witnessing" will be replaced by booing. Lots of it. But if he can win a couple championships and average a triple double, he'll probably salvage some of his badly damaged rep.

Mel Gibson
It's hard to make the gold-digging Russian girlfriend sympathetic, but Gibson accomplished that -- and then some. While the initial focus of the Grigorieva Tapes was on the boogeyman of racism (which Gibson's been associated with for years), further recordings revealed something uglier: Gibson admits to beating Gregorieva -- possibly to the point of breaking her teeth -- as she held their daughter in her arms.

Taking into account his acting and his filmmaking, Gibson is as big a Hollywood talent as we've seen over the last 30 years. Yet it's hard to believe he can recover from this -- even in a town where all is usually forgiven as long as you deliver the goods on-screen.

Clearly, an uncontrollable anger burns in Gibson. And this rage was eventually going to be the 54-year-old's ticket to irrelevance. It looks like this was the week he punched that ticket.

Chance of recovery: Even if Mother Teresa comes back from the dead and forgives him on "Oprah," Gibson is unlikely to get back into the public's good graces. On the bright side, the unusual way in which he demands oral sex makes for a hilarious Internet meme.