How Andre Iguodala handled his rare NBA sabbatical in Silicon Valley
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(*Chris Bosh is a Hall of Fame player and maybe the most underrated big man of the last decade. Happy to debate. LOL)
Kevin Durant spent his time in the Bay Area investing in startups and learning how the tech world worked in SV.
More and more athletes are thinking of life-after-the-sport, but just as many are also seeing themselves as businessmen DURING their careers. The biggest names want to build iconic brands, and not just brands that focus on their personal identities. Podcasts, streaming services, energy drinks, athletic gear, music, film production, technology. Young smart men (mostly) flush with cash who have been coached on the cautionary tales of the late 90's and'00s where players received mega-contracts and were broke within 5 years (see: Vince Young, Antoine Walker, Andre Rison)
One last story: I used to work in the hosting/infrastructure world and an early colleague was a very early employee at RAX. Once told me a story that Gregg Popovich (coach) and David Robinson (HOF player) of the San Antonio Spurs each put $1M into RAX when they were still doing seed investments from friends, family and connections. He told me that if both men liquidated their shares at IPO, even with the 20% dip that happened quite quickly, their individual take would have each been more than Robinson made as an NBA player in his entire career ($112M).
But lets not fool ourselves either, there is also a lot of celebrity investments where a famous name is slapped on a lifestyle product like vitamin water, the celebrity makes millions, and the consumers ultimately get shafted because more often then not the celebrity name is just credentialism to up-sell a mediocre product. Shark tank does this as well because they know as soon as the show airs there will be a huge spike in sales by default.
Sometimes this is really bad for society as was the case with Theranos board of directors and any of the Kardashian brands. We shouldn't let celebrities amplify pump and dump schemes. I don't think the NBA players you listed have been involved, but I think its always important that we are vigilant for it...
And I appreciate your diplomacy (seriously), but a lot of athletes have their intelligence underestimated because they are minorities and only went to college for one or two years...but mostly because they are minorities. The notion that someone young and African-American who can jump out of the gym might also be really smart is not something that's common to consider unfortunately.
For example, investing in start-ups is good but raising gluttonous amounts of money with a terrible product or business plan is bad. If we have a bunch of articles glorifying industry outsiders parking their money here, it will raise a reciprocal amount of Uber and dollar shave club clones which take away from "more-worthy" projects.
I don't think this is true for the majority of Americans anymore in regards to sports athletes. My finger on the rather sensitive topic is it has more to do with how different groups perceive one's culture (and potential ignorance thereof) than race. You'll be hard press to find, save the few rare 0.1% fringe racists or trolls, questions around Russell Wilson's intelligence, or Patrick Mahomes, or Kobe Bryant, or Richard Sherman. If you simply google "smartest athletes" you get a pretty diverse representation of African American athletes, White athletes, and everything in between.
Also working against famous athletes, is the fact that pop culture and celebrity is generally not associated with intelligence in America on a whole.
(Thank you for this rare opportunity to talk sports on HN!)
Bosh would not have been able to reach over Duncan to get the rebound and it would have been over. To this day, I still cannot comprehend what Popovich was thinking.
That being said, Bosh definitely deserves a spot in the HoF. He was a MVP candidate his final year before leaving for Miami. A lot of people totally forget this.
https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/kobe-bryants-6m-investment-spo...
Jokes aside, I respect the hell out of athletes who realize their timeframe is limited and pursue business opportunities like this. They bring an interesting, outside perspective on what can be a Very niche world.
A couple years ago I went to a cryptocurrency conference only because Kobe was the keynote speaker and honestly I wanted to bash him (hate the lakers). But despite the general idiocy of the conference he shared some very insightful comments about his thoughts on economics, investments, business, etc.
It seems that many athletes do realize their timeframe and try to invest so they have money afterward. Unfortunately, many make bad investments. Many athletes like the concreteness of investing in a business where you know the people, over the abstractness of putting money into an index fund, though the first comes with a lot higher risk than the second. Many times they are preyed upon by unscrupulous business people because of this.
i'd go so far as to suggest that all pro athletes should be offered a mini-mba program of business courses as rookies: statistics, economics, marketing, accounting, finance, and strategy (and possibly financial valuation, operations and organizational behavior too). that way, they'd have the basic tools to evaluate the investment opportunities that will inevitably seek them out.
Gerald Green is still bouncing around the league as a trade chip.