Is Business Making Basketball Less of a Priority for NBA Stars?
Money matters to NBA superstars, but what if it matters too much?
As endorsement deals explode, dwarfing actual on-court earnings for many of the game's biggest names, you wonder whether basketball might soon take a back seat.
You wonder because when Carmelo Anthony listed the reasons he stayed with the New York Knicks as a free agent this past summer, he discussed his business interests alongside his basketball concerns:
You wonder because the sheer volume of endorsement dollars boggles the mind. Derrick Rose signed a pact with Adidas in 2012 that guaranteed him $185 million over 13 years, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports. His current contract with the Chicago Bulls, a so-called max deal, will pay him just over $60 million before it expires.
Damian Lillard will earn a salary of $3.3 million from the Portland Trail Blazers in 2014-15, but Adidas will pay him as much as $100 million on a 10-year deal, according to Brian Windhorst and Darren Rovell of ESPN.com.
Kevin Durant just emerged from a bidding war between Nike and Under Armour with a contract that could net him as much as $300 million if he reaches incentives, as reported by Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today. The Oklahoma City Thunder have him on the hook for just $39 million over the next two seasons.
When a player's biggest checks aren't coming from an NBA team, you wonder if his loyalties might shift a little. You wonder if his focus might waver on the court or while training during the offseason when he's got far larger sources of income available.
If there's a decision between one more workout and a shoe-release party, which will Rose, Lillard and Durant choose?
To hear Chris Sheridan of SheridanHoops.com tell it, Durant's late-stage withdrawal from Team USA may have already provided us with an answer:
"What Kevin Durant did was shameful.
And what I have discovered in talking to members of the U.S. federation over the past two days is this: Durant and his agency, Roc Nation, are more interested in cashing in on his MVP award and his expiring Nike deal than they are in having Durant keep his word to the people who were with him in 2010 in Turkey at the World Championship and in 2012 in London at the Olympics.
"
What if this is the start of a trend in which NBA players only care about basketball until basketball gets them to a point where they can care more about something else?
That's a logical concern in the alternate reality of sports fandom, which if we're honest isn't a logical world at all.
But if we step back a bit, we should confront ourselves with a couple of questions.
Why do we care if Durant, just as an example, may have reached a point in his life where his first job got him a better second one?
And why do we worry his value as a player might be compromised by an allegiance to another boss?
Maybe the answer has something to do with the strange lens through which we view athletes. Employing equal parts wish fulfillment and paternalism, we want NBA players to be gladiators who only care about winning (and if we're honest, entertaining us). At the same time, we ask them to embrace unrealistic values—like prioritizing a silly game over a lifetime of financial security.
Basketball is supposed to mean the most to them because it means the most to us.
If we imagine NBA players as employees, businessmen or whatever other real-world example makes them easier to relate to, the unfairness of our expectations becomes clearer. Why should they forgo lucrative opportunities or focus on a sport when more sustainable sources of income are available?
Basketball careers are short, and even if they're highly lucrative, a player's not being greedy or losing focus if he's looking to make money in other ways while he's still relevant. We'd all be chasing endorsements like mad if we were in their shoes.
Even if we can't (or don't want to) put this conversation in a broader perspective—the perspective that reveals our concerns to be selfish and controlling—there's still an answer to the headline's question that should soothe all the myopic diehards out there fretting about athletes' priorities.
Designed to Focus
Based on what we've seen, massive endorsements and other obligations haven't derailed top-tier NBA stars.
Michael Jordan made a mint away from the court and never lost his edge. He now stands as the ultimate example for today's athletes. Dominate on the floor, build a brand that endures and cash in for years to come.
LeBron James has made more money as a pitch man than a basketball player, according to Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes, and it doesn't seem to have hindered his work on the court.
Kobe Bryant spends weeks every year hawking his brand in China, but nobody would ever accuse him of losing focus on basketball.
The guys who work the hardest and possess the single-mindedness necessary to excel in sports are precisely the ones who enjoy enough success to attract endorsements. And they're also precisely the ones who don't allow outside concerns to distract them. Players who have the most endorsements and off-court earning opportunities are the ones for whom on-court competition will always matter most.
It's a self-selecting group.
Durant just won the MVP award while becoming a ubiquitous commercial presence. He showed up in commercials for everything from Gatorade to Sprint. He knew his Nike deal was up for renegotiation this summer. Despite that, he put together the most focused, brilliant season of his career.
We shouldn't expect anything to change now that he's secured his hefty shoe deal.
When we worry about money and non-basketall issues distracting players, we're projecting—assuming our own weaker constitutions are shared by athletes who've scratched and clawed and sacrificed to excel at one specific trade. Players who make it to the top in the NBA, to a point where shoe companies and soft drink manufacturers want to pay them millions, have a built-in ability to focus that exceeds our own.
We should also give guys like Durant credit for understanding a very simple truth: Basketball dominance is what made those endorsements possible in the first place. Slippage on the court is bad for business—just ask guys like Shawn Kemp and Stephon Marbury, two examples of former endorsement darlings who lost their edges.
In that sense, players like Durant, James, Rose and Bryant are who we want them to be: They put basketball first, even when their other financial pursuits should probably matter more. If those players wanted to prioritize something else over basketball, like, say, a $100 million shoe contract, we'd be crazy to fault them for it.
Fortunately for fans everywhere, we're not going to see any of the game's biggest stars reach that point.
They're just not wired that way.
