Mar 28

The LeBronchelorette: Courting the Biggest Free Agent in History

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As the summer looms, the one of the most anticipated free agent signings in sports history will occur. There are tons of offers on the table, but in the end, only one will land the big one:

Which professional athlete will Kim Kardashian sign with after her split with Reggie Bush?

No, just kidding. (But not really. Reggie said that he couldn’t handle the media spotlight of dating someone like Kim Kardashian…. You were the starting running back for the Super Bowl champions Reggie! I know that’s pretty obscure. I mean, only about 1.2 billion people actually watched the game. Personally, I think Reggie was just afraid of not being #1 – not in media attention though. I mean, at Kardashian family reunions, would he even be the best athlete? I could see Bruce Jenner getting picked before him in a pickup basketball game. The guy’s a gold medal Olympian.)

Getting back to topic though, as anyone who has ever watched more than thirty seconds of ESPN probably knows, LeBron James is an unrestricted free agent after this season, and any team is eligible to land the greatest basketball talent since Jordan.

With cap space and market size restrictions, there are actually only seven teams left in the LeBron sweepstakes though: New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Dallas, New Jersey, and the LA Clippers.

Yes, you read those last two teams correctly. New Jersey is getting a new stadium in downtown Brooklyn and the Clips just fired Mike Dunleavy as GM, opening up the opportunity for LeBron to craft any team he wants in the second-largest market in the country.

Sorry smaller-market teams. Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, and Sacramento simply just don’t scream “media mogul. ” Also my apologies go to Detroit. I know you cleared all of your cap space for 2010, but the biggest free agent you’re going to land this summer is probably Oleksiy Pecherov.

LeBron’s Goals

Everyone likes to compare LeBron and Kobe, especially the creators of the Nike puppet campaign. The biggest difference between two isn’t their game, but their aspirations off the court.

Kobe Bryant wants to be the best basketball player of all time. Hands down. He knows all the milestones: Jordan’s six titles, Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points, Marko Jaric’s five sexual assault charges. All of these are in reach. At the end of the day, Kobe really doesn’t care what others think about him, though. He avoids interviews like they’re murder mystery parties at O.J. Simpson’s house. Kobe just wants to be the greatest athlete who ever set foot on a basketball court.

This is what every street corner in China will look like next decade.

LeBron, on the other hand, has a completely different mindset. He doesn’t necessarily want to be the greatest player of all time, simply the most popular. Much like Jordan was the global icon of his time, LeBron wants to be a household name not just in America, but around the world.

Why do you think the Cavs allowed a Chinese conglomerate to purchase a part of the team last year? Why do you think LeBron is almost fluent in Mandarin? It’s not so he can watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without the subtitles.

The Yao Ming experience has proved that China is the next great frontier for the NBA, and LeBron is leading the charge into the Forbidden City.

There are a lot of options he can take this summer. LeBron can stick with his current team and try to maintain his legacy with one city, or he can move to a bigger market outside of Cleveland. One of the more entertaining – and incredibly improbably – ideas I had was this:

The “F*** it. I’m going to win a championship EVERY year” strategy

What if LeBron just decided “you know what, Bill Russell’s 11 rings is good and all, but I want to absolutely blow that out of the water.” You can’t expect a team to stay as dominant at the top as long as the Celtics of the 1960s though. He’d have to switch teams a few times in order to make sure his team stays at the top. So what if he just signed 1-year contracts every season for the rest of his career?

Wouldn’t this be incredibly captivating? Every summer, LeBron could dramatically choose which team had the best 4-man roster that he could fit into. You could even make it into a Bachelorette-style reality show. Have LeBron stay at a mansion with all 30 NBA general managers trying to court him. He could eliminate one GM each week until the dramatic season finale when he signs with his new team. Tell me you wouldn’t watch this.

Unfortunately, The LeBronchlorette doesn’t look like it’s coming to ABC anytime soon, and it seems that GMs will simply have to woo him with market shares and piles of cash. My only question is this:

Why should the contract money have anything to do with his decision?

Sure, Cleveland can offer the largest contract since they currently own his rights. Dallas could offer the most money down the road because there isn’t any income tax in Texas. (Hooray for fiscal conservatism!) New York has the largest cap space available. But the guy already made over $300 million in contracts and endorsements. Why should he care about another $3-4 million that one team can offer him over another?

It’s a well-known fact that the top athletes make most of their money not from salaries or winnings, but from endorsements. Tiger Woods makes over (or at least “made over”) over $80 million a year from endorsements compared to only about $10 million in tournament winnings. LeBron’s deal with Nike is no different. His initial seven-year Nike contract that he signed out of high school was worth over $100 million with bonuses. Compare that to his current $60 million NBA contract.

With all that money, the guy could literally purchase the Milwaukee Bucks if he wanted. It’s ludicrous to think he could pick one team over another simply due to contract offers. Doesn’t he realize that the bulk of his earnings are based on endorsement deals – which themselves are basically a measure of how popular he is?

Tell me you wouldn't watch "The LeBronchelorette"

Put is this way: if LeBron wins a championship, his popularity skyrockets, bringing in millions in endorsements. If he wins in a major media market like New York or Chicago, he’s even more of a global icon. With this train of thought, wouldn’t it actually make sense for him to sign for LESS money?

Taking up a smaller portion of the salary cap could bring in other major free agents like Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, or even Dwayne Wade to his new team. Imagine a LeBron-Wade-Bosh nucleus running the Knicks next year. Wouldn’t they win the next seven NBA championships? Wouldn’t they rule over the media capital of the world? Wouldn’t that make them the most famous team in all of sports? Now that Wade has signed with Nike, wouldn’t all three of them also make hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements in the coming decade?

If I were LeBron, I would literally sign for free. (Unfortunately this isn’t possible, so he’d have to settle for the veteran’s minimum.) Still, it absolutely makes sense. Peyton Manning did it with the Colts, and they won the Super Bowl the next year. Why can’t LeBron take less in the NBA?

I simply don’t understand why money is suddenly a big issue. In this 2007 interview with Fortune, he said, “I know I can go out and sign a lot of endorsements and get checks. Money is not the issue.” Why is it now? I understand the economy has gone down the tubes, but I don’t think he was a major stockholder in Lehman Brothers.

The Other Contract

One of the most underrated stories this offseason isn’t LeBron’s expiring NBA contract, but his $100 Nike contract that also happens to end this summer. This where his business managers really need to make the push for the big bucks. A $20 million NBA contract will look like pocket change next to his new $150 million+ Nike contract.

He’s already hinted at the fact that he’s almost certainly going to sign with the athletic conglomerate, and his new deal will surly be the most lucrative in sports history.

LeBron has a major decision this summer: signing for the maximum amount, screwing over his team’s financial flexibility, and maybe winning 2-3 championships, or eschewing his salary for immortality. Not only would he become the most famous athlete of all time, but he would eventually make more money in the long run by signing for less now.

Everyone is talking about LeBron’s new contract this summer. They’re just focusing on the wrong one.

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