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Athlete LeBron James: Best basketball player of his generation - and more
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Maddie Meyer / Getty Images
In basketball, LeBron James won everything.
He is a four-time MVP, 16-time all star, has won four NBA titles and two Olympic golds, and has broken a number of records.
Now James has reached a record that is enormous even by his standards: The 36-year-old will be the first basketball player to have earned more than one billion US dollars in the course of his active career.
So wrote the business magazine "Forbes", which published its annual NBA earnings ranking a week ago.
In it, James is at the top for the seventh time in a row, thanks to an estimated income of $ 95.4 million, which makes him a member of an elite group.
Only Tiger Woods (golf), Floyd Mayweather (boxing), Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi (both football) have so far cracked the billion mark as active athletes.
"King James" draws almost a third of his annual salary, $ 31.4 million, from his player contract.
The rest comes from advertising deals, investments or other branches: for example from his stake in Liverpool FC, his leading role in the remake of the basketball film "Space Jam" or from his life contract with Nike, worth more than one billion dollars.
And that's just the surface of a business empire that not only aims for prosperity, but also for social influence.
It was created by a group of school friends who were first laughed at, then criticized, finally respected - and now glorified.
LeBron and his four riders
"The starting point for everything was LeBron," Maverick Carter said in 2018, according to The Undefeated website.
“He had to be the best player he could be.
It's still the most important thing to this day. ”Carter has known James since high school.
He's been his business partner for 17 years and part of his innermost circle, which consists of four black men from Akron, Ohio: James and Carter, as well as Rich Paul, his agent, and Randy Mims, his chief of staff.
Together the quartet has given itself the nickname »Four Horsemen«: the four riders.
For years, James received criticism for the decision to give his entrepreneurial existence into the hands of childhood friends.
Partly rightly, for example after the rider's worst business decision to date, known as "The Decision".
Back then, in the summer of 2010, James announced his move from Cleveland to Miami on a lavishly produced live broadcast.
It had been Carter's idea.
The ostentatious staging seriously damaged James' reputation - and that of his companions as well.
You have been portrayed as the clichéd entourage of a young, black athlete: connected but incompetent;
as bloodsuckers who benefit from their friend's success.
Ten years later, it is undisputed how much James benefited from the success of his riders.
Black people
Black people are (unlike white people) a self-designation.
It is not about a characteristic that can be traced back to skin color, but about a social position affected by racism.
We are adopting this political self-designation here and therefore capitalize »Black«.
James leaves the operative business largely to his confidants.
Mims, about whom little is known publicly, takes care of everyday matters for him.
Paul, in turn, made James the most million dollar basketball player in NBA history.
And Carter sets up business aside from basketball.
"The idea is to build companies instead of just taking sponsorship money," he told The Undefeated.
For example, in 2012, when the company was largely unknown, James bought a stake in a fast-dining chain called Blaze Pizza on Carter's advice.
He paid around a million dollars for ten percent.
Three years later he got out of one of his most lucrative advertising partners, McDonald's - he paid several million for it - in order to be able to advertise Blaze Pizza from then on.
In the meantime, the number of branches has increased as has sales.
Last month, James switched from longtime sponsor Coca-Cola to Pepsi, and there were immediate rumors that Blaze Pizza would serve Pepsi instead of Coke in the future.
The value of his original stake has grown approximately 25 times.
At the same time, James is not just the face that a company like McDonald's uses to advertise and that earns a few million for it.
He exercises influence himself.
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LeBron James, Chris Paul, Randy Mims, Meek Paul, Rich Paul in Los Angeles 2019
Photo: Jerritt Clark / Getty Images
More than an athlete
, more than an athlete, in James' case that's more than a slogan.
It is a value created by four men who started life underprivileged but were willing to empower themselves.
Rich Paul, for example, has no college degree, he sold jerseys out of the trunk of his car.
Today, his agency Klutch Sports is arguably the most influential in US basketball - and one of the most controversial: Last year, when the Los Angeles Lakers became champions, six players, including James, were under contract with Paul, i.e. more than a third of the squad.
They were all referred to the Lakers by him.
Carter, in turn, founded the media company SpringHill Entertainment with James in 2020, endowed with $ 100 million in venture capital to support projects by structurally disadvantaged creatives.
And James himself made it from a fatherless boy who slept on the couch to the greatest basketball player of his generation - and a cultural icon.
For almost two decades he has appeared as the voice of the black US population.
And he doesn't stop at just words: with his "I Promise School", a state-of-the-art all-day facility for children at risk in his hometown of Acron, James pushed into new dimensions among the sports philanthropists.
Commitment with limits
James is not a moralist because of this.
See 2019: At that time, Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets at the time, showed solidarity with the Hong Kong independence movement on Twitter and thus alienated the important Chinese market.
And James, who had even argued publicly with the US President elsewhere, not only remained noticeably quiet.
He publicly distanced himself.
Since then, James has had to put up with the charge of hypocrisy.
Although the story primarily shows a man who weighs business and political interests - and who is willing to risk more to fight anti-black racism than to secure Hong Kong's independence.
As an athlete, James is primarily compared to Michael Jordan.
In his mélange as a world star, entrepreneur and social actor, James is more reminiscent of the rapper Jay-Z, who made it from the music stages of this world to the very large business premises and into the political discourse.
One is more than a musician, the other far more than an athlete.
And both are more than billionaires.
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