While all sports revolve around games being played, the leagues themselves are businesses at their core. Take the NBA, for example, as the best basketball players in the world are paid hundreds of millions of dollars to go out and win.
At times, that creates an interesting power dynamic between the owners of the teams in the league who are paying them and the players themselves. And according to Andre Iguodala , things get a lot more interesting when you factor in race.
Dre on the dynamics between owners and players
Iggy spent 19 years in the NBA, but right away, he recognized that money was central to everything in the league. The four-time champion was making tons of money, but if he was getting paid as much as he was to play basketball, he figured owners were making far more money than him.
It's a unique dynamic, especially when you consider that many NBA owners are white and many players are black. Iguodala didn't want to settle for just the salary he was making, so he set out to find ways to make even more money in the business world.
"When I got to the league, I was sitting around thinking, based on American history, why is a white man paying a black man this much money?" Iguodala said on 7PM In Brooklyn . "I read 'Forty Million Dollar Slaves.' William Rhoden, book changed my life, my train of thought."
"I'm like, 'Why they pay us all this money?' And then it led to the next question, 'How much money are they making that they pay me, a black person, that much money?' They gotta have a lot of money to pay me that much money, so what are they doing?...Now you learning where the real money is at, and it's like, 'How do you build those things?'" Iguodala added.
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The complicated relationships the NBA is built upon
Iguodala credits the book Forty Million Dollar Slaves with helping him change his perspective on being a professional athlete. While he enjoys playing basketball, if he's getting paid a lot of money to do so, that means that someone (NBA owners) is benefitting from employing him.
Now, that doesn't mean all of these players are 'slaves,' but the point is that if owners are paying them all this money, they must be getting something in return. Whether it be a strong play on the court or more money through owning the team, there's always something in it for the owners.
That concept struck a chord with Iggy, so he set out to find different ways to make money beyond playing basketball. Dre is a big investor in the tech industry. He's invested in big companies like Facebook and Twitter and funded at least 25 different startups.
Iguodala's awareness helped him thrive in a way that not many other basketball players have been able to. Making other young athletes aware of these dynamics is crucial. Hopefully, they can learn something from watching what Iggy has managed to accomplish in the business world.
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