Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and his agent, Rich Paul, have a lot of power in the NBA.
If you come at the King, and his agent, Rich Paul, you best not miss.
An anonymous NBA agent took an opportunity to unload on both — accusing them of mismanaging players and unfairly using LeBron James as a recruiting tool for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Paul and LeBron James’s relationship is well-documented. In 2003, after the NBA Draft, James asked Paul to join his trusted inner circle, which already included his childhood friends Maverick Carter and Randy Mims.
After spending some time working under Leon Rose at Creative Artists Agency, Paul left, and in 2012 launched his own sports agency, Klutch Sports Group.
Anthony Davis, John Wall, Ben Simmons, Draymond Green, fellow Lakers teammate Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and rising star Trae young are some of the players represented by him.
Since the emergence of Klutch Sports Group on the scene, Paul has grown its’ profile substantially. He’s even expanded to other sports leagues such as the National Football League and Major League Baseball.
We all know there are NBA players and owners who resent James for the power and influence they believe he has within the league. It all started when he took his talents to South Beach and joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Somehow, James became the poster child for the new era of free agency.
But since Paul started representing James and other players around the league, their ethics have come into question.
I would be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that the dynamic duo of James and Paul seems like a conflict of interest on the surface.
When Paul sits down with prospective clients, is he operating in their best interest, or James’?
Is he only getting these meetings because of James’ status?
Those are legitimate questions.
But leveraging your platform is the nature of the business. The sports agent industry is as cutthroat as on-court action can be. Having James on board his agency gives Paul the most important word in any negotiation: leverage.
When you represent the best player in the NBA, you have something no other agent has: the face of the league.
Other agents know this, and because of this reality, they resent this.
To highlight players such as Nerlens Noel, Norris Cole, or Shabazz Napier as examples of gross negligence on Paul’s part rings hollow. I can point to several athletes like Tristan Thompson and J.R. Smith that were compensated well beyond what many believed their market dictated.
In business, you win some, and you lose some. You know what the adage is: you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.