LaVar Ball turned down a $10 million Nike deal to launch Big Baller Brand, a shoe line that flopped due to poor quality and planning. The speaker argues the rejection itself was smart strategy, though the execution failed. If built around his youngest son LaMelo, who became a star, it might have worked.
LeVar Ball. He has 3 sons, all 3 wanted to make it to the NBA. They're sort of like the basketball version of the Kardashians. There's 3 brothers and an overbearing parent who is like architecting their business strategy. The guy was gonna get picked second in the draft and Nike offered him a contract, Adidas, and instead he created Big Baller Brand, you know, Triple B. He created his own shoe line and like the shoes kind of sucked and like, you know, he didn't have the full business plan and people were making fun of him for like, oh wow, you turned down a guaranteed $10 million from Nike to like launch this thing. Actually, that was the right move. Now maybe his execution was slightly poor, but a lot of these NBA players would have been better served had they done that themselves. And actually, now that it would have worked, because the youngest brother, he was kind of like a, a little bit, had a gold, you know, like a diamond grill, had like a Lambo at 15, and he was kind of off the reservation. He actually turned out to be the best one. He's actually a star player. And if they had kind of built it properly around him, it probably would have done a lot better.
