Kudos to the Bagley family, who seem to have worked the sneaker wars to perfection. News broke Thursday that Marvin Bagley III will be the first NBA player signed to Puma in 20 years, inking what is reported to be the biggest rookie sneaker deal since Kevin Durant’s $8 million annual deal a decade ago.
Marvin Bagley III worked the sneaker game cold
We have that and more in Friday’s NBA newsletter.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Why does this matter? First, that’s a lot of money ... for a big man ... from a company with no current NBA presence. Reports had suggested Puma was actually chasing Trae Young, the best guard in the draft, which makes more sense, given that guards traditionally move sneakers in ways that big men (Bagley is 6’11) don’t. Bagley is going to go higher than Young though, and is more of a sure thing in the pros. His camp leveraged that in some fashion to convinced Puma to bring the bags.
The other thing is that Bagley has been tied to Nike for a while. Nike funded Bagley’s Nike EBYL team — named Nike Phamily — which, as documented by Rick O’Donnell, also starred Bagley’s brother and was run by Bagley’s father. Duke also happens to be a Nike school. (Four of Bagley’s final six college contenders were Nike schools.)
This pipeline usually results in a player picking a Nike-friendly agent after declaring for the draft, and for the very best prospects like Bagley, it usually results in a sneaker deal with the shoe company that brought you here. The Bagleys were brought here by Nike, and now they’re dancing with Puma.
What makes it extra cold is that if the Puma-Bagley partnership is a success, Nike has a new competitor in the marketplace! This is almost worse than signing with Under Armour (but probably not as bad as flipped to Adidas).
... And one
Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News wrote this tweet about Bagley’s deal: “Someone tell me he’d have gotten this deal without an All-America season at Duke. I could use a good laugh.”
This is a fair point: Bagley has a far larger public persona simply because of 30 games at Duke. He owes some portion of his sneaker deal to that. However, this is a disingenuous sentiment when you consider that without the age minimum, Bagley would have earned at least $3.8 million this season just to play basketball were he a top-five draft pick in 2017 (which he likely would have been without an age minimum). Starting a year early would have effectively gotten him to a lucrative second contract a year earlier, and added a year of earning to what could be a long career.
Even if Bagley’s Puma deal is $6 million and his prep-to-pro sneaker deal would have been $1-2 million, the first-year NBA salary just about makes up for it, and the long-term impact of starting that years of service clock early more than makes up for it. So let’s not imply the age minimum actually helped Bagley make money. In the long run, it will have cost him.
Links galore
There is so, so much to this Kent Babb profile of Tina Ball (Lonzo’s mom) and the Ball family.
I wrote about three reasons the draft could get especially bonkers.
It seems as though Gregg Popovich, Kawhi Leonard, and Tim Duncan (!) are all in New York ahead of a reported tete a tete between the coach and star.
Michael Porter, Jr.’s confab with lottery teams on Friday is back on. It remains unclear whether he will work out or just be examined. Meanwhile, here is Porter’s injury explained by a surgeon and a jelly doughnut.
A reminder that physical violence is never the solution to bad tweets. The only thing that can cure bad tweets is more bad tweets.
Could the Pistons use Andre Drummond like the Rockets use Clint Capela?
And finally: Mike Bibby got swole. Like really, really swole. Watch yourself, Skeets.
Be excellent to each other.
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