I agree. James has larger aspirations than basketball. Although I don’t see LBJ going broke like a few athletes that have come before him.

LaBron is definitely thinking much bigger than basketball. Just imagine having an equity stake, and significant royalties from marketing as an owner. Just imagine being the number 1 player to the other 4 billion people between Europe and China. I mean the US is great but we’re still only 330 million people. Championships are great but if you can go make a billion I’m sure you’ll get over it. There are tons of championship winning athletes that are broke or near it. Give me the fortune, f the fame and yall can have the name. Quick.

The only thing that saves the NBA for his death would be tha David Stern manage to bring and mix the Esuro League teams with the NbA ones.

King_Kaun – I saw Dirk’s new do. Lol.

http://cache.deadspin.com/assets/images/deadspin/2008/08/Nowitzki.jpg

Hooray!! Olympics are here!!

p.s. LeBron would totally bolt for that price.

so you are saying that not everything appears to be what it be?

it’s all about “perception”.

hopefully lisa horne will stop back by and leave another comment, so you can break out your decoder ring and translate for me.

thanks.

KOBE!!

No offense taken. I hope I answered your questions/concerns.

Sorry if I appeared to be offensive. I think you’re a great guy. I have not followed your links yet. Maybe next time. I just didnt find it smart to relate the exchange rate factor to an article of another sports columnist, quote and unquote.

“Another thing that you need to take into consideration is the exchange rate.
I cited this above, but Patrick McManamon of The Akron Beacon Journal reported yesterday that “$100 million in U.S. dollars adds up to a meager $64.57 million euros.””

Dusty
As for the comparison to Dominique Wilkins, he was hugely popular because of his rivaly with Michael Jordan both in points production and slam-dunks. LeBron will surely be remembered even if he plays in Europe. But certainly not as great as you’d expect it to be considering his status now. That’s probably what Lisa Horne’s message. The gravity of name recall is different. Not everyone has a sharp memory or follows the NBA closely. It’s like me saying something like this that people already forgot about Hakeem Olajuwon and of course you can also argue that a number of guys can still manage to spew out his approximate stats during his phenomenal years, championship and MVP years. It’s not necessarily being literal even if it appears to be literal.

Take a look at this:

http://www.nikebiz.com/media/pr/2008/06/25_Earnings.html

It doesn’t focus on LeBron, but it does touch on Nike’s European sales and discusses the exchange rate.

You said, “In my estimation, considering all the known factors to me, I would put the price tag for Lebron to disregard or sacrifice his other valuable concerns at the $70M range tax-free. Because if $50M ‘barely’ exceeds his current level at the cost of sacrificing his other concerns, then a substantial amount over that should be presented to him.”

Are you implying that LeBron would receive less in endorsement money if chose to play in Europe?

I didn’t really “need” to cite the Akron Beacon Journal columnist. I just wanted to bring a great article to your attention.

If you’d like to check his numbers, here is a currency converter:

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency?u

And in most circumstances, I don’t fault players for trying to earn as much as they can. Unless those players are putting dollars over victories or legacy. Which wouldn’t be the case for someone as young as LeBron.

_____________

as per usual, great point here by lisa horne.

lisa, ever heard of dominique wilkens?

nique, (good god i love that name)was inducted into the NBA hall of fame in 2006.

nique (lol) lead the league in scoring ONCE, and earned 1st team all NBA ONCE!

ZERO championships, ZERO finals appearances, ZERO mvp’s.

hopefully you hadn’t forgotten who nique played for in 1994, i bet hawks fans haven’t.

PS. gag me.

YOu have agreed with my assessment that paying Lebron $50M tax-free wont be profitable and it does not even ensure a strong chance at the title. I have reservations though on your forecast of Nike sales once Lebron transfers to Europe. Im a sales information analyst with logical and pragmatic approach influenced by my engineering background and I must say that marketing is not an exact science. I don’t like to appear rhetorical but you have to convince me about Lebron’s Nike sales influence with solid numbers.
Had Lebron not existed would Nike sales be down? Had Nike sales been up because solely of Lebron? How about the influence of other endorsers? I can go on and on but the bottomline is, anyone can easily point out a kink in that data like sales cannibalization, changing trend or buying pattern/preference, emerging competition and so on. In short, an environment from two different periods can never be the same. In effect, Nike sales may go down or up wherever Lebron plays however large his influence may be. So, I have to reserve my analysis on this one unless I’m presented with more credible and comprehensive sales figures from Nike.

I will focus in stead on your million-dollar question. In my estimation, considering all the known factors to me, I would put the price tag for Lebron to disregard or sacrifice his other valuable concerns at the $70M range tax-free. Because if $50M ‘barely’ exceeds his current level at the cost of sacrificing his other concerns, then a substantial amount over that should be presented to him. Whether he’s worth that amount or if a Euro team is actually capable of paying and being sane at the same time is beside the point.

I find it strange that you have to quote a day-old item from another sports columnist to figure out how much $100M is actually worth in Euros.

I’ll keep my critique of LeBron’s statement for the meantime.