LeBron James is headed to the Philadelphia 76ers on a deal that’s tiny by his standards, but a new off-court agreement may be making the whole setup even more interesting.
ESPN’s Dave McMenamin reported Friday that James is joining the 76ers for “his final run at another NBA championship.” Rich Paul, the CEO of Klutch Sports Group, told ESPN’s Shams Charania that James, 41, is signing a two-year, $8 million contract with a player option. That makes it the smallest NBA contract of James’ career.
But the money doesn’t stop there. Front Office Sports reported that James recently landed a partnership with Polymarket worth $15 million a year, which means he’ll actually make more from that deal than from playing for Philadelphia. Ryan Glasspiegel and Ben Horney wrote that James is “not an investor in Polymarket, just an endorser, one source says.”
That arrangement is what has people around the league talking. NBA insider Brett Siegel pointed to the possibility that side deals like this could open the door for a new kind of free-agency maneuver.
“As far as my knowledge goes, this doesn’t interfere with any CBA rules, but moving forward, these side deals players have with companies could directly lead to smaller contracts to help with cap relief, which in theory, is kind of like cap circumvention,” Siegel wrote.
James has spent his career changing the way the league works, and now, at 41, he may have added a new wrinkle to how players and teams think about free agency. If this kind of structure catches on, older free agents or players looking to land with teams short on cap space could start looking at similar setups. The Polymarket deal’s exact timing isn’t known, but it may have played a part in how James approached this move.
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