19
MARCH 2020 FORBES ASIA
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56 35 31NBA DRAFT PICK
3 1 2NBA TITLES
6 3 2INSTAGRAM FOLLOWING
19.1 Million 53.5 Million 11.6 Million
@jumpman23 @KingJames @easymoneysniperNBA CAREER EARNINGS 1
$90 Million $307 Million $224 Million
(1984-1993, 1995-1998, (2003-present) (2007-present)
2001-2003)2019 NIKE SNEAKER DEAL
$130 Million $32 Million $26 MillionBEST INVESTMENTS
Charlotte Hornets Blaze Pizza, Liverpool FC Coinbase, PostmatesDISCARDED NICKNAME
Magic The Akron Hammer DurantulaMJ VS. LBJ VS. KD
HOW KEVIN DURANT POSTS UP AGAINST MICHAEL JORDAN
AND LEBRON JAMES ON (AND OFF) THE COURT.(^1) Not adjusted for inflation
MICHAEL JORDAN LEBRON JAMES KEVIN DURANT
He will earn more
than $70 million
this season without
suiting up for a
single game.
So will this playbook work in New York?
“New York will be the culmination of the dif-
ferent communities Kevin’s touched, and it
will take our company to the next level,” says
Kleiman, who met Durant originally through
a mutual friend, the musician Wale, at a
Jay-Z concert. From his loft, he can walk to
Thirty Five’s soon-to-open 418sqm Chelsea
headquarters.
If the Bay Area was about Durant latch-
ing onto deals, New York is about owning his
own media. There’s Swagger, a scripted se-
ries based on Durant’s early life backed by the
Hollywood titan Brian Grazer; it’ll be distrib-
uted on Apple’s new streaming service (thanks
in part to his friendship with Cue, the Apple
executive). Lower-budget series and shorts
live on his YouTube channel, which now ap-
proaches 800,000 subscribers. Durant’s fran-
chise, The Boardroom, covers the business
around elite athletes with a website, newslet-
ter and ESPN show. “The younger generation
is looking for access and authenticity,” says
ESPN president James Pitaro.
All these initiatives could yield ten-bag-
ger results. The secret sits in those workout
machines in Durant’s apartment. No player
of Durant’s caliber has ever returned from a
ruptured Achilles to the same level of domi-
nance. No player in almost half a century has
brought an NBA trophy to the country’s larg-
est city, one mad for basketball. “The team is
in the garage stage, where we are putting the
idea together. It’s more intimate, everyone
understands the goal and has a fresh experi-
ence,” Durant says. “A championship would
be a whole other level, but injecting a new en-
ergy into a city through basketball would be
even cooler.”
While Acorns and Lime scooters will suc-
ceed or fail without him, with his new initia-
tives and his own assets, he controls his des-
tiny—and sees no limits. “I want to own and
run an NBA team—run day-to-day operations
and impact young players coming through the
league,” he says, ticking off the path that Mi-
chael Jordan took to become a billionaire.
“I started down here,” Durant adds, leaning
forward to touch the floor of his apartment
with his gigantic hand. “I know there’ll be kids
popping up in my family, and I want them to
start above this roof. The only way to get there
for your family is to create money, and I want
to do it in a cooler way, not just being greedy
and accumulating as much as I can.”
ENTREPRENEURS