The Sixth Man

by Andre Iguodala

  That was a large part of the reason I began to think about leaving early. I began to look at it as if I was working for any company, say Google. I’ve been an employee, I’ve done my job. But then it becomes clear that there are career-advancement opportunities available to me if I strike out on my own. Of course I want to test the water, want to make sure I’m making the right decision. But once I get a sense that there’s a better deal out there for me, then I’m going to start looking into it. Wouldn’t you?

  So I began to break it down. What was my compensation from the University of Arizona? OK. I’m getting an education, of sorts. Technically. And for me, I was getting much more of an education than a lot of guys on my squad. I was All-Conference Academic my entire time there. I left with a 3.0. I was actually going to class, doing my homework.

  The education really can help if you are an athlete who knows that you are not going pro. That would be a great thing if guys on teams were actually getting an education. But when you look at big-name, multimillion-dollar programs, you’ve got to be honest. It’s not about education. It’s about sports. And that’s it. It’s about getting guys in and getting guys out so the teams can compete next year. And if you’re a player on one of those teams, your whole life is basketball. You’re up early in the morning at the gym, running, lifting. You’re practicing, you’re traveling. The toll on your body is intense. You’re getting fatigued, injured. Every waking moment is consumed with either practicing, playing, or thinking basketball.

  And yet you’re supposed to carry a full course load and get an education. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do. I did it. But I was in a position to do it because I was already a real student coming in. I had already taken high school academics seriously, been in honors classes. I did that because that’s the kind of person I was. But it wasn’t because the school cared. They would have recruited me regardless, so they can’t take credit for the fact that I happened to be a student. They cared that I remained eligible, that I was not in violation. But they did not care if I got an actual education. That’s simply not what college sports is about.

  The guys who are being recruited are being recruited for their basketball skills only. Some of us are coming from situations where no one has cared for a moment about academics in our entire lives. I’ve played with guys who can barely read. I’ve seen guys literally have all their homework completed by “tutors.” They don’t care because the goal is not to educate young men, but to sell tickets, merchandise, and the logo. And those kids’ bodies are what is traded in exchange.

  There’s a scene in Blue Chips where a bunch of coaches have descended on a Chicago Catholic school to recruit Butch McCrae, played by Penny Hardaway. They are all in the office waiting to make their pitch to the principal, played by Lou Gossett Jr. When he emerges from his office to see all these men assembled to compete for the services of McCrae, the principal pretends to be holding a slave auction. “How much for McCrae?” he asks sarcastically. “Young boy, good stock, strong, hard worker. Where can we start the bidding?”

  That is how it has always felt to me on some level. Sports is people telling you to use your body to make them money. In professional sports you are receiving a paycheck in exchange. In college you are not. But why is that? In college they are still generating income. Collegiate administrators can say that they’re providing you with an education in exchange, but if they are recruiting kids who are not students, looking the other way while those students take bullshit classes and have their homework completed by tutors, and then letting them walk before they graduate, and they’re letting all that slide specifically so those kids can stay and play, then how can the exchange of goods honestly be said to involve an education?

  The tuition is worth $25,000 to $65,000 per year, depending on the school, but the most recent NCAA men’s basketball tournament generated over $1 billion in revenue this past year. Coach Mike Krzyzewski at Duke currently makes $8.9 million per year. Coach Brian Jones at North Dakota State, who is one of the lowest-paid Division I coaches in the country, made a reported $109,273 in 2017. Even that salary is worth way more than the average price of an education. And that’s not including bonuses. So the athletic director is making seven figures. The coach is making seven figures. The assistants are making six figures. TV networks are making billions. And yet the players who are grinding their bodies into nothing, sacrificing kneecaps and ligaments on a daily basis, who are the only people anyone tunes in to watch, are earning the equivalent of $40,000 per year? And that’s not even in cash but it’s in a “service”? That’s like being offered the most physically dangerous job on a staff where everyone else is making six or seven figures, and you’re supposed to risk your health and be the face of the company for a compensation package of $40,000 in gift certificates.

  NCAA basketball claims to care about its student athletes but doesn’t make it possible for these athletes to support their families, who are oftentimes struggling. A basketball player has to play for free for at least a year, a football player for three years, before they are eligible to earn an income. But sports like tennis, baseball, golf, and even hockey allow kids to go pro whenever they want. Is it a coincidence that these are overwhelmingly white sports while basketball and football are not?

  When you take all that into account, Jalen Rose wearing black socks is not the person who is disrespecting the game.

  So, when I added all this up, the choice was pretty clear. NCAA basketball is a racket. And the players are the only ones losing.

  That was what began to become clear for me from the moment that agent started talking to me outside the arena that night. People who say that agents talking to kids interferes with the purity of the game are being disingenuous. There was no purity to the game to begin with. It’s just that oftentimes the players are the last to know.

  I wanted to make sure that, out of respect, I told Coach Olson before I went public. I sat down at his house for a dinner he invited me to. It was awkward. We’d never had anything other than a relationship totally about the execution of basketball. I was sitting at his home—which was beautifully appointed, looking like something out of a movie about rich people. I felt certain I would break a $60,000 vase or something. We fumbled our way through small talk punctuated by uncomfortable silences as best we could. His wife, apparently, had had enough.

  “Andre,” she blurted out, “are you coming back?”

  “Oh, well . . . I don’t know if Coach wants me back.”

  Coach Olson jumped in. “Well, of course I want you to come back, Andre.”

  It was a stunning moment. Never, all year, had this man expressed anything close to that. All year it had been “Grow up. Play better.” No positive reinforcement at all. Now all of a sudden I’m part of the family?

  But I was realizing that there was a reason he was doing this very poorly executed wooing right here and now. He needed me. If I did go pro, he’d need me to be on his side. He’d need me to stay connected to Arizona basketball to help with recruiting.

  But I needed him too. GMs were going to be asking him about me, and one word from him could sink my career if I rubbed him the wrong way. One word could cost me millions.

  We sat at that table, no longer player and coach, no longer kid and mentor. Now we were two men, one black and nineteen years old, one white and seventy years old, engaged in a transaction on equal footing.

  I laid it out. I told him that I was going to be moving on. That I appreciated everything he’d done for me, but that it was a dream of mine and I had to go for it.

  He was quiet for a moment. “I respect your decision” was pretty much all he said.

  * * *

  —

  My time at Arizona went by so quickly that it almost felt like it never happened. I had come to campus hoping to have an entire experience. Instead I found myself confused, unsure, and pushed into things before I was ready. My basketball got better.
But in the end, college was not the place for me. If you are to play like an adult, you should be paid like one. Whether I was ready or not, I had seen the signs. It was time to move on.

  04

  Welcome to the NBA

  The first agent I spoke with was the guy who had stopped me outside the gymnasium and told me that Coach was holding back on how good I was. In the time that had passed, he and I had kept an informal relationship going. It was exactly what I needed at the time; a perspective outside of the program and outside of my own head. He was doing what agents do: making himself available seemingly out of charity, but in reality grooming me as a client. His goal was to make it so that I felt like I couldn’t possibly imagine navigating my career without him. And in a lot of ways, it worked. I was at least 99 percent sure that I would sign with him. But although I didn’t know much, I knew better than to sign anything without due diligence. My experiences with college recruiting had taught me nothing if not that. I let him know that I was going to, just as a formality, talk to a handful of other agents.

  “Yeah, no, that’s great,” he said. “I get it.”

  “Yes, thanks. I just want to make sure I do it the right way. Best-case scenario, I sign with you. But I want to go out and learn a little more about everything.”

  “Of course. Totally understand.”

  “Cool.”

  “Just . . . you gotta know all these other guys are bums, man. They can’t do for you what I can do for you.”

  “Bro, relax. I’m going with you. Chill.”

  “Yeah, no. We’re good.”

  “Cool.”

  “Just don’t trust those LA guys man. They may look flashy, but they have too many clients. You’ll be bottom of the barrel there. With me—”

  “Man, I said I got you.”

  “’K. Cool.”

  I did my due diligence and met with a handful of other agents including another group out of Chicago. They flew me out to Chicago to meet with them, and they were making the solid pitch. I had been flown out, dined, and courted. They wanted me to see the facilities where their athletes had access and show me a little bit about the town. We were riding in the back of a limo, making small talk, when my phone started to buzz with texts.

  “Man, how’s it going?”

  It was the other agent, the one I had told to relax.

  “Pretty good, bro,” I replied, hoping that would end it.

  “Cool. You should come by the office since you’re in town.”

  “Nah, man. Look, I really wanna do this the right way, after all the stuff I’ve been through the past few months. I’m not trying to be disrespectful or go behind anyone’s back.”

  “Cool, cool. I can respect that.”

  Then a minute later I received another text. “I’m going to drop by your hotel tonight.”

  This guy wouldn’t let it go. Then he begins to tell me about how the people I was meeting with, right there in the car, were trash and how I should never trust them.

  It was stressing me out. And despite myself, I mumbled out loud, “Man, these guys are always hating.”

  The agents knew exactly who was texting me. Then they started trashing him. The whole thing just bummed me out. I’ve never been one who responded well to pushy people. I’m not someone you can fast-talk into a corner. Usually the pushier you are, the more you trash other people and pump yourself up, the less I trust you. It’s just not a style that works for me. Making the decision to leave school had been stressful, though I knew it was the right thing to do. But the world outside seemed even more treacherous. I really began to feel like I didn’t know who I could trust.

  The final agent I met with was Rob Pelinka out of Los Angeles, and what we did during our meeting was play Ping-Pong. That was it. That was what did it. Ping-Pong. No talk of business, no talk of basketball or branding or other agencies. He didn’t tell me how he was going to make money off me, what he had planned. He just asked me about my life and told me about his. It was the first time in the whole process of looking for an agent that I could just relax. I didn’t feel like I needed to protect myself or be on guard about anything. He treated me like a human being and not like a cash cow.

  There is so much dehumanization in big-money sports. A lot of people don’t want to hear it because of what we get paid, but money doesn’t change that fact. It really makes it worse. Money really makes people look at you like an object. You’re putting your body on the line, and no human body was meant to run up and down the court for eighty-two games. You get injured, you take a cortisone shot, you’re back out there. I’ve been told that I’m a “hard-nosed player.” This is supposed to be a good thing. Once, I broke my hand in a game, stood up, taped it, and went back out to play. Coaches are like, “Atta-way! You got heart!” But honestly? That’s some dumb shit, playing with a broken hand. In this game, people are all over you, trying to get in your head and manage your thoughts. And that process is intensified when you’re a new prospect.

  So, playing Ping-Pong with Rob, just having someone treat me like a person rather than an object, really worked for me. That night I slept better than I had in months. The next time I saw Rob, I told him I was going with him, and that was that.

  “Great,” he said. “Now here’s our plan.”

  * * *

  —

  Rob had found out that there were a handful of teams that didn’t like me. One didn’t like me from the cell phone incident. Another’s scout had seen me giving Coach Olson bad looks in that freshman practice. Rob’s plan was to fix my rep with these teams. And he wanted to do it by going through Coach Olson.

  We set up a meeting with Coach, and that’s the first time I got to see Rob work. He had a great instinct for what Coach needed to hear and also for how to increase my brand and perception in the eyes of NBA front offices.

  “Coach, oh man, we just want to thank you for everything you did for Andre. Without you, we wouldn’t be here. Whatever you need, let us know. Andre’s Arizona for life. We’re going to come back every year. Whatever you need for camps. You need us for recruits, we’ll call the recruits. There’s nothing like an Arizona guy being a pro for recruits.”

  It worked. Every GM, every scout, every assistant who called Coach about me heard nothing but good news. “Andre’s a hardworking player. We’ve had no issues. Good teammate. Here’s what he’s working on.” That meeting with Rob made all the difference. Because without it, the story very well may have been, “He’s a good player but he can be a little difficult at times. Here are a couple of examples . . .” The difference between millions of dollars can be just that subtle.

  I began to work out in Chicago in preparation for team meetings. Rob set me up with a number of players, both aspiring and current NBA guys to train with. But the biggest influence in that whole group was a midcareer guard named Corey Maggette. Corey was a six-foot-six small forward from just outside Chicago playing for the Clippers at the time. The thing most casual fans remember about him was that he could get to the free throw line more than anyone else. He was consistently a leader in the category. But his teammates called him Maximus because it was widely known that he approached his practice like a gladiator. He worked out with incredible discipline, and he ate like a monk. As a kid just coming out of college, I was completely ignorant to the level of physical and mental discipline it took to remain in shape for the longevity of an NBA career. As far as I knew at the time, all you had to do was lift and run around. But Corey was incredibly specific about diet, about supplements. He tracked his heart rate, calculated formulas. He was not only a scientist with it, but he also physically pushed himself harder than anyone I’d ever seen. It was one set after another, more sprints, more weights, more shots up. I had never seen anything like it, and it changed the way I understood my body and my profession.

  After that, it was back to Arizona for three weeks to finish classes and wrap thing
s up at school. Returning to campus was weird. It suddenly hit me how fast everything was happening. When I first stepped on campus for freshman year, I had truly thought I’d have more time to just be a kid, to be a basketball player in college. To go to parties and play pranks on campus. I remember once I showed up to a costume party in a diaper and people thought it was hilarious. But that second year, and the sudden attention from scouts and agents, the cooling relationship with Coach Olson, getting dinged in the press, and maybe most importantly coming to realize how incredibly lopsided the game was for so-called amateur athletes, had forced my hand. I was ready to take on independence, and I was ready to look forward. But there were moments on that visit back to campus when I felt envious of how everyone else got to hold on to their youth a little longer. Kids were biking around, sitting in the quad in flip-flops and shorts with no greater decision to make than what they were going to get from the dining hall in an hour. It seemed that everything had happened to me so suddenly. But what had been done had been done. There was no room for those moments of doubt. So I made no room for them.

  Next, it was to Chicago to work out with Tim Grover. He was widely known as Michael Jordan’s trainer and he was the guy you had to see if you were serious about the draft. It would be an understatement to say he had a reputation. He was known as the toughest trainer in America. I got a little apartment in downtown Chicago. My agent, Rob, loaned me some money to live on that I paid back without interest over the next six years. And from there, my only job was to eat, sleep, and live basketball.