Empoword

Part Three: Research and Argumentation 401 To date, he has said that Lonzo would make the best team in the league (the Golden State Warriors) better if they somehow swapped him with Steph Curry, the back-to-back and first-ever unanimous NBA Most Valuable Player. Lavar has called Lonzo the best player in the world; he said that Lonzo would only play for the Los Angeles Lakers. Lavar said that he himself would beat Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest human basketball player to live on the planet Earth, in a one-on-one game. These comments, along with Lonzo’s campaign on the court and LaMelo’s highly controversial 92-point game at Chino Hills, have all coalesced into making the Balls the most (in)famous family in the basketball world’s recent memory. They have created a name for the family that is extraordinarily atypical in a time where players are coming in as more and more nondescript products to the league each passing year. The Balls’ need to have creative control has not stopped at the painted house, either. In fact, the largest dispute surrounding their branding with shoe companies today is centered around their need for creative control. The types of deals that are available to NBA players are very structured and limited to three tiers. According to Yahoo! Sports’ NBA shoe insider Nick DePaula, undrafted rookies and fringe NBA players typically receive “merchandise” or “merch” deals from shoe companies that gives them sneakers and gear for them to play in. These deals amount to products around $50,000 to $100,000. That is just a baseline though—effectively the minimum wage a professional hooper can be paid to promote a brand like Nike, adidas, or Under Armour, rather than the player cutting a check from their own wallet for footwear. The next tier of deal is called a “cash” deal, “where the majority of the league falls” (DePaula). Players with these deals will get a certain amount of cash, essentially a salary, over a set number of years according to the contract they sign with the company. On top of that, though, many of the best players in the league will get their own logos, phrases or ad campaigns along with colorways, known as player exclusives, of the shoes that Nike is running out that season to match their team’s jerseys or something connected to the player. The salaries are negotiated by agents and depend on how marketable the player is. Usually, “a rookie will sign a shoe deal with a brand that’ll last three or four years” and the “current shoe deal range for a marketable lottery pick [such as Lonzo Ball] can be anywhere to $200,000 to $700,000 [per year], with exceptions