Magic Johnson’s Missed Opportunity: Rejecting $5 Billion in Nike Shares

The former NBA player revealed that he had the opportunity of a lifetime.

Magic Johnson has been one of the best NBA basketball players of all time. His amazing level at the university in the 70s made him the most wanted player in the 1979 Draft and the Los Angeles Lakers were in charge of choosing him in the first place to start a story that closed in the mid-90s with five rings. champion and a legend for the Californian franchise that still excites its fans. Such a career allowed the now 63-year-old man to amass a fortune in his bank account, but unbelievably, when she was still a young promise, he let the best deal of his life slip away.

In an interview that he gave this year to the All The Smoke podcast and that went viral in recent hours on social networks, Magic recalled the mistake he made when he was a figure of the Michigan State University team and several companies were desperate to have he. “Well, I had recently won the (collegiate) national championship against Larry Bird and three companies came. Converse, Adidas and Nike. Nike was only one or two years old from its founding. So Converse offered me more money. When you grow up poor, you take the money. Then Pgil Knight (CEO of Nike) came and said: ‘Hey, I can’t offer you the same money as them, but I can offer you shares’”.

At that time, the American company was new to the market and it would take a few more years to explode, as it did when it managed to close Michael Jordan in 1984. That is why the firm could not afford to offer million-dollar contracts, but Johnson was given the opportunity to accept shares. “I didn’t know anything about it! And my family didn’t come from a wealthy background either. That’s something that hurt us sometimes, when you don’t have money, you don’t know… I didn’t even know what stocks were at that time. So I rejected the shares, ”he lamented. When asked how much those shares would be worth today, he stunned everyone: “5 billion dollars,” he declared.

Magic obviously remembers him humorously as he has no money problem and his successful career has earned him hundreds of millions of dollars. But, he never had a business as lucrative and simple as that before his nose.

The legendary Los Angeles Lakers point guard and Hall of Famer is currently a businessman and is even part of an ownership group that, among other acquisitions, bought the NFL’s Washington Commanders in April for $6.05 billion. of dollars. In addition, he owns minority shares in the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball; Los Angeles FC of the MLS and the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA.

Beyond what he’s accumulated in his playing career, Johnson is a wealthy businessman specializing in entertainment, retail and real estate. His introduction as a team owner came in 1994, when Lakers owner Jerry Buss sold a share to Johnson. Buss was considered by Johnson as his mentor in the world of business, and life.

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2023-08-10 16:34:11
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