Any NBA player’s dream is to be sponsored by Nike. Nike has 11 of the 15 highest paid endorsement deals in sports, including contracts with LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, etc.
LeBron just signed a lifetime contract that is worth upwards of $1 billion.
Stephen Curry, on the other hand, refuses to work with Nike and his reason why will blow your mind…
Signing Curry should’ve been the easiest thing in the world. He had many ties to Nike even before he played in the NBA. His godfather, Greg Brink, worked for Nike.
Curry also wore Nikes growing up and throughout his entire college career at Davidson.
When he was drafted 7th overall by the Golden State Warriors, no one doubted that he was going to sign with Nike…
And that’s exactly what happened. Nike signed him to a 4-year deal that lasted up until 2013.
In 2013, when Curry scored a career-high 54 points in Madison Square Garden, he wore Nike Zoom Hyperfuses. He saves that pair of sneakers to this day at his house to remember just how far his career has gone. It was his breakout year, setting the single-season record for 3-pointers made in the process.
Of course, Nike had to re-sign him.. right?
Following the end of his Nike contract in 2013, he was free to hear pitches from other companies, but Nike still owned the rights to match any deal that was made to him.
Nike set up a meeting with Curry and his father, former NBA player, Dell Curry, at the Oakland Marriott, the same building where the Warriors practiced. Steph said it was a bit awkward hearing a pitch from a company you’re already signed to, especially since you’re familiar with some of the people in the room.
The way that Nike is structured is they have tiers of athletes. The top tiered athletes had preferential treatment, which included the likes of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Durant.
Once the meeting began, it was crystal clear to both Steph and his father that they weren’t a top priority to Nike and weren’t even close to being considered in the top tier of the company…
The entire presentation by Nike was poorly planned and made Curry appear as an afterthought to other big-name athletes.
According to Curry’s father, NBA alumni Dell Curry, the first sign of disrespect was when the Nike representative giving the presentation mispronounced Stephen’s first name, calling him Steph-On instead of Steph-En. And the worst part was, NO ONE else in the room representing Nike corrected him. But that wasn’t what turned Curry away from Nike forever, it was something much, much worse…
As the meeting progressed, it became clear that Nike didn’t value Curry as much as others. They awarded youth development camps to Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis instead of Stephen Curry. Irving was drafted in 2011 and Davis in 2012, 2 and 3 years after Curry respectively.
The ability to help young players meant a lot to Curry, who could see himself in some of the players that attended those camps. He attended Chris Paul’s camp when he was younger and wanted to give back to kids who were in his position. But that wasn’t going to happen with Nike…
It’s possible that Nike simply did not have enough room for Curry, given that Irving plays the same position and had a certain swagger and cool image that Curry might have lacked at the time.
Whatever the reason, nothing should’ve excused Nike for the next mistake they made during their re-signing presentation to Stephen Curry. It could possibly go down as the biggest blunder in sports marketing history just by the sheer lack of disrespect it took to make the mistake.. brace yourself for it…
During the presentation, one of the Powerpoint slides had Kevin Durant’s name on it. The slide was literally the same slide used for a presentation to Kevin Durant and they forgot to change the name to Stephen Curry.
This was the ultimate sign of disrespect. Curry and his father stopped paying attention after that. Nike, even after the horrendous mistake, still had the audacit...
