David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…That village is named Michael Jordan. The legacy these two dudes, Jordan and Stern, is that today—we're not done with the story yet—it really just comes from what these two people did. NBA players and alumni are: (1) the highest-paid athletes in the world as a group, which a lot of which stems from that 1983 collective bargaining agreement that Stern orchestrated with the Players' Union, (2) have the largest social media followings and influence among American sports players by like a laughable, laughable margin. Soccer and soccer players—football for all of our non-American friends—is actually bigger than basketball players in terms of social following, but within the US, it's not even close. We're going to talk a bunch more about that in a minute. But then, probably most importantly, I think the last element of this is that the current and former NBA athletes have wealth at a level and have become entrepreneurs and business people. At a level that just completely eclipsed any other sport (period) in the world, both in their current playing careers and post-playing careers. At the top of the list is Jordan himself. As of today, he's worth $2.1 billion. He is the wealthiest former athlete in the world, the fourth richest black person in America. Astounding. Below him—it's a wide gap between Jordan and the next—they have a bunch of other people too. Kobe's estate. Sadly, Kobe, tragically— Rest in peace.…

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