LeBron James at the Crypto.com Arena on February 9, 2023 in Los Angeles.
(Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images)
A few days after Thanksgiving in November, LeBron James left Los Angeles for a visit to his hometown of Akron, Ohio, in part to show reporters around his childhood home.
That’s right, a replica of his childhood home.
“Come on in,” he said, nodding toward a green door that’s an exhibit in the new LeBron James Home Court Museum and is modeled after the entrance to Room 602. “Take a look around.”
The store’s walls were covered in taped-up, teenage-style posters of 1990s football: Shaquille O’Neal charging toward the basket, Earvin “Magic” Johnson going for a layup, Kobe Bryant going for a dunk.
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In many ways, those men — the legendary Lakers whose time in the purple and gold ended long ago — are more synonymous with Los Angeles than James, who still wears the uniform. But if that bothers the 39-year-old, playing the best basketball of his 21-year career, it hardly matters.
Indeed, while fans and pundits were busy speculating about the depth of his team loyalty and future, James was busy building an economic empire more closely tied to Los Angeles. And unlike Ohio, where he’s known as a savior of civic life, opening not just museums but transformative schools, housing complexes and community centers, his work in Southern California has been a team effort.
Think of it as a collection, or maybe a solar system.
At the center of LeBron, Inc., is James, the global star and center of gravity, and the three brothers he is most closely associated with, who have lit up around him for decades and always aligned in some way.
Rich Paul, founder of the powerful Beverly Hills-based talent agency Clutch Sports Group, quickly hired James as his first client after a chance encounter at an airport in 2001 and a conversation over vintage football jerseys.
Maverick Carter, who met James in grade school, first moved to Los Angeles and is now CEO of Spring Hill, the television and film studio they co-founded.
And Randy Mims has been James’ friend since childhood and is now his chief of staff.
Less frequently mentioned but also highly significant are Farah Leff, COO of Klutch Sports Group, Adam Mendelsohn, James’ media adviser, and Paul Wachter, founder and CEO of Main Street Advisors.
At center is global star LeBron James, who formed a core group of friends and family to build a financial empire rooted in Los Angeles. Top left: Bronny James, Adam Mendelsohn, Paul Wachter, Rich Paul. Top right: Randy Mims, Farah Lev, Maverick Carter, Savannah James.
(Zipeng Zhu/The Times)
James’ son, Bronny James, is also a star athlete, having played one year of basketball at the University of Southern California before entering the NBA draft, while his wife, Savannah James, is an entrepreneur and investor who is building her own Los Angeles-style empire.
The impact James and his posse have had on Los Angeles, especially in the media and entertainment sector, is clear.
Clutch, for example, is one of the world’s leading agencies, having grown from just four clients in 2012 to more than 400 today, including NBA stars Anthony Davis and Trae Young and NFL stars Jalen Hurts and Odell Beckham Jr. In 2019, Clutch agreed to a pivotal partnership with United Talent Agency, further expanding its reach into Hollywood across film, TV and podcasts.
Lev, who has been with Clutch since its early days, said she and Paul “wanted to break the mold of the typical agent-player relationship. You sign a contract, you meet for the next contract. Our goal was how to develop young people, professional athletes, professional businessmen, fathers and sons.”
These are recurring themes in Paul’s memoir, “Lucky Me,” for which James wrote a foreword.
“Rich helped me find strength in the midst of that chaos. He knew the chaos all too well. Rich didn’t ask for anything from me. He didn’t care if I was a future professional or just the kid across the street. He just knew I needed his help and he gave me what I needed most: the space to be vulnerable,” James wrote.
Meanwhile, Spring Hill (named after the Akron building where James’ real-life Apartment 602 was located) has released a slew of acclaimed shows, films and documentaries, including “What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali,” HBO’s “The Shop,” “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker” and, of course, “Space Jam: A New Legacy.”
Sport is no longer just sport: it is culture, business, music and more, all subject to investment.
Additionally, over the years, the company has brought on new investors, including RedBird Capital, Nike, Fenway Sports Group, and Epic Games, to fund international expansion, and has also inked deals with Netflix, ABC Studios, and Universal Studios to further solidify its presence in Hollywood.
What’s often forgotten is that James and Carter were, in many ways, pioneers of the idea of active professional athletes becoming part of a media ecosystem — not just being interviewed by journalists and subject to outside coverage, but running media companies and creating their own narratives.
This has become commonplace — think Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures or Naomi Osaka’s Hana Kuma — because sports is no longer just sports: it’s culture, it’s business, it’s music, it’s all investment opportunities.
“The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years,” says Wachter, who has long managed James’ investments, from Cannondale bicycles to Lobos 1707 tequila to Beats by Dre. “Athletes are now more interested in business, which was very unusual.”
Indeed, Wachter often uses the word “unusual” when talking about how James, Carter, Paul and Mims became so powerful. He was one of the first to interact with them in Los Angeles in 2005, when the LeBron Inc. collective was still based in Akron and near Cleveland, where James played for the Cavaliers.
“They were kids. I wasn’t a kid,” Wachter said. “I was just amazed that they would go to that age and find someone who wasn’t their mother or father or sister or cousin, who was obviously outside of their world, and try to find out who was right for us.”
They hired him, and Wachter and his then-teenage daughter took LeBron and Savannah James house hunting.
“And now, almost 20 years later,” Wachter said, “he came here and made his home here.”
Or the house. James and his family are building their dream home from the ground up on the site of their former $37 million Beverly Hills mansion.
“He chose to be here. He wasn’t traded,” Wachter said. “He basically took what was a Cleveland operation and turned it over to an L.A. operation.”