This clip makes steam come out of my ears and flames come off the top of my head. It’s Kevin Durant on Logan Paul’s podcast talking about investment:

“I’m invested in like pickleball, um, uh, women’s soccer league, MLS too… both of those leagues, fuckin volleyball league, I’m trying to stay in the sports arena man.” 

Are we sure that KD knows what sports teams he’s bought into? He owns a 5% stake in the Philadelphia Union with the opportunity to purchase another 5%. He’s a minority owner of Gotham FC in the NWSL, or “women’s soccer league” as he describes it. He’s put money into various leagues, startups, and tech products through the investment group Thirty Five Ventures (35V), which he started with his agent, Rich Kleiman.

That begs the question of whether or not KD actually cares about any of these teams beyond being investment vehicles or portfolio diversifiers. The most passionate thing we’ve seen on the record is him arguing with a Union fan on Twitter, then deleting his parts. But does the guy do anything behind the scenes? Does he help with recruiting? Does he talk to Union brass? If you’re a Union front office member reading this, text me. Tell me what KD’s level of involvement is and I’ll leak it for you. I’m willing to play ball if there’s actually ball to be played. Otherwise Kevin Durant is Peter Gibbons from Office Space. 

“What would you say you do here?”


People will undoubtedly point out that KD owns a small stake in the team. Okay, fine. But you do know how many of these European soccer players love the NBA and love American sports and know exactly who Kevin Durant is? A lot of them come over here because they’re infatuated with the culture of sport in this country. See: Gazdag, Daniel, who is always at Sixers games. If Kevin Durant gets on the phone with Antoine Griezmann and says “hey man, I’m part owner of the Philadelphia team, how’d you like to play here?“, that’s better than any recruiting pitch that anybody else in the organization can make, other than offering Griezmann $10 million a year that they don’t have.

It’s just corny to have these people in ownership who see the team as an investment vehicle and nothing more. Jeffrey Lurie? Great owner. Emotional intelligence and all of that. John Middleton? Spending boatloads of money to put a great team on the field and get his fucking trophy back. And Josh Harris gets criticism, but this dude flew to Los Angeles to recruit Paul George and brought Dr. J with him. If 74-year-old Julius Erving is willing to go cross-country for a third star, then it’s not too much to ask K.D. to get on a fucking Zoom call with whomever the Union are currently scouting from the Bulgarian third division.

(For the sake of context, I went back and listened to this five-minute portion of the podcast, which takes place at the end of the episode. They talk about NFTs and Bitcoin for two seconds, then they talk about pickleball for 10-20 seconds and the show basically ends. What you see in the clip is everything relevant.)