Any kid offered Futures league equity instead of cash should take the cash

If I were 16 and the Futures Basketball League handed me a choice between NIL cash and league equity, I'd take the cash, every dollar of it, and I'd tell my parents to put the brochure down. I like this league. I think it might be the best thing to happen to grassroots basketball in years. The equity offer is the one part of the pitch I'd keep a kid away from, and it's the part that sounds the most generous.

Here's the setup, from the league's Nov. 10 release and Sports Business Journal. Twelve regional teams, 120 players from the classes of 2028 through 2031, and an April-to-August season of 10 weekend events ending in a national championship weekend. The owners include LeBron James and Maverick Carter's LRMR Ventures, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's Boardroom, Derrick Rose, Paolo Banchero and Gary Vaynerchuk. Players don't draw a salary. They earn NIL compensation and can take it in cash, league equity "subject to administrative approvals," or some of each.

A lot of this is good. The calendar was built around the high school season, NCAA live periods, USA Basketball and the NBPA Top 100 Camp, which tells me somebody asked what a top recruit's year actually looks like. There's a training partner in HMBL Development, a financial literacy curriculum, and a $1 million pledge to the MADE For All Foundation. I spent my career next to guys who showed up with talent and no plan, and the ones who lasted usually had somebody building a plan around them. Rose said something close to that in the release, crediting his brothers. That part of the pitch is real.

Now the equity. Chairman Jason Stein told SBJ that the teams sold so far went for $6 million each, with owners getting equity in the league. Then he told a pickleball story: he and LeBron bought a team for $1 million, and six months later teams were selling for $6 million. He added there's "an element of not wanting to rush too many team sales too early."

That's a sharp owner talking, and you should notice who his story is about. The money in that example went to the people who got in early at the owner's price. A sophomore taking equity in place of NIL cash is getting in too, but at what valuation, on what terms, and with what protection when the next round of investors shows up? Nobody's said. "Subject to administrative approvals" is the whole answer we've got.

The best argument against me is Stein's own. He told SBJ it's better for athletes to start managing money young, with a smaller amount, than to get millions a couple of years later and figure it out then. I agree with him. Learning on cash is how you learn. Learning on a private stake in a league that, per SBJ, had no sponsor or media agreement to report on launch day is how you learn something expensive.

Maybe the equity turns out great for some of these kids. If Futures follows the pickleball path Stein described, a few of them will look like geniuses. A teenager still shouldn't be the one carrying that bet, and a league seeded with what Stein called "tens of millions of dollars" doesn't need him to.

So here's my ask, and it's an easy one for people with this much money and this many lawyers. The day Futures announces its first signing, publish the equity terms: the valuation, the dilution, and when a player can sell. If the deal is as good as the pitch, showing it costs them nothing. Until they do, I'm telling every kid I know to take the cash.

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