LeBron James just earned a new nickname. LeBond. Today reports came out that back in 2018 LeBron Borrowed nearly $300 million though a company he controls. The internet got this wrong right away. It’s nothing to do with debt. It’s a very LeSavy financial move by an athlete. Let’s explain how smart this really was by LeBron. Here’s how smart this was. LeBron has a lifetime deal with Nike that pays him for decades. But instead of just sitting and waiting to collect that money over the 30 years he just borrowed against the contract. He’s taking $300 million in cash up front through bonds that pay the lenders back until 2049. Guggenheim arranged (we’ll visit that in a moment) and two life insurers bought it because his Nike contract is basically the safest bet a lender will see. So these institutions have no issues handing him a third of a billion against income he hasn’t seen yet. But what makes this smart? LeBron had raised $300 million by selling pieces of his businesses, he'd have paid a massive capital gains tax and given up ownership of assets that keep climbing in value. A loan skips both. He got the cash immediately, owed no tax on it because loans aren't income, kept every share of everything he owns, and paid the interest with Nike money that was already coming. This is the same maneuver billionaires use when they borrow against their stock instead of selling it, the strategy the ultra-wealthy call "buy, borrow, die." Most athletes don’t get quite to this level. LeBron’s team made a great call here and taught him this at 33. But for this to actually be pulled off he had to do something no player that I have heard of has done before. His future earnings were packaged into a bond, rated by a credit agency and sold to investors the same way a company raises money. LeBron James the PERSON is the asset that Wall Street could underwrite and insurers could hold in a portfolio. It wasn’t good accounting, it was a person operating as a company. As Jay-Z once said “I’m not a business man, I’m a BUSINESS man.” This is a place LeBron doesn’t get enough credit for. People know the hoops, the media, the assets in sports teams like Liverpool. But behind it all he has a machine of generating wealth with the people behind him helping him steer the wheel. His NBA contracts are great and all, but every agent signs his players to good deals. The infrastructure LeBron’s team built is savvy. And has to be celebrated. Now one thing we do have to keep in mind is who arranged the deal which we brought up earlier. And well that’s Guggenheim, they arranged the loan, led by Mark Walter, who later bought the Lakers and is now under a federal investigation into parts of his business. Bloomberg said directly there's no indication the loans to James have anything to do with those inquiries. It's the same small world of sports money overlapping again, nothing more. The real story is that the best player of his era has also been one of the shrewdest businessmen in the game the entire time, and we knew it, but we just didn’t know how sophisticated his money team was.