For nearly two decades, Andre Iguodala established a reputation as one of the N.B.A.’s most versatile players, an All-Star and Olympic gold medalist who racked up four championships with the Golden State Warriors.
Now, Iguodala has told DealBook exclusively that he is retiring from pro basketball to focus on his other career: start-up investor. He will run Mosaic, a $200 million venture capital fund that he just raised with his longtime business partner, Rudy Cline-Thomas.
Iguodala’s disclosure ends years of speculation. The 39-year-old had suggested that last year’s season would be his last, only to shoot down rumors about it earlier this year. But now is the time to hang up his sneakers. “It’s been a blessing to play for that long,” he told DealBook. (He hasn’t fully come to grips with it yet: “I don’t know if it’s actually hit me yet,” he said.)
He’s embracing his next act. Though he and Cline-Thomas had begun buying tech stocks in 2010, the two dived deeply into start-ups when he joined the Warriors in 2013. “When I initially went out to the Bay Area, it was my intent to have success on and off the court,” Iguodala said. “I thought about how to get access.”
That led to meetings with venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz, and then to taking stakes in start-ups, including Zoom and the cybersecurity provider Cloudflare.
It is a model now followed by many pro athletes, from the N.F.L.’s Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers to Iguodala’s longtime Warriors teammate Steph Curry. “Athletes are becoming smarter and smarter,” Iguodala said, asserting that their competitiveness and an ability to speak to audiences help to sell and scale products.
Mosaic is now his focus. The firm will home in on seed- and early-stage investments in enterprise software, fintech health care and sports companies. Iguodala and Cline-Thomas closed Mosaic’s first fund — whose investors included endowments, institutions and founders of companies they have already backed — in May.
Mosaic’s investments include Vessel, a builder of modular multifamily homes, and Athletes First, an N.F.L. talent agency and management firm.
Sports franchise ownership is another focus. Iguodala is a co-owner of Leeds United, an English soccer club; Bay Area F.C., the National Women’s Soccer League team; and, along with former teammates Curry and Klay Thompson, the San Francisco branch of TGL, the upstart golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Iguodala’s highest aspiration? Owning an N.B.A. team. “The timing has to be right,” he said, but “that’s definitely the ultimate goal.”
Iguodala is going to test the boundaries for who qualifies as a Basketball Hall of Fame player.
Ben Wallace did this. Dennis Rodman before him. Tim Hardaway until recently. Chauncey Billups is already doing this. Derrick Rose will do it after Iguodala.
The threshold for the HOF is constantly being nudged one way or another.
While none of the names you mentioned are HOF shoe-ins, they are all much more accomplished in terms of individual accolades than Iggy:
Wallace: 4x DPOY, 6x All NBA, 6x All Defense, 2x Rebounds Leader, 1x Blocks Leader
Rodman: 8x All Defense, 2x All NBA, 2x All Star, 2x DPOY, 7x Rebounding Champion
Hardaway: 5x All Star, 5x All NBA
Billups: 5x All Star, 3x All NBA, 2x All Defense, FMVP
Rose: MVP, 3x All Star, 1x All NBA, Rookie of the Year
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Iguodala had a lot of seasons without an accolade such as all star or all defense where he was a very good player. A sub-all star in Ben Taylor's terminology. His career value is thus much better than it looks from accolades.
If you look at career win shares he is at 100.36. Tim Hardaway had 84.89. Derrick Rose has 44.2. If one values career value more than peak value he definitely deserves more consideration than those two. And those numbers do not take into account the four championships and the FMVP.