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NBA Players Trending Towards Tech Industry

Business Insider writer Eugene Kim penned an interesting article earlier this month that focused on 10 current or former NBA players who have started a trend towards basketball players investing in the tech industry. 

We figured it would be fun to break down a few of these ventures, especially considering some of these start-ups could very well have implications on our daily lives.

Baron Davis (BloomThat)

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Davis joined forced with Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana in seed funding for BloomThat, which is an on-delivery flower startup. The website promotes ridiculously fast flowers starting at $35, which are delivered in 90 minutes. Of course, this is all dependent on aliens not abducting the delivery person. 

Dwight Howard (Tapiture

Courtesy of ESPN.com: Show Howard the money.

Courtesy of ESPN.com: Show Howard the money.

I am pretty sure that you have heard of the start-up Tapiture, which enables online users to share, purchase and discover some pretty awesome items. True to the nature of social media today, you must sign up through either Facebook or Twitter in order to browse the site. Either that, or give them your email in order to receive a bunch of items in your spam folder. Howard’s total investment in this company is said to be $2.25 million…or in his case, chump change. I wonder if Tapiture enables users to buy a new personality. In that case, Howard might very well find himself another worthy product to “test.”

Magic Johnson (Detroit Venture Partners) 

Courtesy of Tech.com: Already filthy rich, Magic is still doing his business thing.

Courtesy of Tech.com: Already filthy rich, Magic is still doing his business thing.

Always the savvy businessman, Johnson has reportedly invested millions in this firm, which was co-founded by Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. The idea behind Detroit Venture Partners is actually pretty awesome. They give up to $3 million to each company that they invest in, and seem to be focusing more on start-ups. Seed money for companies looking to help further technological advances. That’s pretty cool. So if you have a startup, just go ahead and tweet at Magic. Wait, nevermind, avoid him on Twitter at all cost. 

LeBron James (Beats) 

How much longer until LeBron is in the one percentile of the one percent?

How much longer until LeBron is in the one percentile of the one percent?

How would you like to be James right about now? In addition to winning two of the last three NBA championships and returning home to Cleveland, he’s turned a simple marketing opportunity into $30 million in cold hard cash. Back in 2008, Dr. Dre’s headphone company Beats offered James a small percentage of the company if he promoted its expensive product. When Dre sold Beats to Apple for a cool $3 billion earlier this year, James profit was estimated to be at about $30 million. Yeah…

Photo: Business Insider

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