by Cedric ‘BIG CED’ Thornton
October 6, 2025
Haywood said he cashed out in 1973.
The first basketball player to rep Nike, Spencer Haywood, said his agent sold his stake in the company way too early, resulting in him missing out on a massive windfall.
On a recent episode of All the Smoke, Haywood said before Nike became the behemoth it is today, his representative, strapped for cash, convinced him to sell his shares thinking the brand wouldn’t be worth that much.
Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, asked the Seattle SuperSonics star if he would wear the sneakers on the court. Haywood agreed. but Knight offered Haywood stocks instead of cash, as Nike was still a startup company.
“First of all, I was young, too. And I’m thinking, livestock?” What kind of stock? What stock? What are you talking about?”
Haywood said his agent convinced him sell his stake back to Nike.
“So I get the stock and my boy, that I let do the negotiation, he was struggling, you know have them bills taken care of,” Haywood said on the podcast. “So he was like, convincing me that the shoe is never going to work because, look at what happened. Because when I was walking, running down the floor, guys would come behind me and pop my shoe off…It was new. It was a running shoe.
“So I said, “OK, man. I’ll give you the power of attorney. Let me just go play. I got to play. I got to focus on this game now because this is my chance. When I came back, he had sold that s**t. He said, ‘Man, I got the cash right here: $100,000.’”
Co-host Matt Barnes asked Haywood how much the stock would be worth today.
“It was up around $2.7 billion,” the NBA Hall of Famer replied.
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