Four-time NBA champion and 19-year veteran Andre Iguodala recently said that he’s retiring from the game of basketball at the age of 39.
“Now, Iguodala has told DealBook exclusively that he is retiring from pro basketball to focus on his other career: start-up investor,” Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ravi Mattu, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced and Lauren Hirsch wrote. “He will run Mosaic, a $200 million venture capital fund that he just raised with his longtime business partner, Rudy Cline-Thomas.”
Iguodala went on to admit that owning an NBA team is his ultimate goal.
“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 [Stephen] Curry and Klay Thompson, the San Francisco branch of TGL, the upstart golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy,” Sorkin, Mattu, Warner, Kessler, de la Merced and Hirsch wrote.
“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.'”
The 6-foot-6 forward spent 16 of his 19 seasons in the NBA with two teams: the Philadelphia 76ers and Golden State Warriors. He played the first eight seasons of his pro career with the 76ers after the team selected him with the No. 9 overall pick in the 2004 NBA Draft. Iguodala averaged 15.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.7 steals per game in 615 total regular-season games played with the franchise (all starts).
The 39-year-old didn’t experience much postseason success during his time in Philadelphia, though. He reached the second round of the playoffs with the 76ers just once back in 2012. Iguodala and the 76ers lost to Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo and the Boston Celtics in seven games in the second round of the playoffs.
The forward played eight of his final 10 seasons in the NBA with the Warriors franchise. He was no longer the All-Star caliber player he was with the 76ers but still served as a valuable two-way player on four championship teams. Iguodala won titles with the Warriors in 2015, 2017, 2018 and, most recently, 2022. Golden State beat the Celtics in six games in the 2022 NBA Finals to take home the championship.
Iguodala becoming the owner of any NBA team would be newsworthy, but hopefully he will eventually own either the 76ers or Warriors franchise, seeing as how he made a name for himself in the league playing for those two teams.
