Report: Spencer Dinwiddie Gives Me A Migraine With Complex-Sounding Contract Conversion Plans

Spencer Dinwiddie, a cool basketball man, is planning to sell bonds secured by his contract with the Brooklyn Nets in order to raise up-front investment capital, or anyway that is how I have chosen to make sense of this gobbledygook-ass report from Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Here’s the gist, or as close to the gist as I can get while sizzling hot organic matter squirts out of my ears: Dinwiddie plans on starting a company that would sell bonds—in this case in the form of digital tokens—that would entitle purchasers to some cut of Dinwiddie’s $34 million contract with the Nets, plus interest. The reason to do this would be to raise a lump sum of cash all at once, which due to the time value of money is more valuable to Dinwiddie than salary payments stretched out through the 2021–22 season. Dinwiddie could then use that cash-in-hand to generate investment income—he’d be giving up a portion of his future salary, but would be banking on the rate of return from his investments more than making up the difference.But don’t take my word for it! Here’s Shams:

In a securitization, the borrower gives up some future income in return for a smaller lump sum payment. But the borrower, in this case Dinwiddie, then has more money to immediately invest than he otherwise would.

A token is digital currency term. The bond exists in the digital currency world. Instead of buying the bond from a broker, it is through a token.

Yes, thanks, that’s very helpful. A token is digital currency term. Moving right along, this has apparently been tried before, by NFL and MLB athletes, but would be a first for the NBA. Shams anticipates possible conflicts arising if this sort of thing becomes popular in the NBA—owners quietly investing in player bonds in order to directly profit off of their team’s own salary payments, for example—but for now this is just one savvy player doing hot-shot investor stuff with his first big NBA payday. I think. Maybe he actually invested it all in cattle! What am I, Warren Buffett? Take a crack at the whole report and see if you can make any better sense of it.