We have a written about a number of high level Asian American athletes who graduated from Ivy League Universities, such as skater Nathan Chen (Yale), basketball player Kaitlyn Chen and of course, NBA star Jeremy Lin (Harvard), But what reason would make an athlete leave the Ivy League? One Princeton Basketball player apparently found 6 million reasons. According to On3, Xaivian Lee gets $6 million in deals as he transfers to Florida for his senior year.
What’s really intriguing to me is that the majority of the value of his deals is from a multi-year global sneaker agreement with shoe brand Serious Player Only. An Asian basketball player with his own shoe? How cool would that be?!? At the moment, he is featured prominently on the Serious Player Only website with the video we have embedded above.
The NCAA changed their rules in 2021 to allow collegiate athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Since then, we have written about Asian American athletes who have signed NIL agreements, namely Gonzaga Basketball Players Kayleigh and Kaylynne Truong and Cornell quarterback Jameson Wang. Looks like we will add Asian Canadian Xaivian Lee to that list.
(h/t: Number Two Son)
