Kendrick Perkins: The Ex-NBA Player Turned Loan Shark Who Targets Impoverished Teens

For many years collegiate athletes went unpaid despite the amount of wealth that was generated off of their backs. While hard working athletes could not collect a dime, coaches, administrators and many others got rich. The landscape has changed and college athletes are now able to earn money off of their name, image and likeness in what is often shortened into the acronym NIL. The introduction of NIL money into college sports has provided athletes with the chance to support themselves and their families through their athletics. While some athletes make a few dollars here and there, those who play college football or college basketball have been able to strike it rich. College quarterbacks are signing multimillion dollar NIL deals every season that often come with perks such as luxury cars and watches. While I think it is absolutely a great thing that college athletes can now get paid, the introduction of NIL has introduced a few leeches. One of the worst leeches in the NIL space is former NBA player Kendrick Perkins. For those unfamiliar, Perkins is a fourteen year NBA veteran who is now a pundit for ESPN. If you asked most NBA players, coaches or fans what they thought of Perkins, they would probably call him an idiot or a grifter. Since the end of his playing days Perkins has remained relevant by making inflammatory statements on TV and beefing with his far more famous ex-teammate Kevin Durant. While most who see Perkins on TV can recognise that he is a self interested and self serving man, few are aware of the true lengths he is willing to go to in order to enrich himself. Perkins has recently taken to creating what is essentially a loan shark business that targets impoverished high school athletes.

For many high school athletes, the NIL money available in college football and college basketball can be life changing. Perkins sees how much of an opportunity this is for poorer families and has decided to prey upon them and their kids. His new company Nilly has found a way to turn a profit from this. The Nilly website and “about us” page are both fairly vague and for good reason. If Nilly was truthful about what it is that they do, nobody would partner with them. They say they “are designed to enable, empower and enrich student athletes”. The way their business works is that they will pay an advance to an aspiring college athlete typically ranging between $25,000-100,000 USD and in return gaining exclusive rights to sell the athlete’s name, image and likeness until they recoup an amount typically 2-3 times the initial advance. Dan Murphy of ESPN managed to obtain a contract that was given to a high school senior in which the athlete was paid a $50,000 advance and had to return $125,000. Nilly has been quick to try to compare their business model to music licensing deals, despite it being common knowledge that music licensing deals are incredibly exploitative. Nilly seems eager to be compared to record labels because they are far more scared of people referring to what they do as a loan business. Perkins’ business partner Chris Ricciardi has been quick to say “there's no interest rate. There's no requirement to pay back, It's purely a licensing deal. I would be surprised if those people thought that music advances were high interest loans”. Now the deals may not be structured with an annual interest rate, but to structure it as I give you $50,000 and you give me back $125,000 at a later date… that kind of sounds like interest to me. While I don’t know if Ricciardi shares Perkins level of intelligence or just Perkins loose morals but I imagine he knows that this is functionally just interest. It is in the same vein as giving your friend 3 poker chips when they run out and telling them to give you back 5 later. Another comparison could be how Islamic banks do not charge interest, rather a flat rate fee that mimics interest and could be payable over installments. In both examples while anyone with a triple digit IQ would disagree, Ricciardi would likely state that there is no interest taking place. It is merely one party paying the other and expecting to be paid a larger sum at a later time. It is incredibly funny to listen to Ricciardi defending his business practices by comparing them to that of the music industry, an industry widely renowned for its shady and exploitative practices. I would argue that what Nilly does is actually far worse. The music industry offers record deals to everyone regardless of their financial status, Nilly specifically picks on children from poor families. This is not some wild accusation, but something they have been quite open about. Perkins has talked about how their business caters to low income families, although he describes it as if they are helping. Nilly catering their business to these families is not because they want to help, but because any athlete coming from a financially stable background would never willingly enter an agreement with them. Their business preys on the vulnerability of struggling families and of teenagers who have no prior experience with large financial dealings. They exploit the power imbalance that exists between an impoverished teen and Nilly themselves, a company who has raised more than $200 million in venture capital. While they frame their business as helping underserved teens and their families, anyone with basic critical thinking skills can see it is nothing more than wealth extraction. Nilly can tell you a million different ways that what they do is not a loan business and is indeed helping, but experts seem to disagree. Consumer finance experts have suggested that if taken to court a judge would likely rule that Nilly is a loan business not a licensing business. Utah law professor Chris Peterson believes that Nilly’s business is functionally a loan service and described their operation as “trashy” and “designed to take advantage of young kids”. In addition to this, financial advisors who work with college athletes have raised concern about Nilly due to the ways in which it operates as a high interest loan business and how they “are preying on people who need the capital now and using that to cloud their focus on the future” (Michael Haddox Jr.). Regardless of what type of business you classify Nilly as, it is bad business.

Nilly is undoubtedly one of the most despicable ventures I have ever seen from a former athlete. Kendrick Perkins is reported to earn $1.5 million USD annually at his ESPN job in addition to having made nearly $60 million USD during his NBA days, yet he still feels the need to take advantage of vulnerable families for even more cash. Perkins is already in the top 0.1-0.05% of US income earners just from his ESPN salary, yet he is so morally bankrupt that he is ok with extracting money from impoverished kids who need money far more than he does. If you ever find yourself defending the ethics of your business by comparing yourself to a record label, it might be time for some self reflection. For as bad of an NBA pundit as Kendrick Perkins is, he is undoubtedly a far worse person.