Spencer Dinwiddie is at it again. The Brooklyn Nets guard is offering fans the chance to choose his next time, but it comes at a hefty price.
Well, this is a new one. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie plans to sign a one-year, minimum deal with a team for his next contract, but there’s a catch.
The catch is that Dinwiddie is asking fans to crowdfund around $24 million worth of Bitcoin to make it happen. He’ll put the vote to investors if he reaches that lofty target. Yeah, this is serious. There’s even a GoFundMe set up for it.
“Shoe companies and endorsers influence team decisions all the time,” Dinwiddie said in a statement. “My/our biggest endorsers will always be the fans, so I want to have some fun while we’re all under quarantine. I hope no owners/team personnel participate so there’s no impropriety on this one of a kind endorsement deal.”
Like most ideas, this one seemed to spawn on Twitter.
I’ll double down. Y’all crowdfund 2625.8 btc I’ll sign a minimum contract for my next deal with the team that y’all vote for ?
I’ll give y’all a month to make it happen lol https://t.co/pV8vGyW0s8
— Spencer Dinwiddie (@SDinwiddie_25) May 14, 2020
For what it’s worth, Dinwiddie has two more years on his contract with a player option on the 2021-22 season. The Nets probably don’t love that Dinwiddie is putting his NBA future in the hands of the cryptocurrency community, but they probably don’t have too much to worry about.
As much as Dinwiddie loves trying to shake up the system, it’s highly unlikely that the NBA will allow this to happen. If the outspoken guard manages to crowdfund more than $24 million in Bitcoin (that’s a huge if), the NBA will not allow him to go through with this scheme.
This would be salary cap circumvention of the highest form. Sam Quinn of CBS Sports breaks down some of the specific sections of the collective bargaining agreement that this arrangement would violate.
The league fought back against Dinwiddie’s attempts to turn his contract into a token-based investment vehicle. Expect the NBA to put a stop to Dinwiddie’s cryptocurrency crowdfunding experiment.
