Paul joins LeBron’s marketing company
By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports 19 minutes ago
After working for years to lure him away, LeBron James(notes) has finally attracted a star athlete to his LRMR marketing company: New Orleans Hornets point guard Chris Paul(notes).
James and LRMR CEO Maverick Carter have been recruiting Paul for more than two years to join their fledgling marketing company, and the All-Star guard finally informed his agency at Octagon that he had decided to leave.
LRMR has yet to make a formal announcement that Paul will be joining them, and sources believed they might have been waiting to use James’ Thursday night free-agent announcement as a backdrop to release the story.
“He’s left Octagon,” Paul’s agent Jeff Austin told Yahoo! Sports. “We’re proud of the work we did with him over the past five years. We wish him nothing but the best.”
James has been using his own reps – Leon Rose and William Wesley – to help shop Paul for trades this offseason, with Wesley telling teams that a key to signing James as a free agent would be cutting a deal for Paul.
Austin and agent Lance Young negotiated Paul a four-year, $68 million max deal with the Hornets. Paul can be opt out to become a free agent in 2012. Paul had several national endorsements through Octagon, including Right Guard and Nike Jordan Brand.
Paul has been with James in Akron, Ohio, this week, where the two friends have been working out at James’ national All-Star high school basketball camp.