Chapter 64: Let Them Wonder

Adidas took two transfers before one of the executives Kobe had met earlier came onto the line. His voice carried the same polished friendliness Kobe remembered from their previous meetings. He congratulated Kobe on the preseason, mentioned the thirty-point game against Detroit, and then spent another twenty seconds reminding Rob that Adidas had been serious about Kobe before anyone knew what he would look like against NBA competition.

Rob let him finish.

“We appreciate the proposal,” he said. “You’ve made a significant move from where we started, and Kobe understands that. But I want to be straightforward with you. Your current financial package isn’t the strongest one we’re considering.”

The speaker went quiet.

Kobe watched Rob rather than the phone. There had been no extra weight on isn’t the strongest, no dramatic pause afterward. Rob simply lowered his pen to the legal pad and waited.

“How far apart are we?” the Adidas executive finally asked.

“I can’t give you another company’s terms.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“You’re asking me to tell you where somebody else’s offer is.”

Another pause followed, shorter this time.

“Fair enough. What would it take to put us in front?”

Rob’s pen moved once across the page. “I’m not going to negotiate your offer for you. You know what you’ve offered. I’m telling you the financial side of your proposal isn’t currently leading.”

“Is this purely financial?”

“It’s a significant part of what we’re evaluating right now.”

“So we’re still in this.”

“If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have called.”

That changed the conversation.

The sales pitch disappeared. The executive started asking practical questions instead: when Kobe expected to make a decision, whether Adidas would have an opportunity to revise its proposal, whether another meeting could be arranged before the Lakers’ season began. Rob answered only what he needed to. Adidas would have another opportunity. There was no deadline yet. He would not identify the leading bidder, and he would not provide a number for Adidas to beat.

When the executive tried one final time—”Give me some indication of what gets this done, Rob”—Rob glanced at the forty-eight-million-dollar term sheet.

“Send me the proposal you believe gives you the best chance to sign him.”

A beat passed.

“We’ll review it.”

“I’ll look for your call.”

Rob disconnected.

Kobe looked at the legal pad. Rob had written surprisingly little during the entire conversation: a time, two words, and a question mark.

“You barely told him anything.”

“I told him what he needed to know.”

“That he’s losing.”

Rob pulled the Adidas folder aside.

Kobe looked at it differently now. Adidas hadn’t been given a target. They hadn’t even been told whether they were one million dollars behind or ten. Rob had left them with a worse problem than a number.

Uncertainty.

Rob reached for Reebok.

“This one is different.”

“Because they’re ahead.”

“Because they think they’re ahead.”

He dialed again.

Reebok wasted considerably less time on pleasantries. After a brief greeting, the executive on the other end went straight to the reason for the call.

“Rob, before we spend another week moving paper around, I need to know something. Are we actually being considered?”

“You are.”

“Because we’re hearing Adidas. We’re hearing Nike. We’ve already made a serious commitment here, and I don’t want my people increasing that commitment just so somebody else can match it.”

Rob said nothing.

Kobe noticed it immediately.

With Adidas, Rob had answered questions without answering too much. This time he simply sat there, pen resting against the legal pad, letting the silence stretch through the speaker.

The Reebok executive filled it.

“If Kobe wants Adidas, tell me. If he wants Nike, tell me. We can live with that. What I don’t want is to be somebody’s leverage.”

“You currently have the highest guaranteed financial proposal we’re considering,” Rob said.

The line went silent.

Rob continued in the same even tone. “So yes, you’re being taken seriously. Very seriously. But the fact that your guarantee is the highest hasn’t ended the process.”

“What ends it?”

“That depends on the final proposals.”

“Give me a number.”

Rob didn’t move.

“If we put another three million into the guarantee, does he sign?”

Kobe’s eyes shifted from the speaker to Rob.

There it was.

Nobody had asked Reebok for another dollar, yet the company had just put three million more into the conversation on its own.

Rob didn’t blink.

“I can’t answer that.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’d be negotiating your offer for you. If you have another proposal you want us to consider, send it over.”

“We’re already the highest.”

“Financially, yes.”

“So what are we missing?”

“Nothing. Kobe is considering three serious opportunities. You knew that when you made the offer.”

A breath came through the speaker. “Would he come to New York?”

Rob looked across the table.

Kobe gave a small nod.

“We’d consider a meeting around his Lakers schedule.”

“This week?”

“Send me what you want the meeting to cover. I’ll look at the calendar.”

Another pause.

“I’ll talk to my people.”

“And Rob?”

“Yes?”

“If the situation changes, I want the call.”

“You’ll get the same professional courtesy I’m giving everyone else.”

It wasn’t the promise Reebok wanted.

It was the only one Rob intended to give.

The call ended, and for several seconds Kobe looked at the silent telephone before glancing at the circled note Rob had written beside Reebok’s name.

+3?

“They offered three more.”

Rob shook his head. “No. They asked whether three more would do it.”

“Difference?”

“Potentially three million dollars.”

Kobe’s mouth pulled slightly at one corner.

Rob remained serious. “Don’t miss that. If you had answered him and said yes, what happens?”

“They add three.”

“Exactly. Maybe they were willing to add five. Maybe six. Maybe they go back into the room and decide they need to change the guarantee instead. We don’t know.” Rob tapped the question mark with his pen. “Never spend the other side’s money for them.”

Kobe looked down at the note.

That was worth remembering.

He had negotiated contracts, endorsements, and business arrangements in another lifetime. He understood leverage. But there was a difference between knowing the principle and watching someone use it without the benefit of Kobe Bryant’s future reputation. Rob didn’t have championships, scoring titles, or twenty years of celebrity to force executives to listen.

He had information, timing, and the discipline to keep his mouth shut.

Most of the time, Rob wasn’t creating leverage by talking.

He was refusing to give it away.

The phone outside rang while Rob pulled the Nike folder closer. The office manager answered on the second ring, her voice faint through the wall before the steady tapping of calculator keys resumed.

Rob checked his watch.

“Nike.”

Kobe looked at the swoosh on the folder.

This one interested him differently.

Rob made the call.

The Nike representative was polished from the beginning. He congratulated Kobe on the preseason and talked about Los Angeles, Nike’s history with elite athletes, and the company’s ability to market a basketball player nationally and internationally. There was no urgency in his voice. Unlike Adidas, he didn’t ask whether Nike was behind. Unlike Reebok, he didn’t ask whether Nike was being used.

He sounded like a man who expected the name on the folder to answer some of the questions for him.

“We believe Kobe fits naturally with what we’re building in basketball,” he said. “He’s young, he’s in Los Angeles, and he has an opportunity to be part of the next generation of Nike athletes.”

Rob rolled the pen once between his fingers. “Kobe wants to understand what that means.”

“In what sense?”

“Where he fits.”

“We’ve laid out the marketing commitment.”

“I’m not talking about the marketing budget.”

A brief silence followed.

Rob leaned forward. “You have Michael at the center of basketball. That’s not a criticism. It’s one of the strongest arguments for Nike. But it’s also reality. If Kobe signs with Nike for seven years, what does Nike see for him?”

This silence lasted longer.

Kobe’s eyes remained on the folder.

Michael.

Of course it came back to Michael.

The Nike executive chose his words carefully. “We don’t look at our athletes as competing for one seat.”

“I’m not suggesting you do.”

“Michael has built something extraordinary with us. That doesn’t prevent us from building something extraordinary with another athlete.”

Kobe’s thumb moved slowly along the edge of the table.

Something extraordinary.

It sounded good.

It also meant almost nothing.

Rob apparently heard the same thing.

“What does that look like?”

“We’d rather have that conversation in person.”

“Then let’s schedule it.”

“We’d like Kobe in Beaverton. Let him see the campus, meet the basketball people, understand the operation and what Nike can put behind him. Not just another contract presentation.”

Rob wrote BEAVERTON on his pad.

“We’ll look at his schedule.”

“And if the financial package is part of the concern,” the executive added, “we’re prepared to review that as well.”

There it was.

Not a number.

Not a promise.

Movement.

Rob’s expression didn’t change. “Send me anything you want us to review before the meeting.”

“Can you give me some sense of where we need to be?”

“I’ve already told you the current financial proposal isn’t leading.”

“By a little or a lot?”

Rob smiled.

“I think you know I can’t answer that.”

A quiet laugh came through the speaker. “Had to try.”

The line went dead.

For the first time since the calls began, Rob leaned back. He flexed his writing hand, took a drink of water, and looked over the page in front of him.

Adidas wanted another chance to revise.

Reebok had floated three million more without being asked.

Nike wanted Kobe in Oregon and had agreed to reconsider its financial package.

Kobe looked at the notes. “You never told any of them what it would take.”

“No.”

“Because you don’t know their limit.”

“Sometimes they don’t know their limit,” Rob said. “Not until somebody walks into a room and asks whether they’re willing to lose the deal.”

Kobe looked again at the folders.

An hour earlier, fifty-two million had seemed like the top of the market because it was the largest number anyone had been willing to write down.

Now the company that had written it was already wondering whether it needed to write another one.

“How long do we wait?”

Rob checked his watch. “If somebody sends something tonight, we could respond tonight. Keeps things moving.”

“Tomorrow.”

Rob looked up.

“Let them wonder.”

This time, Rob didn’t smile. “Uncertainty helps us. Games don’t.”

Kobe let him continue.

“If we ask them to improve and then disappear for two days, somebody may decide we’re wasting their time. These aren’t just logos on folders. There are people on the other end of those phones, and you may be doing business with some of them for twenty years.” Rob closed the Reebok folder. “There’s a difference between making somebody compete and making them feel used.”

Kobe looked down at the three names.

He’d been thinking about what the companies would do next. Rob was thinking about what happened after they did it.

“Tomorrow morning,” Kobe said. “Not longer than that.”

Rob considered it, then nodded. “That I can work with.”

There was no reason to argue further. Kobe had hired Rob because Rob knew this part better than he did, and having someone willing to tell him when an idea went too far was worth more than having someone who nodded every time he spoke.

Rob began organizing the term sheets while Kobe reached for his bag. Late-afternoon sunlight had shifted across the blinds, leaving narrow bars of light over the conference table. Outside the room, the office manager’s calculator continued its steady clack as though the numbers she was adding were no different from the ones sitting inside the three folders.

Forty-five million.

Forty-eight million.

Fifty-two million.

An hour ago, they had looked like choices. Now Kobe understood that none of them was finished.

The telephone outside rang.

Rob kept stacking papers. Kobe slipped the bag over his shoulder and reached for the conference-room door as the office manager answered.

“Pelinka’s office.”

Kobe opened the door.

The calculator stopped.

“Yes, he’s still here.”

Kobe looked back.

Rob’s hand paused over the Nike folder.

The office manager listened for a few seconds, wrote something on the pad beside her telephone, then appeared in the doorway.

“Adidas.”

Rob checked his watch.

Kobe did too.

It hadn’t been twenty minutes.

“They said it’s about the proposal,” she added.

Rob looked at Kobe.

Neither of them said anything.

Kobe lowered the bag from his shoulder, returned to the table, and pulled out the chair he’d just pushed in.

Rob reached for his legal pad.

The office manager handed him the call and went back to her ledger.

Kobe sat down.

Apparently, Adidas was done wondering.

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The shoe war is officially underway, and Kobe’s next few decisions are going to have consequences far beyond basketball.

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