LeBron James speaks with Boardroom’s Rich Kleiman at the CNBC Sports x Boardroom Game Plan Summit in New York City on July 16, 2026.
Shea Kastrinor/CNBC
LeBron James hasn’t decided which NBA team he’ll play for next. In his first public appearance since telling the Los Angeles Lakers he would become a free agent, James attended the CNBC Sports x Boardroom Game Plan Summit and told Boardroom’s Rich Kleinman that he plans to play elsewhere and “I’m not going to keep you guys any longer.”
But what remains to be determined is what kind of shoes James will wear, so closely tied to his storied career. nike.
That relationship dates back to 2003, when James signed a seven-year, $90 million endorsement deal with Nike before joining the NBA. This contract remains the largest rookie shoe contract in basketball history.
In 2015, James signed a lifetime contract with Nike, said to be the largest single-athlete guarantee in the company’s history. In 2021, Nike announced the LeBron James Innovation Center at its Beaverton, Oregon, headquarters. The center is a 700,000 square foot facility focused on groundbreaking advances in sports science.
But while James continues to play at an All-Star level, making a record 22 consecutive NBA All-Star teams last season, Nike has slumped.
In 2026, Nike’s stock price will fall by 30%. The stock is down more than 70% from its November 2021 high.
Nike stock price chart for the past 5 years.
Nike found success during the pandemic under CEO John Donahoe, who focused the business heavily on direct sales and e-commerce, but its exit from wholesalers left it struggling against emerging competitors such as Hoka and Hoka. Running We started gaining market share.
Mr. Donahoe led the company through an extensive restructuring plan aimed at cutting costs and reducing headcount to allow it to invest in growth areas, but the strategy did not work out.
In October 2024, 30-year Nike veteran Elliott Hill came out of retirement to become CEO and focus on a strategy that will refocus the company on innovation and rebuilding trust with consumers and athletes.
“On my first day, my slides said two things: We’re a sports company, and we’re a growth company,” Hill told CNBC in October 2025. “When you grow the sport, the overall market grows. And if that happens, we have a high potential for growth.”
To date, this strategy has not been successful. The company beat Wall Street expectations in its most recent quarter, with sales increasing in North America, but sales continued to slump in Greater China and other parts of the world.
“Overall, the results are still out,” Hill said on a conference call with analysts. “We know we are not reaching our full potential as sell-through continues to be a challenge, particularly for Nike sportswear and Jordan streetwear, impacting both current discounts and future orders.”
“As a member of Nike, I feel like I have a responsibility to make sure we don’t decline,” James said. “Wearing Nike has always been a cool factor.”
“As a Nike athlete, you have a responsibility to be the best because that’s what I grew up with. That’s all I know. That’s all I’ve been with for 20 years,” James added.
Klayman asked James what Nike can do to regain the brand’s standing with both Wall Street and consumers.
“We have to go back to our roots. We have to go back to inner-city life,” James said. “When I came along, there were people literally going out into the community and talking and asking what they liked, what they didn’t like, what they thought about this, what they thought about that.”
The company’s struggles have many speculating what will help Nike regain the sportswear throne.
In another Game Plan session, Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin said, “It’s almost impossible to make what Nike made,” adding that the company’s goal is “something big and cool.”
“This is a very difficult combination,” Rubin said.
Rubin was also critical of some of Nike’s previous decisions, saying there were “a lot of things that clearly didn’t make sense” about the move.
“They’ve really brought a lot of competition into the market,” Rubin said. “So what Nike has to do is figure out how to grow again and how to stay cool.”
Jay Saul of UBS asked in an April analyst note whether Nike had lost its “superpower,” having maintained its position as a luxury brand in various sports niches despite selling lower-priced products.
Saul also noted that the company’s longtime stronghold in basketball may be less relevant than it has been in years past.
“Nike’s superpower is based in part on its ability to maintain its image as the premier sports brand even as it sells many everyday products,” Saul wrote. “Basketball was the vehicle to make that possible. It’s unclear whether Nike could leverage basketball in the same way today. Furthermore, it’s unclear what other ways Nike could regularly revamp its image with U.S. consumers.”
James said that when he was faced with the decision to sign a shoe deal in 2003, Nike was the main reason he chose Nike.
“What do you want to wear on your feet when you leave the house every day?” said James. “It was a cool element of what Deion Sanders brought to the brand, what Bo Jackson brought to the brand, what Barry Sanders brought to the brand, what Ken Griffey Jr. brought to the brand. Obviously, (Michael Jordan). Well, that was a very cool element.”
James said Nike “can’t lose its cool, that’s universal.”
“Whether you’re a man or a woman, everyone wants to feel cool when they leave the house,” James said. “When you go back to that, I think that’s really all there is to it.”
