The most investment-savvy team in NBA history? Eight years ago, the Warriors had half of their locker room filled with "investors."

Author: Zen, PANews

In the more than seventy years of NBA history, the most dominant player is undoubtedly Michael Jordan. When it comes to the strongest teams, people often have different answers—Jordan's six-time champion Bulls dynasty, the three-peat Lakers led by the Shaq-Kobe duo, and the "Super Warriors" led by Curry and Durant are all reasonable choices.

However, in the venture capital field, the title of the strongest NBA team is undisputed. The Golden State Warriors of the 2017-18 season have an incredibly luxurious resume on the basketball court. But looking back at this team's roster eight years later reveals something even more special: this is also the most investment-savvy locker room in NBA history.

Among the 17 regular-season players that year, nearly 10 had investment experience, with the most well-known being Durant, who bet on hundreds of companies including Robinhood and Coinbase, and Iguodala, who made hundreds of millions from a single investment in Zoom.

Even Omri Casspi, who averaged only 5.7 points and did not make it to the playoffs, has just completed the fundraising of $250 million for his venture capital firm Swish Ventures, becoming the head of a VC managing over $800 million in assets.

If we rewind to 2017, they were still teammates in the same locker room. Fast forward eight or nine years, and this locker room seems to have gathered a group of Silicon Valley investors ahead of time. The one who first turned investing into a "second career" might be Andre Iguodala.

Iguodala, the "Investment Mentor" in the Warriors' Locker Room

In the Warriors' locker room, if everyone were to vote for the player closest to the role of "investment mentor," Andre Iguodala would almost certainly win.

Before the Warriors dynasty truly took shape, Iguodala had already begun studying investments. He recalled that he first bought Zynga stock through E-Trade and, after achieving good returns in a short time, began to ponder a further question: since buying stocks after a company goes public can make money, why not get in before it goes public, or even when it is just established?

It was during this process that Iguodala first truly encountered early-stage investing. Later, Jeff Jordan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, became one of his most important investment mentors, not only introducing him to entrepreneurs and investors but also helping him establish a judgment method closer to that of a professional investor: rather than investing in everything, it is better to seek out companies that he truly understands and can help with personal resources.

By around 2018, Iguodala had invested in over 40 companies through investment vehicles like F9 Strategies, including Zoom, PagerDuty, Allbirds, Casper, Carta, Lime, and Jumia, and joined the board of Jumia. In the following years, these investments began to pay off. In 2019, with Zoom, PagerDuty, and Jumia going public one after another, Iguodala welcomed his "IPO harvest season."

Zoom is the most typical investment for Iguodala. He met Zoom founder Eric Yuan largely because of basketball. Yuan is a Warriors fan, and they connected at an event where they discussed basketball and entrepreneurship, ultimately leading to Iguodala becoming an investor before Zoom went public.

In 2019, Zoom went public on Nasdaq and quickly became one of the standout tech IPOs of the year. The exact returns on Iguodala's investment have not been publicly disclosed, but given the growth in Zoom's valuation and market capitalization, it is undoubtedly one of his most successful early investments in his career. Iguodala later publicly lamented why he didn't invest more at the time.

However, what truly made Iguodala stand out in that Warriors team was not just his investment portfolio. As his network in the investment community expanded, he began to actively introduce the VCs and entrepreneurs he knew to other athletes and organized some investment opportunities for his fellow players to participate in together.

In 2017, he co-founded the Players Technology Summit with business partner Rudy Cline-Thomas, bringing athletes, VCs, and tech company executives together in the same venue. Later, "helping professional athletes enter the tech investment circle" gradually developed into a relatively mature business model.

After retiring, Iguodala did not stop at personal angel investing but fully entered the professional venture capital industry. He is now a member of the investment team at Mosaic General Partnership.

From buying Zynga on E-Trade to investing in Zoom, and bringing teammates into the Silicon Valley investment network, Iguodala has completed not just a transition from athlete to investor. To some extent, he is also the first person in that Warriors locker room to start "passing"—only this time, the passes are investment opportunities.

Off the Court, Durant Turned Joining the Warriors into a "Silicon Valley Study"

For Kevin Durant, the most glorious period of his career was undoubtedly the three years spent with the Golden State Warriors. In 2016, Durant joined the Warriors, forming the "Super Warriors" with Curry, Thompson, and Green, who nearly swept the league. In the following three years, he won two NBA championships and was named Finals MVP twice.

Meanwhile, a change that was not so noticeable at the time was happening off the court: Durant began to truly enter the world of venture capital. The latest attention on Durant's investment portfolio came after Nvidia acquired Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, with multiple media outlets reporting that as one of Hugging Face's early investors, Durant could earn up to $60 million from this deal.

In that "Super Warriors" team, Durant was also one of the first professional athletes to systematize investing. As early as 2016, he and long-time business partner Rich Kleiman founded Thirty Five Ventures, now known as 35V. Strictly speaking, his investment career did not start only after joining the Warriors; during his final days with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the two had already begun building their business and investment system.

However, the three years in the Bay Area truly changed the trajectory of Durant's investment career. During his time with the Warriors from 2016 to 2019, Durant and Kleiman deeply engaged with the Silicon Valley startup and venture capital scene, frequently interacting with entrepreneurs, investment firms, and tech companies, and quickly building their own network. Companies that later gained fame, such as Postmates, Acorns, Whoop, Overtime, Robinhood, and Coinbase, gradually appeared on his investment list.

By the time ESPN interviewed Durant in 2018, his investment portfolio had expanded to about 30 companies, with early investments typically ranging from $250,000 to $1 million, including Coinbase, Acorns, Rubrik, LimeBike, and Postmates. Meanwhile, the people discussing investments around him had become influential figures in Silicon Valley VC circles, such as Ron Conway and Ben Horowitz.

It was also during this time that Durant first truly understood how venture capital operates. He later recalled that his previous understanding of VC was quite simple: find a good company, invest in it, and then wait for it to explode. But after entering the Bay Area, he realized that a venture capital firm might receive hundreds of projects daily, with only a few making it to the next round of research. Investors need to continuously filter projects, study companies, communicate with CEOs, engineers, and teams, and then decide which companies are worth betting on.

This gradually made Durant aware that venture capital is not about finding a "stroke of genius" once but rather a long-term process of continuous filtering, learning, and betting. This mindset was later brought into his investment approach. Rather than trying to find the next world-changing super company from the start, it is better to continuously seek out projects that he can understand and believe in, allowing time and his portfolio to amplify the returns from a few winners.

Eight years later, this approach has borne quite a fruitful harvest. The investment portfolio of Durant's firm 35V has exceeded 100 startups, covering fields such as fintech, AI, health, and media. Beyond startups, he has also extended his asset portfolio into professional sports, holding stakes in teams like Philadelphia Union and Gotham FC.

Although he parted ways with the Warriors after just three seasons, these three years were likely the most impactful experience of his career in both basketball and investment: he won two championships and two Finals MVPs here, and it was also here that he completed the transformation from "NBA star who invests" to systematic tech investor.

Casspi, Who Averaged 5.7 Points, Later Managed an $800 Million Fund

Compared to Durant, who was already prepared to become an investor when he arrived in the Bay Area, Omri Casspi's story better illustrates the influence of the Warriors locker room on players' investment philosophies.

In the summer of 2017, Casspi joined the Warriors on a minimum salary. During the 2017-18 season, he played only 53 games, averaging 5.7 points, and was cut in April 2018 to make room for the playoffs. Although the Warriors ultimately gave him a championship ring, his performance on the court was just an unremarkable stop in his ten-year NBA career.

However, for Casspi, who played for seven teams, the year he spent with the Warriors during the 2017-18 season had the most significant impact on his post-retirement life planning.

Within the team, he saw Curry, Durant, and Iguodala discussing their investment portfolios and exchanging information about startups they were engaging with. On the court, many of the people sitting courtside were Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VCs, and after games, he often interacted with them. Casspi gradually discovered that, aside from playing basketball, "picking winners and investing in entrepreneurs" might be the second most interesting job in the world.

Influenced by this, Casspi, who was nearing the end of his career, began with angel investing, gradually investing in companies like DocuSign and DayTwo. After retiring in 2021, he began to systematically enter the Israeli tech scene, founding an early-stage fund called Sheva in 2022 and raising $50 million, primarily investing in Pre-seed and Seed projects.

In 2024, he launched a new fund under the name Swish Ventures, subsequently absorbing the previously established Sheva. In January of that year, Casspi rented a suite at the Chase Center, the former home of the Warriors, to host Cognition AI co-founders Scott Wu and Steven Hao.

The game between the Warriors and the Lakers was incredibly exciting, with both sides battling through two overtimes. Curry scored 46 points throughout the game, but Caspi's attention was more focused on another "roadshow" happening in the suite: Wu was introducing him to an AI programming agent that had not yet been officially launched. The next day, Caspi had a long conversation with Wu in Palo Alto and quickly decided to participate in the seed round of Cognition.

At that time, Cognition was valued at only $150 million; now, the valuation for the new round of financing that Cognition is seeking may rise to $47 billion.

Another example is the cloud security company Upwind, which was early-stage invested by Swish. It had a valuation of about $65 million in its 2022 seed round, and by early 2026, its Series B valuation had reached $1.5 billion. Early investments in cloud backup company Eon and AI company Applied Compute have also entered the unicorn ranks.

As of September this year, Swish's investment portfolio consists of about 20 companies, of which 8 have reached a billion-dollar valuation. The latest fund, which just completed a $250 million fundraising, includes investors such as Sequoia Capital and U.S. pension funds and university endowments, pushing its managed asset size to about $800 million.

Back when he joined the Warriors, Caspi was just a role player who had moved between multiple teams in the NBA. Nine years later, the amount of funds he manages has far exceeded his entire NBA career earnings of about $18 million. To some extent, he is the best example of how this Warriors team has achieved long-term returns through an "investment culture."

'Platform Investor' Curry, Integrating Investment into His Business Empire

Compared to Durant, Caspi, and Iguodala, Curry's investment path appears much more low-key.

But that doesn't mean he entered the game late. Curry actually started engaging with tech startups quite early, co-founding the marketing technology company Slyce, and later gradually integrated his personal brand, media, charity, and investment business into the same business system through SC30. By December 2018, SC30 had already participated in the financing of the online travel platform SnapTravel; by around 2019, his publicly disclosed investment portfolio had expanded to 8 companies, including esports club TSM and smartphone company Palm.

Curry's investment logic differs from Durant's. He doesn't seem to rush to expand the number of investments but prefers to find companies that can synergize with his brand, interests, and resources.

His investment in the educational platform Guild Education in 2019 is a typical case. Guild primarily helps large companies like Walmart, Disney, and Chipotle provide continuing education and vocational training for employees. At that time, Curry had just established the Eat. Learn. Play foundation, and education was already a long-term focus for him, so SC30's involvement with Guild was not just a simple investment but also a strategic partnership.

Three years later, Guild completed a $175 million financing round, with the company's valuation reaching $4.4 billion. Although it is unclear what Curry's specific shareholding cost was, and it is impossible to calculate the actual investment return, at least from the subsequent valuation changes, this appears to be a quite successful growth investment.

Subsequently, SC30's investment business further extended to Penny Jar Capital. Curry himself serves as a special advisor to this VC, while daily investments are handled by long-time business partner Bryant Barr and other professional teams. Penny Jar's current investment scope has covered multiple fields, including enterprise software, healthcare, and AI.

From this perspective, Curry may be the closest to a "platform investor" among this group of Warriors players.

He hasn't completely transformed into a professional fund manager like Caspi, nor has he rapidly scaled up a personal investment firm like Durant. Instead, he has chosen to embed investment into his business system: the brand provides influence, the business network provides resources, and the professional team is responsible for screening and managing projects.

From Klay, Draymond to Zaza Pachulia, the 'Investor List' Keeps Growing

Aside from being an ambassador for Anta, Klay Thompson, who forms the "Splash Brothers" duo with Curry, has always had a lower presence off the court compared to Curry, Durant, and Iguodala. This is even more true in the venture capital field, but in reality, he has not distanced himself from this game.

Klay began to engage more intensively in venture capital after 2020. In 2020, he participated in the financing of mental health company Lyra Health through the athlete investment platform PLUS Capital, and subsequently appeared on the investor lists of Dapper Labs, sports media company Overtime, healthcare technology company Carbon Health, sports social platform Sleepe, and AI voice company Wispr.

Another core member of the Warriors, Draymond Green, follows a route that is closer to the traditional definition of an angel investor. He began investing in startups as early as the mid-2010s, having invested in projects such as orthodontics company SmileDirectClub, food tech platform Snackpass, and tequila brand Lobos 1707.

Unlike Durant, Green has never intended to establish his own VC firm. He believes that he already has professional investors like Bill Gurley around him, so he prefers to be an LP in funds or participate in specific projects alongside these familiar investors.

The "investor list" of the Warriors does not end here.

Center JaVale McGee's investments are strongly colored by his personal lifestyle. After switching to a plant-based diet, he invested in Beyond Meat, plant snack brand Outstanding Foods, and restaurant brand Tocaya Organica. Beyond Meat went public in 2019, with its stock price rising 163% on the first day of trading. In 2020, McGee co-invested in Dapper Labs with Iguodala and continued to participate in its financing. In 2022, McGee also participated in the financing of the Web3 e-commerce infrastructure project Rye.

Another Warriors center, Zaza Pachulia, has consciously learned business knowledge throughout his playing career. During his early years with the Hawks, he took business courses at Emory University and later attended related courses at Harvard; after ending his playing career in 2019, he joined the Warriors' management while continuing to engage with startups and investments.

His tech investments truly began to form a continuous record around 2023. That year, Zaza participated in the seed round of medical AI company Tennr, which had a valuation of about $22.8 million. A year later, when Tennr completed a new round of financing, Zaza continued to follow on. By 2025, Tennr completed a $101 million financing round, with a valuation reaching $605 million, and top institutions like a16z and Lightspeed were among the investors.

In addition to Tennr, Zaza is also an investor in AI chip company Cerebras. After completing a $1 billion financing round this year, Cerebras reached a valuation of about $23 billion and has signed a large-scale AI inference infrastructure collaboration with OpenAI. In July of this year, he also became an angel investor in AI security company Neo, which has raised a total of $100 million, with investors including a16z, Bessemer, and Craft Ventures.

From this perspective, Zaza has even gone further than many of his teammates in the locker room back then: he hasn't established his own VC, but has gradually extended from familiar fields like hotels and basketball training to medical AI, AI chips, and AI security.

Power forward David West's investments lean more towards industry; in 2016, he invested $250,000 in clean energy company Zoetic Global. After that, he not only held shares but also became an advisor to the company and participated in energy projects for the long term. After retiring, he continued to engage in entrepreneurship and investment-related matters.

Backup guard Shaun Livingston's path differs from the above players. Before joining the Warriors, he had already tried film investments, but he truly began to systematically engage with VC after being influenced by teammates like Iguodala in the Bay Area. He attended investment meetings at Kleiner Perkins to see how startups pitched to funds. Later, he also became an LP in some projects of the venture capital firm Eonxi and continued to be active in the Bay Area venture capital network.

Looking back at the Warriors' family photo from the 2017-18 season, one can find an interesting result: among the 17 players, at least 10 later had clear experiences in entrepreneurship, angel investing, or VC. Saying that half of the locker room consisted of "investors" is not an exaggeration.

Why the Warriors? The Silicon Valley Network Behind a Locker Room

Why did the Warriors of the 2017-18 season gather so many investors in the same locker room? Perhaps what truly makes this team special is that it provides an environment that is difficult for other NBA teams to replicate.

First is the geographical location. At that time, the Warriors were located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the players' training, living, and social radius was almost directly embedded in the world's most concentrated area of venture capital. VCs on Sand Hill Road, founders of startups in San Francisco, tech company executives, and billionaires were not distant names in financial news; they could very well be the ones sitting courtside watching the game and dining together afterward.

Secondly, there is the team owner. Joe Lacob is not a traditional sports owner. He joined Kleiner Perkins in 1987 and has worked in the venture capital industry for over twenty years, leading investments in more than 50 startups across life sciences, medical technology, internet, and energy. It was only after buying the Warriors that he gradually stepped back from daily fund management.

In other words, this team has a strong Silicon Valley gene from the top down. The Warriors' later emphasis on data analysis, sports science, and team management technology also has some connection to this background.

However, more important than geographical location and ownership background is likely the network effect.

It is not unusual for an NBA player to know a few investors, but when Iguodala has already entered the networks of Silicon Valley VCs like a16z, Durant begins to frequently connect with Ron Conway and Ben Horowitz, and Curry has his own relationships with entrepreneurs and brands, and these people happen to sit in the same locker room every day, the originally personal networks begin to connect with each other, forming a whole interconnected athlete capital network.

Caspi can book suites for Warriors games, arranging founders of startups, potential clients, corporate executives, and investors in the same space. Watching a basketball game itself has also become a scene for establishing business relationships and completing project matchmaking. To some extent, they possess another type of scarce asset: relationships with corporate executives, media dissemination capabilities, and the ability to access social networks that are difficult for ordinary investors to enter.

For startups, these resources can sometimes be even more important than a check. And the Warriors of the 2017-18 season happened to concentrate all these elements in one place.

Thus, that Warriors team was not only seen by the outside world as a "super team" that piled up basketball resources to the extreme: four All-Stars, two MVPs, plus a group of highly compatible, experienced role players; off the court, they also achieved a rare gathering of resources.

Team basketball is the most distinctive label of the Warriors: sharing the ball, creating space, and finding the best-positioned teammates. Off the court, they seem to have brought the same logic into the investment world. "The Universe Warriors" share not only basketball but, to some extent, they also share a ticket to enter Silicon Valley.