Kevin Durant has made plenty of smart moves in basketball and business. He has won championships, MVPs, built one of the most impressive scoring résumés in NBA history, and become one of the more active athlete-investors of his generation.
But even Durant has one deal that still makes him shake his head.
Durant recently admitted that he had a chance to get involved with BodyArmor, the sports drink brand that later became one of Kobe Bryant’s greatest business wins. The problem, according to Durant, was not that he said no. It was that he moved too slowly.
“I passed up on BodyArmor,” Durant said. “I was too slow… too slow to respond to some sh*t. And they just went on ahead and went crazy with it.”
Kevin Durant admits he was too slow to get in BodyArmor, the same deal that made Kobe $400,000,000, more than his entire NBA career
“I passed up on BodyArmor. I was too slow… too slow to respond to some sh*t. And they just went on ahead and went crazy with it”
“Kobe changed… pic.twitter.com/MbXDXeMtWf
— katsu (@katsuxbt) June 19, 2026
That is a painfully simple business lesson. Sometimes the difference between a nice opportunity and a life-changing one is timing. BodyArmor did not wait around forever. Durant hesitated, the company moved on, and the deal that could have put him in early became one of those stories that athletes tell years later with a laugh that probably still hurts a little.
Kobe, meanwhile, did not miss. Bryant invested $6 million into BodyArmor in 2014, reportedly receiving a 10 percent stake. When Coca-Cola later acquired BodyArmor in a deal valued at $5.6 billion, Bryant’s estate was reportedly set to receive about $400 million from the sale.
That is the kind of deal that changes the way athletes think about endorsements. Kobe was not just wearing the brand, smiling in commercials, and cashing a check. He owned a piece of the company. When BodyArmor exploded, he exploded with it.
Durant understood exactly what that meant.
“Kobe changed his life off it,” Durant said. “He might’ve made more money off of that than he did in the league.”
That last part is not just a funny line. It is the whole point. Bryant earned more than $300 million in NBA salary during his playing career, but BodyArmor became the kind of post-playing investment that showed how powerful equity can be for superstar athletes. The lesson was not simply “invest more.” It was “own the upside.”
For Durant, the missed opportunity does not exactly qualify as tragedy. He has built his own business portfolio, won plenty, earned plenty, and remains one of the most influential players in the sport. But BodyArmor is the rare miss that even someone as successful as KD can look back on and say, yeah, that one got away.
