These days, plenty of people know who Rich Paul is. He’s arguably the most powerful agent in sports who represents plenty of A-list talent, most notably LeBron James. In his new book that hit stores today, LUCKY ME: A Memoir of Changing the Odds, Paul takes it back to his upbringing in Cleveland to tell us the journey of how he got here.
One of the many topics that Paul addresses throughout the book is the importance of fashion and the incredible feeling that wearing nice clothes gave him growing up in a rough neighborhood in Cleveland.
"I can admit now that I had an addiction to fly clothes. Not just as fashion, but for the feeling they gave me, the affirmation I received from my peers. When you live in a house of pain, that kind of affirmation is like a drug that makes it all feel better," writes Paul in his new book.
In this exclusive excerpt, Paul reminisces on his addiction to Tommy Hilfiger while growing up in Cleveland in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and getting the opportunity years later to work with the iconic menswear brand. Read below:
Showtime and I played basketball for a Catholic middle school team, St. Aloysius, coached by Mr. Thornton. I didn’t go to school at St. Aloysius, but they had a rule that if you went to Mass on Saturday, you could play for the team. I think the Catholic schools made that exception to scoop up Black athletes. My game developed a lot in middle school. My quickness and jump shot were elite, to the point where not many grown men in the neighborhood could check me. We played Catholic league games at St. Joseph’s, and when I became one of the better players, St. Joe’s started recruiting me. I also got attention from Benedictine, which was more intriguing to me. My friend Terry who lived across the street played for Benedictine, and one year his squad went 22–1. Benedictine turned the lights out when the team was introduced at home games, like the Chicago Bulls. When I found out the team shoes were Jordan 9s, sky blue to match the school colors, I was sold. I was going to Benedictine. To pay the tuition, which might have been five thousand dollars per year, my dad asked my Uncle Booker, who worked in the post office, to take out a loan from his credit union. Dad made the payments. He probably had the cash on hand but wanted to keep it liquid. I got ready to start the ninth grade in the fall of 1995.
Grandma Johnnie Mae had me listed as an authorized user on her credit card for the Dillard’s department store. Going into my freshman year, Dad said I could spend five hundred dollars at Dillard’s, and I took my grandma’s card to the mall. Benedictine had a shirt-and-tie dress code, with no sneakers allowed, but I could do my thing within those rules, and I wanted everything Tommy Hilfiger. I had to have the Tommy shirt, Tommy tie, Tommy belt, Tommy pants, Tommy socks—multiple versions of each. I loaded up my shopping cart and pulled up to the register. I was supposed to stop at five hundred dollars, but when the register finished counting, it was fifteen hundred.
Dillard’s called my grandma to make sure this baby-faced kid wasn’t running a scam. “Mrs. Paul, we have a Richard Paul Jr. here, is he authorized to spend fifteen hundred dollars?”
“Hell no!” Grandma said. “Send that boy home!” I had to get on the phone and explain to her that I had the cash to cover the extra grand. To be honest, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to give her the money; I was probably banking on my dad paying the extra or her forgetting about it. But I was going to have that Tommy. I can admit now that I had an addiction to fly clothes. Not just as fashion, but for the feeling they gave me, the affirmation I received from my peers. When you live in a house of pain, that kind of affirmation is like a drug that makes it all feel better. When I was alone, vulnerable, and needed a dependable source of love, where could I get that feeling? From having the new $160 Chris Webber Nikes on my feet, white and navy with the air bubble and Webber’s number “2” on the back—and then the next week, having a totally different pair of sneakers. Was it healthy? No. But I never turned to using drugs, no blunts, joints, pills, sherm, none of that. My high was being fly. It wasn’t love, but what’s love got to do with it?
Fast-forward about twenty-five years. It’s a few weeks before the 2022 NBA All-Star Weekend. I’m sitting in a meeting with Tommy Hilfiger, and he’s asking me for advice about his business—what makes brands hot, how young consumers react to different types of marketing, those kinds of things. I went from shopping for Tommy gear, to giving Tommy himself advice about his business. My love of fashion positioned me for a seat at that table. Talk about full circle. It wasn’t the money I spent on clothes that got me into that room with Tommy but the attention I paid to fashion, down to the finest detail, with my own creative touches. I didn’t just pay attention to the clothes, either. I paid attention to the effect they had on people—the way the older aunties in the hood would smile when they saw me looking clean and sharp on a street full of empty lots, or the way the crowd cheered just a little louder when our team walked onto the court fully coordinated with the latest sneakers. Mindless consumption and running up big bills didn’t get me to the table with Tommy. What I cultivated during those years was something more important: careful curation and creativity. As always, it came down to paying attention—which is another way of saying it was about love.Consulting with Tommy Hilfiger still feels surreal. I hope that young people today, especially kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, can envision the way that applying attention to detail and creativity to the things they love can pay off in the wider world. I couldn’t fully see it when I was young, because there were no visible examples. No disrespect whatsoever to Clark Kellogg, but he was as good as it got. If you had told me at age fourteen that I would be in a meeting with Tommy Hilfiger, I would have thought you meant be in a meeting wearing Tommy Hilfiger.
From the book LUCKY ME: A Memoir of Changing the Odds by Rich Paul, with Jesse Washington. Copyright © 2023 by RPXXIII Media, LLC. Published by Roc Lit 101, a joint venture between Roc Nation LLC and One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
