(6-16-22) In a tweet today Klutch Sports Group announced that Indiana’s Ms. Basketball Ayanna Patterson (Homestead HS & UCONN) has joined their group and signed a NIL agreement.

Klutch has a large stable of pro and college athletes that they presently advise and work with.

NIL — which stands for name, image, likeness. At this time NCAA’s guidelines on this are few: Don’t allow boosters to pay athletes and don’t let endorsement deals influence recruiting. Basically, if a college athlete lives in a state where legislation has been passed, they can profit from their name, image, or likeness according to state law.

Klutch Sports Group is an American sports agency based in Los Angeles, California. It is founded by professional basketball player LeBron James’ best friend and sports agent, Rich Paul.

In 2003, after the NBA draft, James asked Paul to be a part of his small inner circle, along with James’ childhood friends Maverick Carter and Randy Mims. Paul quickly obliged. He would later start working under Leon Rose, who had negotiated James’ extension with the Cavaliers in 2006, at Creative Artists Agency.

In 2012, Paul left Rose and CAA to start his own agency, Klutch Sports Group, and took James with him. n 2013, Paul enlisted noted long-time agent and attorney Mark Termini to run the NBA contract negotiations for Klutch. By the conclusion of their agreement in 2020, Termini negotiated $1.4 billion in NBA contracts for Klutch Sports clients from 2014 through 2019. By 2019, Klutch had a roster of 25 clients and brokered over $1 billion in contracts.

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