This week, Warriors all-star Draymond Green announced a partnership with Blink Fitness to open 20 “value-based” fitness centers around the country. This isn’t in and of itself anything striking or new; professional athletes, who have money to burn and their post-retirement futures to consider, have long pursued ventures outside of sports. However, over the last few years, there’s been a marked shift in both how they do business. Players like Draymond are entrepreneurs with diverse interests, looking to make smart, forward-thinking investments. When they make a deal, they do it with good reason. And for Green and others, this isn’t a hobby—it’s a second career.

GQ: Why fitness? Is it important to you that people get into shape?Draymond Green: Being that my day job is based around fitness and being in great shape, taking care of the body is something that I completely understand. It's just organic. When it’s a commercial where I’m endorsing a product, or it’s a donation I'm making for charity, I just like to do things that are organic to me. And what can be more organic than fitness? I do care about people getting into shape. I think it leads to a much healthier lifestyle. People being healthier allows for healthier options. All of a sudden, you see healthier food spots. It just makes everything a lot better.

How important was it for you that it be value-based and have affordable rates?I grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, and our first location will be in downtown Detroit. Dan Gilbert's done a great job down there bringing the city back [but] I don't think it necessarily has the big city money. The chance to help add to what's going on in downtown Detroit, to help continue to build that out, that will also in turn eventually help my hometown of Saginaw.

To add jobs to the state of Michigan, to take gyms to Detroit, to take the gyms to possibly Saginaw, to add jobs in Saginaw, to help people live a much healthier life in Saginaw, that’s incredible. Growing up as a kid, we didn't really have gyms like that. I didn't know what a piece of cardio equipment was until I got to college. Being able to add a value-based gym with low rates to a city like Detroit, possibly to Saginaw, that's very important to me.

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It seems like athletes are getting more and more ambitious with their business ventures.You have to give a lot of credit to LeBron. LeBron did a great job managing his business with his partners. I either read it or I saw him speaking about it … he started to view himself as a partner, not someone who just had an endorsement deal. And I think a lot of athletes have started to take that back. Guys are much more educated, much smarter in the business field and most importantly, guys understand the leverage that we have and the platform that we have as athletes and are trying to take advantage of that.

I’ve also heard athletes talk about the importance of black-owned businesses.Absolutely. With where we are today, with the social climate, with the political climate, I think it's important more and more to have black-owned businesses. The people who are in the NBA and the NFL that are black guys, so to have those black-owned businesses ... I think it's great. It's great for everyone, it's great for the community.

Do you and your teammates ever get competitive or talk trash about business ventures?Guys get a little competitive, not necessarily competitive in the sense of like, boasting and bragging, or trying to outdo each other, but there is a little sense of competitiveness and letting guys know what deals you're in, and letting guys know how those deals are performing.

But at the end of the day, we all wanna see each other succeed. It's not about being super competitive, more so than it is about sharing our deal flow with each other. I think that's the most important thing is that if Kevin sees a deal, he going to tell me, "I'm looking at this deal if you want to take a look at it." I'll tell Steph, "I'm looking at this deal, I can have it sent over to your guys, you can let me know if you want to do it or not. Omri, Klay, Andre, and the list goes on and on. David West.

So I think it's more about us sharing our deal flow with each other and allowing each other the opportunities that one guy may get, just sharing those deals with each other, more than it's about being competitive. We're not trying to compete, we're all trying to eat together and live a much better life, create a much better life for our families, and for ourselves down the road. So it's about helping each other more than it's about competing.

Do you see any parallel between guys’ games and how they do business?I wouldn't necessarily say like, "Kevin is a skilled player, he's skilled in the business world." But what I would say is being a basketball player your entire life, it teaches you certain things. It teaches you how to work with a team. And in business, no one can do it by themselves. And so knowing how to work with a team, knowing that there are roles within that team, that you need to fulfill and everyone else needs to fulfill, I think it helps in the business world.

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As far as myself, I've been a leader on the basketball floor. I think that those leadership qualities ... you can use those in the business world. Now, in saying that, [when] in a majority of these businesses that we all get involved in, we're not as smart as a CEO. We're not as smart or as talented in that field as we are in what we've been doing our entire lives. The goal is always to learn. [But] you can take those leadership qualities that you use and that you know that work on the basketball court because sports and business are more similar than one may think in the way that they operate.

Being on the team definitely translates. It’s about understanding your weaknesses and strengths, as you should in basketball.

A large part of this whole thing is about setting yourself up for life after sports. What do you see yourself as doing down the road?My goal is to create an entire business around this. I don't think that there's one specific thing that I want to do, like "I wanna be the CEO of this company.” I don't know if that's a specific thing that I want to more so than being involved in a bunch of different businesses so that my portfolio will continue to grow. As of right now, I'm just ready to try and build a business around my investments and being involved in different companies.

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