Veteran NBA star Harrison Barnes has found his next big play, and it has nothing to do with basketball.
According to reports, the San Antonio Spurs forward has invested $25 million into an Iowa bank, turning a longtime interest in the financial world into a major offseason investment.
Barnes, a native of Ames, Iowa, purchased Community State Bank in Paton, allowing him to become involved in an industry he has reportedly been interested in for years. The move is an unexpected one for an active NBA player, but Barnes has been thinking about his future beyond basketball for some time.
“This is not a vanity project,” he said during an interview with The Bank Slate. “We want to be Iowa’s next great bank.”
His interest in banking dates back several years. While playing for the Sacramento Kings, Barnes discussed his ambitions with Tyrese Haliburton, who was a rookie and his teammate at the time. Haliburton later recalled that Barnes was seriously thinking about owning a bank one day.
“HB told me this was the plan my rookie year!! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That was the first time I realized dudes in the NBA got real families and are real adults like wtf lol,” Haliburton wrote on X.
That plan has now become reality.
Barnes isn’t simply putting his name behind the project. He has taken steps to learn the business himself, including enrolling in the Iowa School for Banking through the Iowa Bankers Association, according to The Blank Slate. He has also surrounded himself with experienced banking professionals as he prepares to fulfill his vision of growing the institution and establishing it as a significant community bank in the state.
The investment gives Barnes a chance to build something in the same state where his basketball career began. Before becoming an NBA veteran, he was one of the country’s top high school prospects at Ames High School and went on to play at North Carolina.
Now, he is beginning to establish another kind of legacy in Iowa.
He isn’t waiting until his playing career is over to think about his next chapter. Instead, Barnes is using his years in professional basketball to build a business career while competing at the highest level.
For an NBA player, investing in a bank is certainly an unconventional move. For Barnes, however, it appears to be part of a much bigger plan.
