Even if he can't exactly hit an ollie or a kickflip, Gary Payton II has always had an affinity for skateboarding. Whether it was spending hours on his video game console grinding Tony Hawk Pro Skater, or riding to the skate park with his buddies back in high school, skateboarding has always called out to the NBA champion.
“Everybody doesn't get along in the basketball and football world. The skate community, they're together,” Payton told ClutchPoints.
“They don't care where you're from. It's not a turf thing. It's not a city thing. If you skate, they're always going to be welcoming and will want you to come skate… Skateboarding culture is just different. It's really a community, a unit. They don't really care about anything, but skating and landing tricks and helping each other out.”
It is that same spirit of uplifting those in the skate community that prompted the Golden State Warriors veteran's venture into the sports business and entertainment landscape.
Payton is a co-founder of the Skateboard Association (SBA), a new co-ed, equal pay professional skateboarding league based in Big Bear, California, with the intention of platforming career skaters and compensating them for their talents. An endeavor a couple of years in the making, it's the next step in Payton's journey as he looks to use his platform to support the things that are important to him.
“Me growing as a person, a businessman, and an athlete– just to intertwine both of those and be able to do cool things like this– and be a part of dope things that you know will change the outlook of a sport is unique. I'm very grateful to be a part of it.”
Payton's motivation behind the SBA
Payton's motivation behind establishing a league like the SBA is simple. A feeling rooted in his own journey and experience as a professional athlete.
“The feel of being a wanted athlete,” Payton told ClutchPoints. “You work so hard at your craft, you want to be valued.”
Payton, an NBA journeyman who was on the fringes of the league before finding his way to the Warriors, understands the trials and tribulations of being an undervalued professional athlete.
Before he became a key piece in the Dubs' 2022 title run, Payton oscillated back and forth between the non-guaranteed contracts and the NBA's G-League, suiting up for five different franchises and their developmental affiliates from 2016 to 2021. Those years made Payton familiar with feeling undervalued and underappreciated, which helps him empathize with these professional skaters.
“The majority of all these skaters have gotten out of the mud from their journey,” Payton said. “They've had falls, they've had broken bones or whatnot. And just, persistence and just continuing to do what they love– it's one of those things that I can relate to for sure.”
Unlike skate competitions that pay athletes a prize purse based on how they finish, the SBA plans to pay skaters signed to the league set salaries ranging in the five-to-six-figure range. Athletes will be eligible for bonuses and will receive a share of the revenue from merchandise sales.
“I think building this platform and creating the league will help a lot of skaters out and get their own space and just let them grow as humans. I think if you do that naturally, they're going to grow as a skater. And the journey from wherever they are is going to mean that much more.”
How the SBA will function
With his business partners and co-founders, Royce Campbell and Sheldon Lewis, Payton and the SBA are looking to address the lack of support for the sport's top athletes by expanding the platform. They seek to do so by reconfiguring the major sports leagues' business models for skateboarding.
“We want people to be able to experience the SBA the same way that they experience an NBA game or an NFL game, right, even down to the length,” Campbell told ClutchPoints. “From that, it'll also allow some of the larger brands that spend more on their marketing dollars inside of the space, which then will just elevate the space as a whole.”
And like the bigger leagues, the competition in the SBA will be a team-based, season-long format.
The SBA will feature six teams with six skaters each— three women and three men– plus coaches and reserves, will go head-to-head across 10 weeks in the summer of 2026. SBA has 80% of the 46 total skaters signed for the inaugural season. And the league has skateboarding icons Manny Santiago, Robert Neal, Samarria Brevard, Pâmela Rosa, and Jamie Reyes onboard to serve with Payton as owners for each of these teams in the league's inaugural season.
“It's going to be a mixture of your top pros and the pros that are extremely talented but haven't gotten the chance to be highlighted in a manner that some of their contemporaries are,” Lewis told ClutchPoints.
“We're going to be grabbing a handful of young skaters to come in and solidify a name for themselves, and we're going to do it at a level where, when the lights turn on, you're going to feel like you're watching an NBA draft or NFL draft.”
Payton's vision for SBA
The SBA hopes the structure of the league and the skateboarding professionals they've drawn to it will convince brands and sponsors to step in and support the platform they are trying to build.
The SBA plans to stream its inaugural season on YouTube. But Campbell also shared with ClutchPoints that the SBA is talking with multiple streaming platforms to house the SBA.
“We're really betting on ourselves through this first model in season one to then package that up to position us for the long-term, bigger vision with a network.”
The SBA will conduct its six-team draft in the spring of 2026, with the season expected to start up shortly after in the summer. According to Sportico, the venture is funded for two full seasons but continues to look for more brands, sponsors, and investors to contribute to the league. The alt sports league business is a tricky one to navigate, as other startup leagues that have attempted similar endeavors to SBA haven't always panned out.
Regardless of the potential challenges, the co-founder trio has faith in themselves and each other to shape the league into everything they envision.
“When you're able to be in business with people that you consider family, that just makes it that much better for everyone. From top-down,” Lewis expressed. “That love and energy we have, connected between the three of us, is translating into what we're building with the SBA.”
For Payton, the vision for the SBA at the end of the day is to create a league to showcase the athletes driving skate culture.
“Just to have a platform so they can be seen and show their talent that they've been working for all their life means more than anything to me personally.”
