Kyrie Irving’s agent, Shetellia Riley Irving, ushers positive change into All-Star’s life

DALLAS – It wasn’t that long ago that Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving’s NBA career appeared to be spiraling with the Brooklyn Nets. So, in order to turn things around, he turned to an African American woman for guidance who just happened to be his stepmother.

Irving’s decision to hire Shetellia Riley Irving as his agent and CEO of A11Even Sports initially raised eyebrows during the most challenging time of his NBA career. But with Irving in the 2024 NBA Finals with the Mavericks, the guidance of the only Black female agent representing a current NBA player now appears to be a brilliant move that has helped steady his life.

“It’s crazy to see the racial barrier be lifted in a different way in my generation,” Irving told Andscape. “Now we should be calling to do more and create more history. When I brought my stepmom in, it just wasn’t to create the first Black female agent. It was to create another perspective that could be looked at and studied years from now.”

Irving was primarily raised by his father, Drederick. His mother, Elizabeth Larson, died when he was 4 years old on Sept. 9, 1996. In 2004, Drederick Irving married Shetellia Riley when his son was a preteen. At the time of her marriage, she was a senior account executive for the Power 105.1 radio station in New York City.

The hip-hop and R&B station can be heard nationally on the iHeartRadio streaming service now and is the home of The Breakfast Club show. Riley Irving said she took a young Kyrie to the radio station with her occasionally to give him insight on the media business.

Irving also saw her work ethic up close.

“I used to sit him in the radio booth and he used to really just see how I worked on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

In 2006, Riley Irving was promoted to local sales manager. In 2009, she left Power 105.1 to take a position with Black Entertainment Television as an account manager. In 2018, the Houston native was promoted by BET to vice president of ad sales. She said that she learned a lot about the business world, including pride, capacity and fearlessness, but that it was “hard selling the African American consumer” to potential advertisers.

Former BET senior account executive Aulston Taylor said Riley Irving had a positive effect on BET.

“As an executive, she brought a renewed sense of urgency, a great deal of optimism and an uncanny ability in the area of managing relationships to BET Networks,” said Taylor, president and CEO of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans. “As a sales executive, Shetellia was a strong storyteller and her account management was second to none. As a team leader, she led by example and empowered her direct reports to enter the marketplace with the highest level of confidence and enthusiasm. In her nearly 15 years as an executive at the network, Shetellia blazed a trail that may never be replicated.”

“I will always love BET because it’s where I got my bachelor’s, my master’s, my Ph.D., my every degree from. Simply, they really prepared me for my [agent] role not knowing that this role was going to come up,” Riley Irving said.

Irving is an eight-time NBA All-Star who won a championship in 2016 with forward LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The dark part of Irving’s career began when he missed nearly the entire Nets home schedule during the 2021-22 season after choosing not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. He was also suspended indefinitely and missed eight games during the 2022-23 season after he posted a link on social media to a documentary with antisemitic material. That led to him losing his lucrative Nike shoe deal.

While the basketball world was turning on Irving, Riley Irving never lost faith in him as person.

“I knew who he was,” she said. “I knew what my influence was. I knew what his dad’s influence was. Every day you’re looking at somebody like this isn’t the painting you are portraying. This is not who he is. This is a part of something totally different. I knew we needed to make some changes quickly.”

Initially, Irving asked Riley Irving to help him out part time. In September 2021, he hired her to be the new CEO of his company A11Even Sports and to represent him as his agent. She said her desire to change the negativity in Brooklyn was the key factor to accepting the role. Riley Irving had no experience as a sports agent or in sports and received guidance from NBA agents Rich Paul and Rich Kleiman.

So, what was Riley Irving’s key motivation for taking the agent job? “Saving my child,” she said.

“I wasn’t in a space to get it wrong because I’m going to be with him for the rest of my life,” she said.

While the hiring was a surprise move, Irving was confident that her experience at BET and Power 105.1 could help her do the job.

“Why did she come into this?” Irving told Andscape. “We actually needed somebody new in this space. We’re all sports heads, but what if we have someone that is looking at another business who brings her expertise? I wanted to prove to everybody that you should have family in this business. You should have friends that are qualified in this business that you can help ascend.

“I’m trying to put my family on in this business now. I see it happening on an upper management level. So, me as player, if I can empower people through either A11Even agency I have with Shetellia, or Aseye Studio that my sister owns or [my fashion brand] Mind Less or any entrepreneur endeavor and it allows me to use basketball to get more viewership, I’m going to do it.”

Taylor said it was time for Riley Irving to turn the page to a bigger challenge after BET. Riley Irving was having trouble sleeping because of Irving’s struggles and wanted to do more. She officially became the only Black woman to represent an active NBA player as an agent by passing the NBA Players Association agent certification on the first try.

“[Kyrie] called me and said, ‘I’ve always liked your business acumen and I need somebody to work with who has the same business acumen,’ ” she said. “He said, ‘How much would it cost for me to steal you from BET?’ I told him, essentially, he didn’t have enough money because you can’t put a price on what labor of love is. But I said, ‘I will work with you. We will figure it out. I have no experience doing any of this. But I will definitely work with you and figure it out.’ And that is how it has all started.”

Irving played in 143 games in four seasons with the Nets, including only 74 games with fellow star, forward Kevin Durant. There was no title or major success in Brooklyn, and Irving, Durant and guard James Harden asked for trades. On Feb. 5, 2023, Irving got his wish as he was dealt to the Mavericks for guard Spencer Dinwiddie, forward Dorian Finney-Smith and future draft picks.

Irving was ecstatic that he went to the Mavericks because of his longstanding positive relationships with coach Jason Kidd and general manager Nico Harrison. Irving has flourished with the Mavericks, focusing on basketball instead of the issues of the past.

Even so, Riley Irving was initially cautious about the move to Dallas.

“Honestly, I was concerned about any place that he went because he was going to a new location with so much noise around him,” she said. “So, for me hindsight being 20-20, all the stars lined up. But speaking for that moment in time, I was concerned about anywhere because of all the noise around him. People were concerned about who he was, what type of player he was, all of that negativity.”

On the day of Irving’s trade to Dallas, Mavericks CEO Cynthia Marshall had a phone conversation with Riley Irving to work out logistics. Marshall, the NBA’s first Black female CEO, was ecstatic to learn that Riley Irving was in her groundbreaking agent position.

“She knew of me and said she was happy he was coming to Dallas,” Marshall told Andscape. “I just talked to her about Dallas and why I thought it was a good place for him and [how] he would be fine with her. I’m sure she got reassurance from Nico and Jason. But I also wanted to let her know that he was landing in a good place, and we had him and would take good care of him.

“The more I got to know her I realized that not only was she a powerful agent, but that is also her son … I just took a liking to her as a mother, and an agent, and she is powerful.”

The Irving trade didn’t yield early dividends because the Mavericks didn’t make the playoffs or the play-in tournament in 2023. Riley Irving liked how there was no blame game from the Mavs organization afterward. Irving’s comfort level with playing with All-Star guard Luka Dončić, his relationship with Kidd and Harrison, and being sold on the franchise’s championship hopes with former owner Mark Cuban made him comfortable enough to re-sign with Dallas on a three-year, $126 million contract in June 2023.

“They embraced him. It helped that there were relationships with Nico,” Riley Irving said of Irving re-signing. “Nico knows who he is from his old Nike days. There were some similarities with Jason Kidd. There was a lot of mutual respect. It was respect that he had for them and respect they had for him.”

With the Nike deal gone, Irving wore Nikes with the swoosh covered up for some time. That all changed when Riley Irving played a prominent role in Irving signing a five-year collaboration with the Chinese brand Anta in July 2023. Irving was also named the brand’s chief creative officer of basketball to “help recruit players, independent brands and other figures across pop culture, music and artists to create products under [his] signature brand.” Irving has since worn moccasin sneakers to pay homage to his Native American background from his late mother’s family and also developed another shoe in his father’s honor.

“We talked to a lot of people and a lot of different companies,” Riley Irving said. “At the end of the day, Anta checked all of the boxes. Ky is amazing. Hands down, touches every shoe that has his name on it. It’s not a function of it just having his name on it and somebody designed it and everything and I just check a box and says go with it.

“He has impact on every aspect of the shoe. He is really the creator.”

Irving has had more trials than triumphs in the time between winning a championship in Cleveland in 2016 to today. But that page has turned in Dallas where Irving and Dončić helped lead the franchise to its first NBA Finals appearance since 2011. And now the tide for Irving has changed from what is going on off the court to the challenge of whether he can help the Mavericks stave off elimination after falling behind 3-0 in the NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics.

Riley Irving said she reached “every emotion of joy” with Irving returning to the Finals.

“I’m super-excited for him,” she said. “We’re at this amazing juncture for him professionally. It just allows him to show who he is in an environment that celebrates him versus being in an environment that doesn’t …

“He defied the odds. He defied the words. He defied the conversations. It was just amazing.”

Riley Irving is humble about the ground she is breaking for not only Black female sports agents and women in sports. She questions why she was the first Black female agent in the NBA in 2023. For her, it’s a family job before anything else. She is not looking for any kudos or to be recognized historically. She says she also has done some mentoring of aspiring female agents and business with women.

“Being the first is awesome and amazing,” Riley Irving said. “But I don’t want to be the only one. Being the only one means you’re functioning by yourself. And that’s not what I want.”

Marshall, however, spoke volumes for Riley Irving.

“We should talk more about it,” Marshall said. “Not only from the standpoint of boosting her, but so other young women and young men can see what you can inspire to be. When you’re the only one and you’re in a big position like that, people need to know what is possible. But they also need to know that a Black woman is confident and can do that. At some point it won’t even be anomalies. It’s just like, it is what it is.

“But sometimes you don’t realize that somebody is the only body doing it. Who stops to look at what all the agents look like unless you are in this space? If you’re in this space, you know. If you’re not in this space, you don’t know. To have achieved that, we have to talk about that. It’s a huge achievement. And she is great at what she does. And people need to know about that.”