Motivation Quote by Julius Erving

Julius Erving is doing something more interesting here than dropping a feel-good line about “diversity.” He’s translating the language of the locker room into the language of ownership: commitment, approach, operation. The sentence is built like a game plan. Not a slogan, not a confession, but a statement of method.

The specific intent reads as pragmatic credibility. Erving isn’t arguing that diversity is morally correct (though that’s implied); he’s positioning it as a disciplined practice in how capital gets deployed and how organizations get run. “Buying businesses” is blunt on purpose. It signals he’s past endorsements and guest appearances. He’s talking about equity, control, and the boring, decisive stuff that determines who gets to shape an industry.

The subtext is pressure and correction. For decades, Black athletes were welcomed as talent but not as owners, rarely treated as serious operators once the playing stopped. Erving’s phrasing pushes back against that old arrangement: I’m not just a brand; I’m a buyer. “Diverse approach” also hints at a two-part critique of business culture: that deal flow tends to be homogenous, and that diversity can’t be performative if it doesn’t extend into leadership and daily management (“operation of those businesses”).

Context matters. Erving comes from an era when athlete wealth was smaller and pathways to ownership were narrower. Today’s athlete-investor wave is bigger, but it can still tilt toward safe, image-friendly stakes. His language aims for something sturdier: a long-term portfolio and a long-term responsibility, where inclusion isn’t a halftime message but a governing principle.