What to know about Rich Paul’s new girlfriend

Klutch Sports CEO and Lakers general manager sports super agent Rich Paul is one of the most significant basketball figures in Los Angeles today. A childhood personal friend of LeBron James, Paul not only represents The King, but also three other clients on the Lakers’ 2021-22 roster — Anthony Davis, Talen Horton-Tucker and Kendrick Nunn — and has been one of the most powerful figures around the Lakers for years, at one point representing six of the 15 players on the team’s roster during their 2020 championship run.

Recently, Paul has gone Instagram official with a new girlfriend, Adele Laurie Blue Adkins, better known professionally as “Adele.”

But just who is the new partner of one of the most important people in the Lakers’ orbit? I did some googling to try to explain.

It turns out she’s a pretty famous singer!

As hard as it is for NBA fans to believe this is possible, Adele actually might be more famous than Paul. The music video for a song she did called “Hello” is apparently the 23rd most-viewed music video in the history of YouTube, just ahead of “Crazy Frog” by Axel F.

Adele is additionally the 53rd most-streamed artist ever on Spotify, and her latest single, “Easy on Me,” broke the record for most streams on the app in a single day.

I’m just a sportswriter and not a music expert, but that seems pretty successful? Good for her!

She apparently has met Oprah

As anyone who follows Paul on Instagram could see this weekend, Adele introduced him to Oprah recently. Not really sure how they know each other, but that’s pretty cool!

That’s not their only public appearance together, either, as Adele and Paul seemed to have fun while sitting courtside at the Lakers’ season opener as well.

Photo by Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images

How did they meet?

According to an interview Adele did with the publication “Vogue” while promoting her latest album, she first said “Hello” to Paul at a party, where he stood out because of how much he was dancing:

Earlier in our day, Adele had mentioned that she and Paul were friends for a while but didn’t start a relationship until the beginning of this year. “He was always there, I just didn’t see him,” she’d said. Over another round of Aperol spritzes, she tells me they met at a party a couple years ago. “I was a bit drunk. I said: Do you want to sign me? I’m an athlete now.” She adds, “He’s just so fucking funny.” And also: “He was dancing. All the other guys were just sitting around. He was just dancing away.”

And according to Adele, the joke about people thinking Paul signed her is one that has continued throughout their relationship, as Adele said she assumed people would just think she had changed representation to Klutch Sports when she started going places with Paul:

“I didn’t mean to go public with it. I just wanted to go to the game. I just love being around him. I just love it.” The topic did come up on the way to the game, though. “He was like, What are people going to say? And I was like, That you signed me. As an athlete. You’re my agent. And he was like, Okay, cool.”

While Adele has yet to sign with Klutch as of the time of this publication, these two crazy kids seem happy, and in the end, isn’t that even better than a chance to inevitably demand a trade to the Lakers in the future?

The preceding article was (hopefully obviously) mostly a satirical send-up of this headline. I know who Adele is. For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.