Philly’s Chafie Fields is making a name for himself as a top football and basketball agent

Chafie Fields wants to be remembered as the absolute best at whatever he does.

Whether it’s personally or professionally, the goal is the same for the Philadelphian, who starred as a Penn State wideout and now as successful sports agent.

“If we played checkers or chess right now, I want to crush you,” Fields said. “That’s just my personality. That’s who I am.”

Crushing opponents is nothing new for the West Philadelphia native, who at age 7 moved to the Uptown section of the city. As a youth, he stood out in football, basketball, baseball and track for the West Oak Lane Wildcats. Fields went on to become an All-America wideout at Jules Mastbaum High School, then one of the all-time best receivers at Penn State. After a brief NFL career that included stints with the San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos and New York Jets, he became a sport agent in 2003.

Now 18 years later, Fields, 44, is the Executive Vice President of Team Sports for Wasserman sports agency. He works in both football and basketball. As the co-head of Wasserman’s NFL division, Fields represents over 40 football clients. Some of his most notable clients include Dallas Cowboys wideout Amari Cooper, Niners defensive end Arik Armstead, New Orleans Saints safety Marcus Williams and Baltimore Ravens defensive end Yannick Ngakoue. He also has clients who will play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs in defensive lineman Steve McLendon, safety Antwan Winfield Jr. and cornerback Carlton Davis.

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On the basketball side, he represents Los Angeles Lakers forward Markieff Morris and his twin brother Marcus Morris of the Los Angeles Clippers. Fields has known the North Philly natives for most of their lives. In addition to orchestrating their re-signing with their teams in November, he’s also one of two agents at Wasserman who helped facilitate the James Harden trade from the Houston Rockets to the Brooklyn Nets. A new Wasserman client, Harden is co-represented by Fields and Jason Ranne.

The 76ers were in the running for Harden, the 2018 league MVP, who they’ll face in Saturday night’s contest against Brooklyn at the Wells Fargo Center.

“In my role as a sports agent, I know and understand that the young men that I’m going to work with and represent have an enormous amount of influences over the community,” said Fields, who is in his first year of representing basketball players. “So for me, it’s a way to be somewhat of an octopus, where my reach becomes much longer because of these young me.”

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He believes his job is to supply his clients with the right information. Not just to get paid, but to be able to uplift people in their communities.

“I feel like this is my lane and my space to be able to do that,” he said.

That’s understandable considering how sports impacted his life. As a former standout athlete from the inner city, Fields has a lot of similarities with his clients.

And it isn’t shocking that he’s into the basketball side of sports agency. Growing up, Fields was known more for basketball than football. One of his best friends is former Simon Gratz High great and retired NBA standout Rasheed Wallace. The only reason Fields didn’t attend Gratz was because he wanted to play competitive basketball and football in high school. While Gratz was a national power in basketball, they struggled in football. So he followed his older brother to Mastbaum.

He was one of the best players on the basketball team as a sophomore, leading them to the Public League quarterfinals. Despite having the hot hand in that game against University City, Fields said his coach opted instead to play a seldom-used senior in overtime to the dismay of the team. Mastbaum lost. Not agreeing with the coaching philosophy, Fields decided to focus on football after that.

Yet because of his relationship with the Morris twins, he felt it was inevitable that he would represent them.

“I never had the intentions of being a football agent or a basketball agent or any particular sport,” said Fields, who know resides in Miami. “I wanted to be a sports agent, and I wanted to set out to do something that really I hadn’t heard anyone else doing, which was be relevant in multiple sports.”