Latrell Sprewell possibly lost his home in Wisconsin because of the nutritional needs of his family.
If you recall, Sprewell talked his way out of a three-year, $21 million contract extension with the Timberwolves because of this concern.
At the time, going into the 2004-05 season, he said: “Why would I want to help them win a title? They’re not doing anything for me. I’ve got a lot at risk here. I’ve got my family to feed.”
So Sprewell persevered on $14.6 million in his final season in the NBA, all the while believing that someone would be willing to throw stupid money at a 35-year-old guard with a 42.5 career shooting percentage.
It did not happen, sadly enough, and so ended a 13-season career notable mostly because of his choking of coach P.J. Carlesimo in 1997 and frustration at the grocery store.
The latter has been exacerbated in recent months, what with the rising price of eggs and milk shocking the most savvy consumer.
The escalating cost of food no doubt was a contributing factor in Sprewell allowing a mortgage company to foreclose on his home in the Milwaukee suburbs last week. This dire development comes after a federal marshal seized his 70-foot yacht, “Milwaukee’s Best,” last summer. It was sold at auction in January.
Sprewell may have been a four-time All-Star in the NBA, but as a financial planner, he rates a big fat goose egg after earning $96.6 million in his career. The average person could have earned a small fraction of Sprewell’s salary during that period and be set for life today.
Alas, all too many NBA players do not live and think as we do. They accumulate automobiles, homes, hangers-on, jewelry and children born to different women.
During the NBA lockout in 1998, Kenny Anderson, then playing with the Celtics, famously let it be known to the New York Times that he was having to contemplate the draconian measure of selling off his Mercedes to get through the austere economic times.
Not that he was sentencing himself to public transportation.
His fleet included seven other posh vehicles. His auto insurance and maintenance bills were running him $75,000 a year at the time, which would qualify as a nice salary to many Americans.
The NBA Players Association preaches financial prudence to its members, many young and naive. Union representatives cited an unfathomable statistic during financial awareness discussions with teams this past winter, which is: Sixty percent of retired players hit hard times within five years of their last paycheck in the NBA.
Players get taken advantage of by so-called friends and unscrupulous agents and accountants, according to Roy Hinson, a former NBA player entrusted with dispensing the union’s cautionary tale to players.
Players also take up a lifestyle that they possibly cannot maintain once their playing days are finished. Part of that lifestyle includes bedding as many women as possible, with the predictable outcome of offspring.
When Jason Caffey landed in bankruptcy court to seek protection from creditors last fall, the most unsettling aspect of his case was not that he was essentially broke after earning an estimated $28.3 million during an eight-year career.
It was that he was the father of eight children by seven women.
Vin Baker, who saw his career end prematurely because of an alcohol problem, lost his restaurant in foreclosure last winter after he no longer could meet the payments on nearly $900,000 in loans from a Connecticut bank.
You would think that someone who made $89.9 million in his playing days could make a $900,000 debt go away with a few strokes of the ink pen.
That is just not the case of all too many men who know how to throw a basketball through a hoop but are unsophisticated about finances.
We probably have not heard the last from Sprewell. He always has had a peculiar relationship with money.
He once justified his choking of Carlesimo and the millions of dollars it cost him.
“I love money, but my pride, manhood and self-respect was more important,” he said in 1998. “I believe I was right.”
A few years later, he was worried about feeding his family.
Now he is out of a home and yacht.
That is the NBA culture of excess. It is where wrong is right and where an extravagant income is no defense against stupidity.
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