Broke Athletes: Money Ain’t A Thang Till It’s Gone

Mark McKenna
May 27, 2010
2 Comments

Wow Mr. Walker, $15K at Pinky's Boom Boom room?

You tend to think that athletes have it made once they go professional. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the truth is most of them end up bankrupt with a boatload of gambling debts. We’re not talking no names here either, we’re talking about players that have had plenty of success at the professional level, players who have won championships, been allstars, and made millions and millions of dollars and in the end have absolutely nothing to show for it except bills and I don’t mean dollar bills. Read more.

According to Sports Illustrated, 78% percent of NFL players are broke or in financial shambles after retirement and 60% of NBA ballers go flat broke five years after retirement. Those figures are absurd. If you do the math, these guys couldn’t last a day a gambling industry professional’s salary. Of course, many of these players get caught up living the high life allowing everyone to party and live the dream on their dime. Most of these guys are dropping duckets of money here and there, and everyone around them has their hands out looking to shake the money tree. It’s funny how none of those people are around when these players hit rock bottom, it sounds like a raw deal to me. These guys must be kicking themselves for all the sexy vacations, expensive boob jobs and “throw it in the bag” shopping sprees they took all of their dimepieces on. They would have been better off with an Ayre Head who just loves huge ass diamond rings.

The latest NBA star to file for bankruptcy is former world champion and perennial allstar, Antoine Walker. Antoine loves his gambling, and his gambling debts had been piling up, his gambling losses include $770,000 owed to Harrah’s in Las Vegas and $500,000 owed to Ameristar Casino in East Chicago. Now his creditors have come to collect and have slapped him with a $2.3-million foreclosure lawsuit on a mansion in south suburban Tinley Park that he bought for his mother. Read more.

I just hope he gets full price for his championship ring, it’s a damn shame either way you look at it. Imagine if regular people with regular jobs lived as carelessly as some of these athletes, the world would be in chaos. But I don’t blame the athletes completely, I blame the system. You can’ t throw millions of dollars at a teenage boy and expect him to act responsibly. Shit, you can’t throw millions of dollars at most adults and expect them to act responsibly. To a kid that young with a future of making millions, money ain’t a thang…Until it’s gone.

This alarming phenomena is one of the reasons that David Stern raised the age limit for entry into the NBA, but it doesn’t come close to solving the problem. It should damn near be mandatory for these athletes to take a course in money management prior to entering the league. And it might be a smart thing for some of these guys to, I don’t know, hire a damn accountant! Just a thought. I wish I was Antoine Walker’s boy, I would have told him to let me hold on to a couple million for him just for a rainy day, or in this case a shitstorm, and Walker might have at least been able to save his mother’s home. As for me, by now I’d have a fist full of dollars off the interest alone and like any prudent person would do, I’d be off to Vegas to light up the tables and then off to the strip club to make it rain like Hurricane Katrina.

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Tags: antoine walker, Article, broke athletes
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