Posted on 02/16/2012 8:21:54 AM PST by SeekAndFind
RE: Since then Ive taken the NBA for exactly what it is - fixed.
Are you telling us that the recent Jeremy Lin obscurity-to-fame story is SCRIPTED? Now I’m disappointed....
I think I’ll go watch a movie instead...
This is what happens when you support a huge “posse” and their families.
It’s too bad he couldn’t have had some ‘practice’ managing money...:-)
RE: I’ve never understood why teams don’t insist on putting a reasonable chunk of change right off the top into a lockbox that would pay former players a reasonable stipend.
If the NBA did that and operated like Uncle Sam, that money will be spent for current league expenses and the lockbox will be filled with IOUs, with part of the salaries of current players taken to pay for retired former players.
-—60 percent of NBA players go broke five years after their last basketball-related paycheck, reports The Toronto Star.-—
Wooooow...
Just proof that the exception proves the rule. Look at Tyson, Spinks, and a host of other boxers.
To those who feel that way, just sit down, pull out your checkbook, write a check to the IRS that's big enough to clear your conscience, then STFU."
WORKS FOR ME !
The old USFL offered big money contracts to lure players away from the NFL. They didn't have the money to back it up so they paid in annuities.
I find that to be pretty shocking. I read once that the NBA has the best "how to handle sudden wealth" curriculum in professional sports, specifically developed to counteract this problem.
I guess there's no fix for "stupid" after all.
A fool and his money...
“Its too bad he couldnt have had some practice managing money...:-)”
LOL!
“Its too bad he couldnt have had some practice managing money...:-)”
LOL!
Can you say Secretary of Treasury Allen Iverson?
He thought about his money like he thought about practice.
Interesting that the NBA is that proactive on the issue. My impression of the league just inched up, from zero to about 0.3 on a scale of 1-10. Good for them.
My suggestion, again, would be to build something into the standard player contract. Take half the signing bonus and 25% of salary off the top to fund an annuity. (Make up your own percentages; use whatever numbers seem to work to you.) The withholding could be stopped once the annuity was funded up to a level adequate to provide a reasonable middle class income. This need not be extravagant; $50,000/a year would do. The point is to keep the guys off the street.
Big time sports has become incredibly exploitative. It grabs ghetto kids with every socioeconomic/educational/cultural/attitudinal deficit in the book, punches their ticket in a completely fraudulent college experience, and markets the heck out of them when they reach the pros. Yes, the kids are just as irresponsible on their end of the bargain, but they're kids who are too often from bad backgrounds, who lack the basic grounding and mentoring that most of us take for granted, and who may be none too bright to begin with. The teams, the league, and the union should perhaps be much more prescriptive, in recognition of the shaky material with which they're working.
On a much smaller scale, it reminds me of Steeler running back, "Frenchy Fuqua", in the mid 70s.
He was a good back, never a super star and never made large money, but spent like he really had some.
I'd be in some of the downtown clubs when Frenchy and his entourage, consisting of a couple of brothers and 3 or 4 hookers would come into the place.
Regardless of how many were in the place {when he came in the night, usually several hundred} he would set up drinks for every one.
When his career was over he was delivering newspapers in Detroit, after he had declared bankruptcy.
Living large with the Detroit Free Press.
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