Posted on 02/16/2012 8:21:54 AM PST by SeekAndFind
At one time, there was no more famous nor more sought-after basketball player than Allen Iverson. Dubbed "The Answer" to a Michael Jordan-less NBA, Iverson scored numerous record-setting deals and endorsements.
In NBA salary alone, he earned about $154 million, according to basketball-reference.com.
Now, a judge in Georgia has ordered Iverson to pay the $860,000 he apparently owes a jeweler, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The problem is, he didn't have the cash to pay the jeweler, so the judge has ordered his bank accounts commandeered and his earnings garnished.
Rumors about Iverson's insolvency began as far back as 2010, when an Inquirer reporter visited the guard in Turkey, where he was apparently playing on a two-year $4 million contract for a non-elite team.
"The 76ers' former all-everything guard is broke - by all accounts except his own - and playing here in Istanbul for a number of reasons, none of which is to become an ambassador for Turkey's solid, but often overlooked, professional league," wrote reporter Kate Fagan in November, 2010.
Iverson's financial woes are rather common among former big-earning NBA players. The NBA Players' Association reportedly reminds its rookies every year that 60 percent of NBA players go broke five years after their last basketball-related paycheck, reports The Toronto Star.
Scottie Pippen, Antoine Walker, Kenny Anderson, and Derrick Coleman are just a few of the bigger names to have had major financial woes after leaving the NBA, according to Yahoo! Sports. Even the great Julius "Dr. J" Erving reportedly has struggled with money in his post-basketball life.
Iverson fame went well beyond having the most devastating crossover dribble in NBA history, and he spent money like the superstar he was.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
RE: Since then I’ve 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...
“It’s too bad he couldn’t have had some ‘practice’ managing money...:-)”
LOL!
“It’s too bad he couldn’t 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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