NORTH KOREA:
Posted on 01/07/2014 2:42:26 AM PST by markomalley
The NBA retirees on Dennis Rodman’s “dream team” playing basketball in North Korea to celebrate strongman Kim Jong-un’s birthday have largely led nightmare lives since departing the league. There’s no word on how much North Korea will pay the players, but, quite clearly, a few of them could use the cash.
Take the ultra talented Vin Baker, who made over $100 million in an NBA career cut short by alcohol. He told the New York Daily News last year that the money is almost gone. In 2008, a bank foreclosed on his 10,000-square-foot mansion, auctioning the Connecticut property for several million dollars. At around the same time, his restaurant failed. Two years ago, the four-time All-Star sued a financial firm for mishandling his money in an attempt to recoup $12 million. “I went to one of the lowest levels you could possibly go to, being where I was,” a reinvigorated and sober Baker told the Daily News. “And [God] was able to bring me back up. And it didn’t have to do with me becoming a millionaire again. It had to do with me changing my lifestyle, changing my addiction patterns. And that’s everything to me.”
Doug Christie moved from team to team during his fourteen years in the league. But the journeyman forward stayed anchored to his flamboyant wife Jackie. The couple made waves during Christie’s playing days by signaling to one another in hand gestures during games and travelling together on road trips. Doug announced a new marital enterprise last year: the production of pornographic films. They insist that their work will be behind the cameras and educational in intent. The new venture follows the couple’s forays into reality television, including BET’s The Christies Committed and VH1’s Basketball Wives.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Good article.
Vin Baker was a star at University of Hartford. He could be the Jeff Bagwell of the NBA. Jeff is going to be the first University of Hartford baseball Hall of Famer. Vin might have been if it wasn’t derailed.
NORTH KOREA:
Dysfunction junction, what’s your function?
Is there anything uniquely bad about this crew, or typical of NBA players as a whole, so not statistically an outlier group?
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