Miscellaneous articles from around sports media.
Pablo S. Torre, Sports Illustrated, “How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke“
SALARY ASIDE, the closest analogue to a pro athlete is not a white-collar executive. It’s a lottery winner?who’s often in his early twenties. “With athletes, there’s an extraordinary metamorphosis of financial challenge,” says agent Leigh Steinberg, who has represented the NFL’s No. 1 pick a record eight times. “Coming off college scholarships, they probably haven’t even learned the basics of budgeting or keeping receipts.” Which then triggers two fatal mistakes: hiring the wrong people as advisers, and trusting them far too much. …
Says [Anaheim Angels RF Torii] Hunter, “They’ll say, ‘I got this guy, a cousin who’s an accountant.’ But he’s usually an accountant in the ‘hood. You hire him, you’re doing him a favor.”
[Former NBA player Erick] Strickland realized that all too late. In 2001, when a “friend of a close friend” of the nine-year NBA vet proposed a real-estate deal in Georgia, Strickland turned to his business manager: his dad, Matthew, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. The paperwork on the plot of land, which was on sale for $1.8 million but supposedly had been appraised at as much as $3 million, appeared legitimate, and Strickland bought it. “I trusted my father to help look it over for me because I was hooping and didn’t have time,” Erick says. “He checked it out. But he didn’t go that extra length.”
The land wasn’t worth anything close to what Strickland was told. “I had to take that hit,” he says. “I wish my dad hadn’t been put in that position. He just didn’t have the knowledge.” As for his close friend? Strickland says the man secretly got a cut of the deal, and the conflict caused a permanent “falling out” between them.
Relatives are not the only ones foolishly trusted with athletes’ money. One up-and-coming guard in the NBA allows his entire fortune to be managed by his former AAU coach, who has the player’s power of attorney. In a meeting with [Ed] Butowsky in December, the guard’s dad admitted that he has no idea who the son’s accountant is and said he wanted a financial “intervention.”
Joey, Straight Bangin’, “Societal Values FAIL“
Allonzo Trier is an 11- or 12-year-old basketball prodigy who reads below his age group standard, who is dyslexic, and who lives with his single mother. She works as a social worker at a shelter for victims of domestic violence and brings home a “modest” salary. It’s modest enough that Allonzo and his mother live in Section 8 housing. Only thanks to the largess of another does Allonzo have the tutoring and dental care that he needs. …
Allonzo makes 450 jump shots a day; he stays out until late hours during the week playing basketball; he plays a longer AAU season than Tim Duncan plays NBA games in a given year; he already has to take special care of his pre-adolescent knees. He’s 12. He’s no taller than most people’s mothers. He weighs no more than the smoking hot girl who you wish you’d spoken to at the bar that one night. He isn’t in high school yet. Do you realize that? Does that really register with people? …
Look how little he is! That person is already a de facto breadwinner, a de facto savior, up upon whom so much responsibility and so much expectation and so much attention has been piled. Forget that it’s sick; how about the fact that it’s so pathetic?
It’s only because he’s good at basketball. If he doesn’t stay as good, if he doesn’t grow in high school, if one day he slips on a court somewhere and destroys his knee–that will all go away. The clothes, the dental care, the concern. He’ll just be another poor kid who doesn’t read well.
Jason Clinkscales, A Sports Scribe, “Sycophants“
Yet, for every column, comment or conversation I have come across in regards to the collegiate game over the years, someone feels obliged to take a shot at the pros; specifically the NBA. …
Sure, there are pros out there who may not exude the telltale signs of passion; a lot of screaming and scowling, getting in people?s faces when game plans go awry, those head-in-hand moments as a senior realizes his athletic career ended on a buzzer-beater. Yet, if anyone besides media could ever witness a professional locker room in person after a close loss, you may discover that passion ? like leadership, savvy and other intangibles we wax poetic about ? isn?t always in full view of the public. In looking for the obvious and borderline-obnoxious signs (see Eric Devendorf), you?ll miss the more subtle and profound displays. …
When you graduated from high school, were you more fundamentally sound than you were in college? For those who went to college, do you find that you are more fundamentally sound that you are now? Your answers should both be ?no?. The idea that college players are better than the professionals because they ?don?t dunk all over the place? is ludicrous. …
If you?re sick of hearing about Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and the NBA?s other stars, think about this: when we suddenly fell in love with the sharpshooting Stephen Curry, did we take the time to learn the names of any other player from Davidson? Can anyone name someone on the snubbed St. Mary?s team besides Patty Mills? …
Yet, the continued claims of integrity by NCAA sycophants at the expense of the NBA and its fans, no matter how false and absurd, have weathered this soul. They truly believe that because their athletes are not (legally) paid that the virtues of the game show themselves basket after basket. They truly believe that the money professionals earn makes every play less meaningful and less aesthetically pleasing. They believe that the control wielded by the coaches – men who may lead amateurs, but have no qualms with parading down the sidelines in thousand-dollar designer suits ? keeps the game of basketball pure and uncompromised.
