How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke
OVER THE YEARS Rocket Ismail’s portfolio has contained a passel of dubious inventions and risky investments. After mentioning that he once poured money into a religious movie, the gregarious father of four goes uncharacteristically mum about the details. “I don’t really want to go over that agony,” he says, smiling thinly.
You might say Ismail had a run of terrible luck, but the odds were never close to being in his favor. Industry experts estimate that only one in 30 of the highest-caliber private investment deals works out as advertised. “Chronic overallocation into real estate and bad private equity is the Number 1 problem [for athletes] in terms of a financial meltdown,” Butowsky says. “And I’ve never seen more people come to me about raising money for those kinds of deals than athletes.”
Yet with athletes, who are often uninterested in either conservative spending or the stock market, those percentages are frequently flipped. Securities are invisible, after all, and if you don’t study them, they’re unintelligible. Not to mention boring. Inventions, nightclubs, car dealerships and T-shirt companies have an advantage: the thrill of tangibility.
IN 1996, when Panthers owner Jerry Richardson—a former NFL flanker turned businessman—addressed his players, one of them asked, What’s the most dangerous thing that could happen to us financially? “Without blinking an eye,” Ismail recalls, “Mr. Richardson said, ‘Divorce.’“
In 1994, when NBA center Dikembe Mutombo was engaged to Michelle Roberts, a med student, Roberts refused to sign a premarital contract the day before the wedding. Five hundred guests—including a large party from Mutombo’s native Democratic Republic of Congo—had begun flying in to Washington. “[Roberts] never signed,” Falk says, “and Mutombo never married the girl.” Calling off the nuptials reportedly cost him $250,000.
An aversion to family planning goes hand in hand with neglect of other forms of financial foresight, which can affect what happens to athletes’ fortunes even after they die. Hall of Fame linebacker Derrick Thomas, who died at 33 following a January 2000 car crash, had ignored the urging of his financial adviser to make a will, and his entire estate was left for the court to divide, touching off a legal battle among the five mothers of his seven children. (Of the estimated $30 million Thomas had earned in the NFL, he had only $1.16 million in valued assets at the time of his death.) “Derrick didn’t care about meeting with his planner, and we tried to set him up to do it 10 times,” says Steinberg, who was his agent. “The sad truth is that there was a certain group of athletes who actually believed that if they ever sat down to write their wills, they were going to die.”
It’s all part of that ossified notion of how a pro athlete should live and provide for those around him. If he isn’t consuming conspicuously, then he hasn’t made it. “When I was a young buck,” says Hawkins, “I was trying to spend all my money. Now I try to preach to young guys in the clubhouse who are like that. I’ve got all this stuff from 10 years ago—jewelry, rims—that I think, Why the f--- did I even buy this?”
As soon as an athlete goes pro, people in search of handouts tend to stretch the definitions of family and friends. When Hunter went to his hometown of Pine Bluff, Ark., for his grandmother’s funeral last August, he found Old St. James Baptist Church packed, the line of cars outside stretching for blocks. “But my grandma didn’t know anybody,” Hunter says. “She just lived at home.” When he stepped outside the church, people “came running, all dressed up, chasing after me,” Hunter says. “They were throwing CDs, projects, letters.... They were yelling, My sister’s brother went to school with you!” A different but equally potent pressure operates in the workplace—the clubhouse, the locker room and the team plane. “For rookies, it’s like an unspoken initiation,” says Strickland. “You’re trying to get in good with the veterans, so you go beyond your means. You drive the nice car, splurge on a house.” The veterans don’t mind giving explicit instructions. “I got ripped my first three years in the NFL, every day,” says Tubbs. “I got on planes with a cassette player, and [a teammate] would tell me, ‘They make CD players. You’re in the NFL now.’“
Imitators have been less fortunate. When former NBA guard Kenny Anderson filed for bankruptcy in October 2005, he detailed how the estimated $60 million he earned in the league had dwindled to nothing. He bought eight cars and rang up monthly expenses of $41,000, including outlays for child support, his mother’s mortgage and his own five-bedroom house in Beverly Hills, Calif.—not to mention $10,000 in what he dubbed “hanging-out money.” He also regularly handed out $3,000 to $5,000 to friends and relatives. (Along with Ismail, he enlisted as both a Slamball coach and a Pros vs. Joes participant last year.) Former big league slugger Jack Clark filed for bankruptcy in July 1992 while still playing, listing debts of $6.7 million and ownership of 18 cars—17 of which still had outstanding payments.
Hours after Butowsky’s boot camp in Dallas is over, Rocket calmly lays out his rationale: “You know that statistic we heard about how one in 30 private equity investments works?” He smiles broadly. “Well, Lord willing, this is going to be my one.”
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