Basketball stars get ridiculously rich.
It's the American way.
But some players have struggled with their obnoxiously huge wads of cash in ways that
most people could've easily seen coming.
Latrell Sprewell was one of the bigger hotheads of the NBA, and in the end it severely affected
his finances.
He managed to earn a whopping $100 million over the course of his career, but he's lost
virtually all of it, thanks to some bad decisions that started in 1997.
He was infamous for getting into fights; Sprewell once got so mad at something that his coach
PJ Carlesimo said to him during practice that he attacked him.
This led to his $24 million contract being voided.
He managed to get it back in the end, but it proved that when he was angry, he wasn't
thinking clearly.
This continued when Sprewell was offered a contract extension from the Minnesota Timberwolves
that would've earned him up to $30 million.
He spit on the offer, saying it wasn't enough money because he had, quote, "a family to
feed."
Either that's one huge family or they eat a ridiculous amount of food.
In the end, he only played one more year and earned significantly less.
Everything went downhill once he stopped playing.
He racked up legal fees, lost his yacht and both of his mansions, and failed to pay $3
million in taxes.
Out of that fortune of $100 million, it is estimated Sprewell is now worth $50,000 and
lives in a rental property.
Antoine Walker made $110 million during his NBA career.
With even the tiniest bit of foresight, that would set most people up for life, but Walker
managed to blow it all away.
He was drafted at age 19 and suddenly had more money than he'd ever seen in his life,
so he did the right thing and got himself a financial adviser.
Then, he completely ignored him.
"I would travel with eight to ten people with me and pay for their flights, hotel rooms,
eating on the road.
So you add up those combinations of things, you know, we used to have real big bills at
the end of those trips."
For one thing, Walker was supporting his extended family, which is a lovely thing to do, but
it was also expensive, especially when he built all of them multimillion-dollar homes.
But not all of his expenditures were so selfless; he bought himself numerous fancy cars, including
a $350,000 Maybach.
His wardrobe choice was designer suits, and he couldn't wear the same suit twice.
He tried to invest by buying 140 different properties, but then the real estate bubble
burst, and he lost everything.
In 2010, he had to file for bankruptcy and sold his championship ring.
Now he's just trying to save enough so he can retire one day.
Vin Baker lost nearly $100 million, but he doesn't want you to feel sorry for him.
He told the Providence Journal losing all that money was just a life lesson and he's
perfectly fine now, even if that means that he was training to become manager of a Starbucks
in 2015 to support his family.
Baker's problems started with alcoholism.
At one point during his career, he began binge drinking and ended up getting suspended from
paying three times.
Then, the Boston Celtics terminated his contract with $35 million to go.
He ended up getting some of it back, but things kept getting worse.
"A hundred million dollars or a hundred dollars with a disease is zero no matter how you add
it up."
Two years after Baker stopped playing, his $3 million house was foreclosed because he
couldn't pay the mortgage.
Then, a restaurant that he was a partner in went out of business.
He found out his accountant was screwing him over and took him to court.
He eventually had to auction off the Olympic gold medal he won in 2000.
These days Baker is full of advice.
He says it's important to know where every cent goes, whether you're a rookie earning
$50 million or a Starbucks barista.
He also says he's just happy to be alive and not in jail; today, Baker has returned to
basketball and works with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Derrick Coleman was a number one draft pick and 1991's rookie of the year, and his salary
reflected that.
Some say he never totally lived up to his potential, but he still managed to rake in
$87 million while playing.
But then, he filed for bankruptcy in 2010.
Coleman isn't like most of the players on this list.
He didn't blow away his money away at a casino or buy himself 40 Rolexes.
Instead he tried to give back to the community; specifically, Detroit.
He knew the local economy was in more trouble than the rest of America and wanted to do
what he could to help.
Unfortunately, he just did it at the wrong time and lost everything because of it.
Coleman's ideas were good.
He invested in real estate, including a mall in one of the city's worst-off neighborhoods,
in order to create jobs and foster more business opportunities.
But in 2009, just a year after the economy crashed, he defaulted on the loans for the
mall.
His bankruptcy attorney blamed both the economy and the failing real estate market, and Coleman
ended up owing his creditors almost $4.7 million.
But not all was completely lost; despite losing virtually everything, Coleman still has access
to his NBA pension.
Most of these ballers lost all their money after they stopped playing and the paychecks
weren't coming in anymore.
But Eddy Curry managed to top them all: he was millions in the hole while he was still
in the NBA.
He lost some of it tragically, like when he was held up at gunpoint and robbed of $10,000
in cash and jewelry.
But he only has himself to blame for losing most of it.
Nine years into his playing career, after he had already earned $57 million, Curry was
$2 million in debt and defaulted on a $585,000 loan.
His logic on that one was interesting: he said that he shouldn't have to pay it back
because he already had too many expenses.
It emerged that those outgoings included $30,000 a month on "household expenses," giving $17,000
a month to his relatives, and, for some reason, $350,000 to another NBA player.
Then there was his $6.2 million mansion which he bought in 2006; he'd fallen $220,000 behind
on the mortgage by 2009.
The house was foreclosed and auctioned off, all this despite Curry earning $70 million
by the time he was done playing.
As a WNBA player, Sheryl Swoopes' chances of getting as rich as her male colleagues
were relatively slim.
But she was so good that she managed to do what only a few male athletes do: she got
her own sneaker line, known as "Nike Air Swoopes."
The shoes made her a ton of money, and at one point, her fortune was estimated at over
$50 million.
Somehow, it all disappeared.
For one thing, Swoopes is alleged to have made some really bad investments, but some
of it wasn't really her fault, as lawyers and agents may have completely screwed her
over.
In 2004, she filed for bankruptcy, and five years later, she still hadn't fully recovered.
She was 37 and couldn't afford rent, nor could she pay the $300 per month she owed on a storage
unit housing some of her most prized possessions, so mementos of her college, Olympic, and professional
careers were auctioned off.
It was a hard fall for one of the best female athletes of all time.
Darius Miles was drafted straight out of high school, so he was probably too young to know
what to do with his money.
In 2000, he signed a $9 million contract and had plenty of other income streams as well.
Michael Jordan gave him an endorsement deal with his athletic brand, and he even dipped
his toes in Hollywood, acting in movies alongside Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds.
But by 2016, the money was gone, and he filed for bankruptcy.
Some of his expenses were understandable, like when he bought his mother a house.
He seemed to like property, because his bankruptcy filing revealed he owned 13 homes, but they
either weren't paid off or they weren't worth much because he listed only $460,385 in assets
against $1.57 million in liabilities.
In 2010, Miles was sued for child support, and four years later he had to sell one of
his homes.
He may also have been a bit too willing to help out someone in need.
Wherever the money went, creditors wanted to recoup their losses, so his stuff was auctioned
off.
The haul included a waffle iron, karaoke machines, game consoles, and tons of signed memorabilia.
It's not clear where all of Delonte West's money went, but we do know that by the time
of the 2011 NBA lockout he was crying poverty.
According to ESPN, he had lost the $14 million he had earned in his career up until that
point.
He couldn't bide his time off during the lockout by signing to a foreign team, as he was on
probation for weapons charges.
Instead, he applied for a job at Home Depot.
A month later, he posted a photo of himself in a delivery van, having gotten a job with
a furniture store.
He had also reportedly sold most of his cars and jewelry to try and stay afloat.
Even once Delonte started playing ball again, things didn't go so well.
He could only afford to live in a rental, but landlords don't like to rent to people
with gun charges, so he ended up sleeping in his car or the locker room.
He earned another $2 million, but that seemed to go away, too.
In 2016, a fan saw him wandering shoeless in a Jack in the Box parking lot.
When asked if he was Delonte West, he replied,
"I used to be, but I'm not about that life anymore."
Jason Caffey could be the poster boy for how to very stupidly lose $29 millions as a basketball
star.
But maybe since he was busy winning championships with the Chicago Bulls, he didn't have time
to think about planned parenthood.
Instead, he found himself broke.
Caffey has so many kids that there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the actual number.
He may not even know how many are out there.
By 2016, he had at least ten children by eight different women, and those women expected
child support.
When Caffey stopped playing and the checks stopped coming in, the parental expenses basically
bankrupted him.
He filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007, but a judge turned down his petition, allowing
the mothers of his children to sue him for back payments.
Overall, he had debts of $1.9 million and only $1.15 million in assets.
Chris Washburn was drafted in 1986 and made numerous millions during his three years in
the NBA, but the thing that cut his playing career so short would be the same thing that
caused him to blow all his money: his drug habit.
He was still only 24 when he was sacked from the league after failing three drug tests
in three years.
He had to sell his house and soon was in dire straits, living on the streets or staying
with friends, begging for food or even sometimes eating out of garbage cans.
A friend said he looked dirty and would call people up to ask for money.
He reportedly hung out in crack houses and had some run-ins with the law.
Eventually he went to jail, where he was invited to play for the prison basketball team.
"You're looking at the only person in the NBA history that is banned for life."
Washburn seemed to have turned his life around by 2012.
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