Antoine Walker, the former NBA player who is now infamous for blowing through millions en route to bankruptcy, has opened up about his situation in The Player’s Tribune.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Walker was an All-Star with the Boston Celtics after winning at NCAA title with Kentucky. He was supposed to be Paul Pierce before Paul Pierce. He made over $100 million. And he lost all of it.
The entire read is fascinating. Below are just a few excerpts.
On his financial problems:
“I know that this is going to be hard for you to believe, but you’re going to make $108 million playing basketball — $108 million — and a few years later, you’ll be broke. You trusted the wrong person, and you didn’t have anyone else watching the business. You might have been able to work through that, but you handed out too much money to too many people. And the rest, you either gambled away or spent on things that will eventually seem foolish.”
On being more fiscally responsible:
“When you’re on the road — LA, Miami, wherever — you can’t take the 10 or so guys you run with to Gucci or Louis Vuitton and tell them to get whatever they want. I know it’s easy to get bored when you’re on the road, but those trips have to stop. You can’t afford it, especially if you’re also taking your guys to the club and spending thousands of dollars night … after night … after night. The clothes, the cars, the jewelry — all of it — you have to use that no word more often.”
On gambling:
There will come a time in 2008 when over a six-week period, you’ll run up an $800,000 gambling debt at the casinos in Las Vegas. They’ll turn to a bank account of yours that they already have on file to collect, but by that time it will be an old account that you stopped using a while ago, so there won’t be enough money there to cover the debt. And do you know what happens when you don’t pay the casinos within 45 days? A warrant goes out for your arrest.
Again, you can read the full letter here.
Walker currently lives in Chicago now and works as a host for 120 Sports. He also works as a consultant with Morgan Stanley’s Global Sports & Entertainment Division to “promote financial literacy among college athletes and professional rookies.”
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports. Follow him on Twitter or like the channel on Facebook here.
Photo: Getty
