Here’s Antoine Walker’s advice to pro athletes on how not to follow in his footsteps
Following his own financial troubles, former Boston Celtics fan favorite Antoine Walker wants the young crop now entering into cash-flush professional sports to learn from his mistakes.
Walker, who made roughly $108 million during his NBA career before filing for bankruptcy less than two years after retiring, recently talked to USA Today‘s HoopsHype about his efforts with the financial service firm Morgan Stanley to teach other athletes how to budget, save, invest, and otherwise manage money.
Drawing from his own personal experience, Walker had a few specific examples of what not to do.
“I loved cars, even though cars depreciate the moment you drive them off of the lot. I always tell guys that now. But I had a Maybach, which was $450,000. I paid that for one car. I always tell guys about that and how it depreciated. I also had some very expensive homes. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice home, but there’s no reason to have houses with rooms you don’t use. You don’t think about all of the taxes that come with those homes. And when the money is no longer coming in, the upkeep on those expensive homes is a problem. I also had a jewelry fetish. Now, I try to tell guys, ‘You don’t need to have 15 watches!’ If you want a watch, buy one nice watch that holds its value and you can have for the rest of your life. Guys want to make big purchases when they get into the league, but there are a lot of things that they don’t think about when they’re buying these things. I try to tell them some of the things I learned the hard way.”
Walker said he also tries to get young athletes — many of them still kids — to think about passing money on to their own future children and grandchildren.
“When a guy comes into the league at 18 or 19 years old, he’s usually thinking short-term and materialistically,” he said. “He’s not thinking about generational wealth and making sure he’s putting enough money aside for when he’s 40 or 50 years old.”
