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How To Win The Money Game: A Former NBA Star Shares Financial Advice

Adonal Foyle (center) plays for the Orlando Magic against the Milwaukee Bucks in 2007.
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Adonal Foyle (center) plays for the Orlando Magic against the Milwaukee Bucks in 2007. Doug Benc/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Doug Benc/Getty Images

According to Sports Illustrated, more than half of all NBA players are broke within five years of retirement. Most of the players come into professional sports totally unequipped to handle their own windfalls like cars, houses and fancy clothes.

Former NBA star Adonal Foyle is trying to help.

He offers financial advice for current and future professional athletes in his book Winning the Money Game: Lessons Learned from the Financial Fouls of Pro Athletes.

“I think that players continue to make bad decisions in part because they’re afraid to ask questions and in part because people just try to take advantage of them,” he tells NPR’s Arun Rath.

To hear their full conversation, click the audio link above.


Interview Highlights

On adjusting to a league like the NBA

I got my master’s in sports psychology, and my thesis was on retirement experiences of NBA players. I went out and spoke to about 10 to 12 different players, and I talked to them about their transition. And one of the things we talked about was: If you were to do it again, what are some of the things that you would do differently? And almost all of them talk about financial literacy and financial education.

One guy said that, you know, “I saw my parents. They didn’t have any money. I grew up poor and then I was given all this money, and then I had no idea what to do with it. And I was so silly I didn’t ask questions because I was afraid that people would think that I wasn’t smart.”

I think that that is indicative of many of the players. Many of them come from backgrounds where they haven’t been exposed to a lot of financial literacy or financial education. And then they get to this level, and there’s so many people around them and they want different things from them.

On the ways that NBA players are choosing to spend their money

I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. One is how they choose to … bring children into the world. A second is luxury items: houses that sometimes they cannot afford, or not really taking into consideration how many they’re buying. So they’re buying houses for the family, which is admirable, but they haven’t really set aside money to pay for the taxes and all the different maintenance that you’re gonna need in that house.

They spend on jewelry, clothing and numerous stuff, but it’s also about taxes. I think that one of the biggest issues that I’ve seen is that, as a professional athlete, you have to pay taxes in almost every state that you play in and players are really ill-equipped. So if you don’t have a really good financial consultant or CPA [certified public accountant] very early, you can get yourself in a really big hole where it’s hard to get out of. And the average career for an NBA player is 4.7 years, so it’s very important that you get them early and they start making really good decision[s] right off the bat.

On the role of money in life

I grew up on an island with the donkeys. [What] I usually tell people is that the need for cars doesn’t seem to be one of those desires that is burning within me, and I’ve always tried to be really simple. I never let money be the determinant of how I see my future.

I remember leaving almost $19 million on the table to go to another team because I thought playing was more important to me than money that I didn’t make, and I remember people were absolutely outraged by that.

And I said “You know, I didn’t earn it.” …

It’s not what you make; it’s really what you keep and really the respect that you show for money. I remember growing up poor in the Caribbean. and my grandmother never really had anything to eat … and somehow during the course of the day she would find a way to put food on the table. And for me, that has had such a profound effect on my worldview and how I see the world — that money cannot be the determinant of who you are.

You really have to put money in its proper place, and I think if we do that, we will respect it — but not give it too much power over us.

On the lessons he hopes to share

I remember the three guys that I took out and really gave them my first angry financial lesson, and I remember I was out of the league and I was in another city. …

One of them ran up to me and what he said was: “Thank you so much. You’ve changed my life. I’m gonna be richer than you.”

And I said, “Thank you, thank you for at least acknowledging that you can get this done.” And I think that did more for me than any amount of money that he could’ve given me, because he took the knowledge that I was able to pass on.

I remember saying to him, “No, you need to pass it on to the next person. We need to really change the cycle.” And I hope that, you know, he goes out and does that, because I think that’s how that conversation gets started, is that we have to share our mistakes and really help lift the next person up.

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Police Question Suspect In Lyon Factory Beheading

The Air Products industrial gas factory in Saint-Quentin Fallavier, France, shown on Saturday, a day after the attack.

The Air Products industrial gas factory in Saint-Quentin Fallavier, France, shown on Saturday, a day after the attack. Marius Becker/DPA/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Becker/DPA/Landov

Police in France are questioning a suspect they believe was responsible for an explosion and the beheading of a man at a factory near Lyon on Friday. Officials reportedly say he took a “selfie” with the slain victim — his boss at the plant — and sent it to an unidentified Canadian mobile phone number.

The suspect, Yassine Salhi, 35, is a truck driver “with a history of radical Islamic ties,” according to Reuters. Authorities believe he caused an explosion by ramming his vehicle into an area at the plant containing flammable chemicals. He then allegedly placed his employer’s severed head on the factory gate along with Arabic inscriptions, Reuters says.

The factory is owned by Air Products, an American company headquartered in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, French investigators were trying to pin down the identity of the recipient of the photo sent by phone. Reuters quotes unnamed security officials as saying they believe it to be “an unspecified person now in Syria.”

The BBC says that Salhi was arrested at the Air Products factory in Lyon on Friday morning:

“Later, anti-terror police searched the apartment of Mr Salhi, a father-of-three, in the Moines neighbourhood of the town.

“They took his wife and sister into custody. Another man was arrested but released without charge.

“Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, has said police have so far not found any motive or possible foreign connection, and that Mr Salhi is not speaking to investigators.”

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Greece Slouches Toward Default As Germany Rules Out Further Debt Talks

People stand in a line to use the ATMs of a bank in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Saturday after the country's prime minister announced a snap referendum on an international bailout — pushing Athens toward a Tuesday deadline for a plan to prevent default on its IMF debt.

People stand in a line to use the ATMs of a bank in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Saturday after the country’s prime minister announced a snap referendum on an international bailout — pushing Athens toward a Tuesday deadline for a plan to prevent default on its IMF debt. Giannis Papanikos/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Giannis Papanikos/AP

Across Greece, people lined up outside banks and at ATM machines to withdraw euros today after their prime minister called for a surprise referendum on a proposed international bailout for the troubled country — a move that has pushed Athens to the brink of default and an exit from the Eurozone.

With no solid agreement, the Greek government is set to default on 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion) owed to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday. As Reuters notes: “Its stricken banks have depended on emergency liquidity from the European Central Bank to stay open, and the banking system faces at the very least a further flood of withdrawals after billions have left in recent weeks.

“We have no basis for further negotiations,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said today following the announcement of the referendum on nationwide television by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

“Clearly we can never rule out surprises with Greece, so there can always be hope. But none of my colleagues with whom I’ve already spoken see any possibilities for what we can now do,” he said, adding that “there are no more negotiations.”

Germany, home to the European Central Bank and the eurozone’s strongest economy, has led the negotiations, insisting that Athens slash its bloated social welfare net and crackdown on tax cheats.

Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says the decision to call a popular referendum came as a surprise. Tsipras, who leads a leftist, anti-austerity party, called for the vote after an emergency cabinet meeting.

“We are facing a historic responsibility to not let the struggles and sacrifices of the Greek people be in vain, and to strengthen democracy and our national sovereignty — and this responsibility weighs upon us,” he said, adding that the proposed bailout is recessionary and would force the country to remain “a debt colony” – forever unable to pay off billions in loans to international lenders.

He set the referendum date for July 5.

But as Joanna reports on Weekend Edition Saturday: “the prime minister didn’t seem to want to take responsibility of rejecting the lenders’ offer and sending Greece into default, so he asked the Greeks to speak.”

As The Associated Press notes: “The call for a vote has strained relations to a near breaking point between Greece and its creditors, some of which say there may be little left to do to save Greece after five months of fruitless and frustrating talks. The sides are haggling over the reforms the country needs to make in exchange for more financial aid but have managed to only increase uncertainty over the country’s future.”

A default and exit from the Eurozone would cause the country to revert to its previous currency, the drachma, almost certainly entailing years of instability, extremely high inflation and poverty.

“And, of course, there will be isolation from Europe, and I think that’s what Greeks fear most,” Joanna says.

It’s not the first time that a Greek premier has proposed a high stakes referendum seeking political cover for an unpopular bailout. In 2011, Prime Minister George Papandreou called for a similar vote, but quickly backed off, yielding to international pressure.

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