Consider yourself blessed if you grew up in a stable home environment where the bills were always paid, and you never had to worry about where your next meal would come from.
Consider yourself extra blessed when you reached adulthood, you were able to provide for yourself and family.
It isn’t like that for everyone, so I will never look down on an athlete trying to take care of his family. Athletes in a lot of ways are seen as disposable, when they can help you, people will always help them, but watch what happens when they can’t, everyone mysteriously disappears.
So, I say get what you can, while you can, because when you are no longer useful to the high schools, colleges, sneaker companies, pro teams, etc, they will discard you quicker than a gum wrapper.
I don’t begrudge Oregon Live for doing their story, but if the goal was to try to expose Marvin Bagley, they failed at that.
Youth players cannot accept pay to compete. To play in college, the typical first step to the NBA, they must preserve their amateur status. There are no rules, however, prohibiting footwear companies from sponsoring teams – showering athletes with free shoes, uniforms, and sometimes cash to cover travel and other expenses. It’s a strategy that’s long been accepted as ethical and legal.
But the line between throwing money and swag at elite teams and direct endorsement of promising players has blurred, particularly when the parents of top athletes appear to benefit, experts told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
In Bagley’s case, Nike backed the Phoenix Phamily, a grassroots team in Arizona that featured one of the hottest prospects in the country. His father was coach and team director.
Marvin Bagley Jr. and his wife filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April 2008, during the Great Recession, listing their combined annual income at just over $44,000. Property records indicate the Bagley home was sold in 2011 at a trustee’s sale — typically a sign of a foreclosure.
Four years later, shortly after Nike’s sponsorship of the team became public, they left their working-class neighborhood in Phoenix for Southern California. In a tax filing, the Bagleys listed a home address in a gated subdivision in Northridge called Porter Ranch. Similarly sized homes in the vicinity typically sell for $750,000 to $1.5 million, said Jose Contreras, a Coldwell Banker real estate broker active in the area. Rents in the neighborhood range from $2,500 to $7,500 a month.
Neither the Bagleys nor Nike would offer any details about the team sponsorship or the family’s personal finances. Contacted via telephone and through the Duke University sports information department, the Bagleys “respectfully declined” to comment.
If you had the opportunity to get your family out of poverty, would you do it?
I think you know the answer to that. Bagley like so many others before him have nothing to be ashamed of.