Jose Calderon has had a very solid NBA career, made $84 million, and all he needs left is a championship to complete his ride. Life would have been even more perfect had a rumor of him being a billionaire true.
The Cavs’ Channing Frye saw on Google that Calderon earned an estimated $2.2 billion as part of his father’s fortune in the Coca-Cola bottling company FEMSA, according to Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
Calderon quickly shot down the rumor.
“It’s not,” said Calderon. “I wish. I wish I could say, ‘Yeah, it is true. But, no, no, no. No, it’s not. “I don’t have family in Mexico. Nothing. I’m just from Spain. It’s a totally different guy. But the weird part is like, everything else is true. It’s got my wife’s name. I got three boys. I’ve played here and there. So, everything they talk about is true, but the wealth? No. No. Not true.”
It turned out that the real names listed in the fortune are Jose and Francisco Jose Calderon Rojas. What separates these men and the NBA’s Calderon is that they are Mexican and he is Spanish.
Brian Warner of CelebrityNetWorth.com discussed how Google was able to confuse these names.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a very smart system, in my opinion,” said Warner. “It sort of just pulls information in blindly and isn’t able to, for example, tell the difference between an NBA player named Jose Calderon and a Mexican billionaire named Jose Calderon Rojas. So, the wires get crossed and this stuff happens all the time.”
This confusion made Calderon one of the highest-searched names on the website. Over 10,000 searches were made every day.
LeBron James also told ESPN how much fun the team has had joking about this confusion.
“It’s an ongoing joke with our team,” said James. “We don’t know if it’s a joke or not, though. Channing made him pay for a dinner. The check came and he said, ‘Give it to the billionaire.’ So, yeah. We know about it.”
Jeff Green also added how they joke about would they still play if they became billionaires and soon the Calderon rumor came up.
“We joke about it because the lottery is what it is,” Green said. “You joke and now you’re a billionaire, would you continue to play? I’ve had that conversation with a lot of teammates throughout my career. And my answer is always, ‘Yes.’ And then when that came up, if he’s a billionaire, I guess there is my answer. If you love the game that much, you want to continue to play, even if it’s just as a hobby to him. If that is true, then respect to him. We’ll never know the answer. But I hope it is true.”
Even though Calderon doesn’t have $2.2 billion, $84 million will always make him satisfied.
