It is hard to blow $61 million, but not impossible.
Athletes assume they will play forever, so they spend their money as soon as they get it. One day they can’t play anymore but try to keep up the lifestyle and that is when you have a situation like Joe Smith.
Smith had a long NBA career (16 seasons), but never managed his money right and now only has $3k in the bank and needs a reality show to help him out.
Every time he was traded and moved, he bought a place to live in his new city. “Once I got traded, it was always tough to unload those homes,” he tells Rodriguez. “I was always losing money.”
Plus, his car collection included a Corvette, Bentley and two Range Rovers, among other luxury vehicles.
Thanks to reckless spending, bad investments and a costly divorce, Smith found that his fortune had been completely wiped out. And his salary, which was never less than $1.3 million a year while he was in the NBA, plummeted after he retired in 2011 and switched to coaching 10-to-15 hours a week.
At the time Rodriguez intervened, Smith and his fiancée Kisha Chavis were bringing home a combined $26,000 a year from various gigs, including Smith’s private coaching lessons. But their lifestyle, which included a spacious home in the suburbs of Atlanta, cost them $133,000.
Flip the page to see how Alex Rodriguez is trying to get him on right track.