Antoine Walker, NBA Star lost $110 million he earned from his basketball career, so fast that he was obliged to file for bankruptcy just a couple of years after he retired. Walker was forced to retire and play in the is really bad deal of real estate, which is the obscure development of the league, 14 years of loving the high life and gambling debts left him with nothing. This is very far from his glory days during his fame in the NBA, where he won a championship in 2006 and three times to be named in the all-star team.
Walker's story is just one of the parts of ESPN's documentary report "Broke," which traces the failures of professional athletes financially who once collected millions as professional sports stars. He earned $110 million during his career as star forward for Miami Heat, Boston Celtics and some other teams between 1996 and 2008 until his retirement.
The 6"9 player was a rising basketball star when he was at the peak of his career with Celtics after a couple of years playing for University of Kentucky, where he led the team to a championship in 1996. Walker told ESPN "
"You create a lifestyle for yourself, spending a lot of money as you're living through a 13-year NBA career." However in May 2010 he filed for bankruptcy, he only got $4.3 million in his savings and $12.7 million in debts.
In 2010, the same year, he tried to make a comeback, but was not successful to make a team. He just played with the Guaynabo Met in Puerto Rico for a brief time. Then he transferred to Idaho Stampeded during the development league, where he played for two year, then finally called it quits in 2012.
The star forward said his housing bubble partially caused his downfall,
He said his downfall is partially due to the housing bubble.
"Personally, I was involved in a lot of real estate projects with the banks where I was the personal guarantor of the loans. When the recession hit back in 2007 and 2008, the banks went really hard after the money. There's probably like 7 to eight banks that we had loans with. And it kind of hit me all at once. I had to pay back the money."
alker honestly admitted that he went broke and lost a huge amount of money in gambling, but that it wasn't a major cause of his finances drain. He spent from his inner-city Chicago neighborhood friends at $2million. He invested on businesses, ought cars and paid for travel of his friends.
