Basketball recently lost one of its pioneers. While that term is thrown around whenever a player from the black and white era passes away, the true understanding of what it means to be a pioneer is lost. In my view a pioneer is someone who is a visionary who transforms and then defines how things are done moving forward, creating an enduring standard. My dad, Dolph Schayes was such a person. As a player in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s my
We’ve all heard the stories about athletes, including basketball players, going broke despite making millions — or tens of millions — of dollars. From Scottie Pippen to Allen Iverson to Antoine Walker, the ledger of those who have squandered their fortunes is a long one. How does this happen? Why? As I told Noah Coslov of CineSport in this video interview: “The biggest thing is not really understanding how current lifestyle will impact their future lifestyle.” I have written a book on this very
It’s In No One’s Interest That You Get It. All players entering the NBA participate in the Rookie Transition Program. The league and the players association require every new player to attend a weeklong training session before the season starts. The program is an intense immersion type experience designed to open player’s eyes to NBA life. All kinds of lifestyle topics are covered. They cover wealth and investing. They cover health. They cover sex education, drug education and other topics players need
“A fool and his money is one big party!” If you read only one chapter in this book, read this one. It has the answer why so few succeed while most fail miserably. We have all heard that athletes and entertainers blow all of their money on cars, drugs, jewelry, clothes and women, and not necessarily in that order. We hear every day about all these poor slobs who burn through millions of dollars and are left broke and lonely with no
We have all seen the statistics and heard the stories about the majority of athletes going broke soon after they retire, regardless of how much money they made. I have this discussion with many people – especially athletes – on why this happens. The truth is very different than what many people think it is. I will discuss the mechanism at length later in this book, but the truth itself is simple. The reason that many athletes fail financially is the
There has been enough debate on the MVP award, including three columns on this site — all in favor of James Harden. Which, of course, means he will finish second. Or maybe not. I do know this: It is going to be interesting to see exactly how close the vote is from a historical perspective. And speaking of history, I have a little (OK, a lot) of my own in the NBA. So today, I’m going to share a few personal stories and
Like most fans, I found this season’s Final Four to be really good. I guess college basketball isn’t being ruined by “one-and-done” after all. While we saw a one-and-done factory (Duke) win it all, we also had a sighting of a dodo bird. That creature thought to be extinct, known as a senior star. Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan prides himself on building from within and having well-coached teams. He develops players and teams over time by having rosters dominated by kids from
In his most recent column, Danny Schayes noted how the Utah Jazz were doing a pretty nice job of playing spoilers, beating a bunch of the top playoff contending teams. Lots of crazy outcomes can happen in the late days of a season, and Schayes recounted a pair of instances when his team was out of the playoff picture but came up with victories that were not only unlikely, but uncommon for the circumstances that surrounded them. Here is a link