not smart enough to put some away for a rainy day??? 
not smart enough to put some away for a rainy day??? Buried way down in the story is actual wisdom from a good person who became a wealthy pro athlete:
“I always looked at each contract as my last,” he says. He talks about being the lone guy in the locker room not to buy a luxury vehicle. “I didn’t care what others thought of me when I drove a Toyota 4Runner my rookie year,” he writes. “It was what I could afford.”
I live in Jacksonville Fl and you can always spot a Jaguar because they are the one’s driving Lambos, McClarens, and gold-plated Escalades in a town full of Hyundais and Kias and Chevy trucks.
I used to live in Aiken SC where a pro football player from that town was building his mom a mansion but his career suddenly ended and she wound up living in a mobile home next to a half-finished shell of the mansion she almost had.
Crazy chicks, “give me” family, drugs, stupid “friend has no no lose” investments and failing to save at least 50% of what you are making...
No car, mansion, clothes or anything else feels as good to me as a sizable amount of security in the bank.
Good points raised in both of these articles including the aspect that the mind-set & personality types (Type 'A') of a pro-caliber athlete is very different from money conserving type. Mike Tyson & Warren Sapp are good examples of this. The point of child support for children getting into big money also applies to the above personality as well.
I know that the various players' associations are trying to help their members here but that too has its own set of problems. Try telling a 20yo with a single mother and 5 siblings that he needs to watch his money, not give it to those who have supported him all his life! Add his extended family, friends and neighbors and money flows like water!
As a kid most of us dreamed of being pro athletes. But, gee, there are so many downsides.
I once spent a couple of hours with a great player who was smart, had a great career, and a full career after sports. But, he was most famous for playing the worst game of his life when it mattered most. And he couldn’t stop talking about it. It was like he was in a trance. He sounded like the brainwashed guys in MANCHURIAN CANIDATE. It was sad. It really damaged him.
It’s hard to feel sorry for millionaires. But, they’re people too. And they have a lot of problems we don’t think about.
Some of these guys haven’t thrown it all away - Junior Bridgeman had a 12 year NBA career mostly as a sixth man, he and three other guys were traded to Milwaukee for Kareem in 1975. He currently owns over 100 Wendy’s restaurants and is worth over 400 million.
You are barely out of your teens, and have been signed to a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract by a pro team. You can expect another $20 million to $30 million in endorsement deals, and are positioned to become a brand unto yourself: another LeBron, Brady, Kobe, Jeter.
...
Brady is smart. He married a woman with more money than himself. Problem solved.
No one "plays" accountant or roofing installer. That's work.
All you have to do is sock away your first years’ salary and spend all the rest, and you’ll still be rich when you retire.
They say that lottery winners have close to the same percentage of people who burn through their money and go bust. And for many of the same reasons, too.
“WOW, a 10 million dollar contract. I’ll buy a 20 million dollar house.”
This is why the really smart players like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and several others, have already carefully planned out their post-NBA careers. As such, they likely won’t fall into the the issues mentioned in this article.