I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [23]
And the line they use on you is, “Oh, you ain’t the same guy anymore!” They tell you how you’ve gone big-time and how they know you don’t want to be around them anymore. Next thing you know you’ve lent them hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I’m not exaggerating. I’ve got the receipts to prove it. But you know what? I’m not going to ever ask their asses for my money. And the money, on some level, is irrelevant because I can do without the money. But it bothers me more that I’ve lost those friendships. You’re just caught, not really certain what to do.
Guys in similar situations joke about it, how you’ve got to watch your family, too. Man, your family goes through money like crazy. We all know guys in the NBA, great guys, who have a lot of brothers and sisters and they’re all driving Mercedeses. Hey, you can get your brother a Hyundai. Everybody in the house doesn’t have to have a Mercedes-Benz.
I built my mother and grandmother houses, and my brothers houses, and I’ve bought them two or three cars at least. I had to get to a point where I said, “No, hey, that’s enough.” As much as I love my family, I have to say, “We’ve got to stop this.” You hear some real horror stories from your teammates. I’m fortunate because I played a long time and made great money. But the average career is four, five years. And those guys aren’t necessarily making a ton of money. But guys don’t think to themselves, “Hey, I might only be in the league two or three years and I better really watch what I’m doing.” No, guys think, “Well, I’m making several million dollars a year; I won’t ever be able to spend it all.” But after you take out taxes, even on $10 million a year, and support all your freeloaders, you’re like, “I’d better get on the right track with this.” I tell them, “When it’s over, make sure you’ve got something.”
I’ve got guys right now who had a deal with Nike, and now call me to get them shoes from Nike. When you’re out, you’re out. We call them “owls” because when they call after they retire the person at the other end of the phone says, “Who?” When the party is over, there are no more shoes, no more free tickets. Ex-NBA players don’t get free tickets to games. You need to have saved and invested. I was very fortunate when I was a young player to have veteran guys pull me aside and counsel me on what to do. My first agent cheated me out of a lot of money. Luckily, Julius Erving and Moses Malone taught me so much about a lot of things, including money.
I don’t know if it’s a black thing or not . . . maybe it’s just because most of the guys in the NBA are black and that was my environment. But when I first got to the pros, I bought something like six cars. And Doc and Moses made me sell ’em. They told me, “Look, man, you can only drive one car. What the hell are you doing with six? If you drive one car, sell the other five and invest that money wisely and just let the damn money grow, that will become enough money to buy twenty cars in five to ten years.” Something else they told me that was very important, and I’m glad they didn’t just sit back and tell me what I wanted to hear. They told me, “You don’t have to drive a lot of flashy, expensive cars, spend a lot of money on jewelry to get attention. Stop trying to impress people; everybody already knows who the hell you are.” And it was really profound. They were right, of course. You don’t need to drive a Bentley; you’d be better served with the money being wisely invested. I’ve got my expensive hobbies. I like to go to Las Vegas and gamble, which everybody knows, and I love golf. But I have two cars now, SUVs, and I don’t have any entourages.
The first time it hit me that