Lakers forward Christian Wood
Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
There are more than a few professional athletes who’ve found themselves burdened with a sizeable child support payment in the wake of a relationship that fell apart. That includes former NBA player Christian Wood, who has been ordered to pay the mother of his son $25,000 a month after missing the filing deadline for an appeal.
There are plenty of perks that come with having the talent needed to play a sport for a living, but being a pro athlete who gets paid millions of dollars a year can also make you a prime target for people on the hunt for a payday of their own.
The NBA makes first-year players go through a program known as the Rookie Transition Program, which features classes led by league officials and former players that stress, among other topics, the importance of financial literacy and being aware of outsiders angling for a relationship (business or otherwise) that primarily revolves around trying to get their hands on the money they earn.
I can’t tell you if that program features cautionary tales concerning the so-called “gold diggers” who have an ulterior motive in their quest to shack up with a professional athlete, but anyone who keeps tabs on the NBA is probably aware there’s no shortage of players who’ve gotten involved with women who ended up taking them to the cleaners when things fell apart.
No one wants to become a member of that unenviable club, but one man who made over $50 million while spending close to a decade in the league has joined it after being handed an L in a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Ohio.
Former NBA player Christian Wood has been ordered to pay $25,000 a month in child support after missing an appeal deadline by the narrowest of margins
Christian Wood spent two years at UNLV before declaring for the 2015 NBA Draft. It initially looked like he was going to be selected in the first round, but his girlfriend broke up with him immediately after learning he hadn’t been picked by any team by the time the event wrapped up.
The 6’8″ forward signed with the 76ers as a free agent, which kicked off a career where he also spent time with the Hornets, Bucks, Pelicans, Pistons, Rockets, Mavericks, and Lakers while starting in around 40% of the 339 games he appeared in over the course of eight seasons (the most recent of which was with Los Angeles during the 2023-24 campagin).
Wood’s personal life has also been the source of some drama off the court. The 30-year-old had a son with an Instagram model named Yasmne Lopez before they broke up and ended up in the midst of a messy legal situation, but he’d previously had another with Jedda Eggleton, who “caught the attention” of Wood after she “went viral on Twitter” in 2019.
Those quoted phrases come from a ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Ohio last week concerning Wood’s attempt to appeal a ruling that ordered him to pay Eggleton $25,000 a month to support the child they had together in 2021.
He initially agreed to send $5,000 their way each month that year, but in 2023, a judge upped that sum by $20K while citing the lifestyle Eggleton and her son would have enjoyed if they “had stayed together to raise” him (the magistrate who oversaw the case noted a $2,144-a-month order would have been more appropriate in a “normal” situation).
Wood was given 14 days to appeal the ruling after it was issued on December 13, 2023, and it was filed on December 28th (which, if you can’t do the math, was 15 days later). His legal team argued he should have been given extra time to respond because he received the ruling via mail three days after it was issued, but the Supreme Court determined that was not the case while ordering the $25,000 payment to stand.
Ouch.