Los-Angeles-Lakers-forward-Michael-Beasley
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Michael Beasley spent 11 years in the NBA so he has a rather unique perspective on that life. He earned over $33 million, but much like many other players, he is no expert when it comes to managing all of that money. Which is why, he says, so many NBA players end up broke despite earning millions of dollars during their careers.
“I think it should be mandatory for each league, each professional league, well, now with the NIL and kids getting paid in high school I think it should be mandatory for that first check, second check, anything up to, these players making millions of dollars, so anything up to $5 million mandatory for whether it’s your first check or your first two or three checks or your contract or I mean your contract, your first $5 million should go into a whole life and that should go into a trust fund,” Beasley said on the Common Denominator Podcast.
“I think we teach our kids and especially in my community that saving money is the way … for a basketball player that comes from where I come from it’s only worse because rather than, what we think, because we getting more money we save more money, we actually in the bad because we don’t understand taxes. And now we don’t understand that $1 is $2 and we don’t understand inflation. And then we think saving that money and then we turn around and $10 million is is only $7 million five years later. One percent in the bank. They’re not teaching us that we can get 10% on real estate. They’re not teaching us that we can get … 10% over S&P over 30 years.”
Michael Beasley went on to explain that when a player gets his first NBA contract he can “borrow against that money, at least 90% of it in the first 20 days.” He also talked about how many players don’t understand taxes and especially how they get taxed in every city that they play.
“We pay taxes in every city we go to, but even that, dinners, business meetings, etc. etc. etc., managers, it’s so much we could write off and then making the trust fund the controller of the trust fund takes the players, now I have to go through channels to get certain things and then in a certain amount of time I’m getting a tax-free check every month.”
Beasley added, “When you’re in high school, you know you’re skipping class if you’re dribbling the ball with us. Yeah. You’re graduating, going to college, and we’re still dribbling the ball. You’re having kids and watching them grow up, and we’re still dribbling the ball. And then they take away the only life we know. Now we look crazy for still dribbling the ball. Yeah. We don’t know what taxes are. We don’t know what a W-2 is. We’ve never seen a resume, let alone know what the real world is. Some guys figure it out. Some guys don’t. And the ones that don’t? The world just laughs at us.”
As for the never-ending Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James GOAT debate, Michael Beasley thinks it is a no-brainer.
“LeBron over Jordan. One hundred percent,” he said, then explained, “Okay, my argument is a reasonable one, right? First, I’ll start with what everybody knows, points, longevity, all of that. With Jordan, they don’t talk about the negatives. They don’t mention the playoff losses. They don’t talk about the fact that he actively sought out Dennis Rodman, who was already a two-time champion. And no disrespect to Jordan, because he’s Jordan, right? But they don’t tell the story of him having to learn the championship pedigree. LeBron James gave us, or has given us, the opportunity to be witnesses. We watched his good. We watched his bad. We watched his ups and downs for so long, and he’s been so great that we don’t have anything to say anymore. So now, we talk about his son, right? That’s my personal argument.”