Oh no doubt there's taxes and stuff, but lets face it, most people working today wont earn 15 million before taxes in their lives, even taking into account inflation pushing up their wages from today's level. You can't tell me what he's made isn't enough to live off, most people can and do live off that much throughout their lives.
There's over 6 billion people in the world who deserve sympathy for not having money more than some dumb athlete who has blown all theirs.
I'm not suggesting that Randy Brown deserves your sympathy per se. I'm just saying it's a different culture, and that there are reasons why an absurd percentage of former athletes go bankrupt.
Think about it for a moment, the bankruptcy rate among former athletes is approximately 60x the national average, and that's with all these people having radically more earnings than the typical person.
I think there are a wide variety of reasons for it, and I'm not suggesting you feel sorry for them, but it's clearly a problem without an obvious solution. Some of the problems include:
1) A keeping up with the Joneses attitude, but the Joneses in this case earn 10+ million a year, so the guys who don't earn at the high end tend to spend with those that do still.
2) A lack of education about how to handle finances for most of the players. They haven't earned the money through careful business planning or gotten it gradually, but have it all dumped on them at once. It's a massive change that most people don't experience, but many businesses struggle when they grow too large as well and have a hard time transitioning and that's with a gradual shift.
3) Their social circle and entourage as well as the women trying to get knocked up so they can retire off the child support. They spend a ton of money on friends, and even if they wise up eventually this hurts a lot.
4) A lack of understanding of when the ride is over that it's over because they're pampered and given everything in life through the AAU system. They don't seem to understand that when they can no longer play no one cares.
5) They spend too much money on things which decline in value. Jewelry, partying, cars, partying, etc..
I don't suggest you feel sorry for former athletes, but when it's a huge percentage of these guys filing for bankruptcy (60% within 5 years of retiring from the NBA according to a recent article) then it's clearly not just a problem with stupidity. It's a system that is setting people up to fail.
