One thing that I decided to try out for 2012 is to use the “Life Story” category to recount some mildly amusing vignettes from my life. Here’s one story I found myself telling a few weeks ago.
When I was in college, I worked 20-25 hours a week for a small, high end jewelry store in downtown Chicago. Our clients included bankers, traders and a few celebrities like R. Kelly (before he went to jail!) and Chris Gardner (Pursuit of Happyness).
My primary responsibility at the store was silver engraving (I have a few stories about that as well!) as well as watch band and battery replacement. But every once in awhile, I was asked to do something singularly nerve-wracking, (like drive a $100,000 Mercedes around the block for 45 minutes).
One day, a newly drafted NBA player came into the store and presented the owner with a rather large piece of jewelry, which was hanging on a white gold chain around his neck. He said he had paid a certain amount for it and wanted to know if we could appraise it on the spot.
The piece actually turned out to be a custom sculpture of the player’s name and jersey number, along with a basketball going through a hoop. It probably was about 6 inches wide and 10 inches long.
And it was covered with diamonds.
Much to my surprise, I was handed the bejeweled piece and asked to count the number of diamonds.
Trying not to let my panic show, I quickly reproduced a sketch of the piece and then began to count the number of diamonds on each part – the hoop, the basketball and each letter of his name. It was a painstaking process and took about 15 minutes – all while the NBA rookie watched and made small talk with my boss.
After what seemed like an eternity, I came to a conclusion: there were 1,170 diamonds embedded in the piece.
My employer did some calculations and then gave the player this appraisal:
“For the piece, you’re probably looking at around $30,000. The gold chain is another $10,000, so together this piece is worth about $40,000.”
“Yep, that’s about what I paid,” the player said. He thanked my employer (not me the lowly diamond counter), hung the $40,000 emblem around his neck, and walked out of the store.
This anecdote might explain why 60% of NBA players are broke 5 years after they retire.
Question: What would you do if you got a fat NBA contract?
Strange thing is Twan came to the club I used to work at all the time and spent thousands of dollars even though he’s broke. It’s amazing considering he made over 120 million over the course of his career.
That’s crazy but not surprising. As a side note, the player that came in was not Antoine Walker, I just picked him as a high profile NBA bankruptcy.