For spending thirteen years of his life playing basketball, Antoine Walker managed to end his career in 2008 with a whopping amount of $108 million.
But that colossal amount of money was flushed down the drain in just two years.
Antoine lost the money he earned and went bankrupt. This is because he made some outrageous expenses despite that some of them were with good intentions.
Having a humble beginning, Antoine had a significant amount of people to assist in his life – family, friends and even acquaintances. According to him, he helped about 30 people have “better situations.”
“I gave them whatever they wanted and spoiled them. You can’t do that,” Walker said. “It ended up being an open ATM throughout my career.”
For his family, Antoine built his mum a house worth $4.1 million. It was a 15.000 square feet with an indoor pool. “Everything you can ever imagine was in the house,” he noted, He also owned four homes.
Aside from caring for his family, Antoine aspired to create a wealthy look and for that reason spent on some flashy items like cars, watches, jewelry among others.
“It’s a cultural thing, and I like to speak for myself. When I came out, Jay-Z, Puffy, all the rappers, what they did is what I wanted to do. You see them with the big jewerly, the chains, nice cars, you see the videos. I am looking at all that and thinking when I get it, I am doing that. When I had a lot of money, I also had a lot of fetishes. I had a car fetish. I would have 8 to 10 cars at one time. I had a watch fetish. When I came out, Jacob the jeweler was the man; everyone shopped with Jacob. I used to get all the new watches. I had 15 to 20 watches at one time, and I couldn’t wear them all,” he said as quoted by Basketball Network.
Again, he lost large sums of money gambling, although Walker insists this wasn’t the main cause of his financial collapse and that media reports are overblown.
In spite of the ups and downs, Antoine has been able to elevate himself from bankruptcy.
Source: The Independent Ghana