Professional sports are such a bold experiment in the redistribution of wealth. You take all this money from big corporate sponsors, deep-pocketed owners, and ticket buyers, and you give it to young people selected for their ability to play basketball.
Many of them have no idea what to do with it, and lose it all in a haze of expenses.
Others invest it wisely, and set up their families for generations to come.
Still others use it to change the world.
Like Jonathan Bender.
He was forced, by arthritic knees, to retire at the age of 25. But man oh man you have to believe the world is a better place for all those millions he earned.
Just a few years later, he's having so much fun, working hard trying to repair New Orleans, that he can't even say for certain that he'd rather be playing basketball.
I talked to him when I was in New Orleans, and he rattled off about a dozen different projects he has going on. Many are non-profit -- like adopting schools, and starting after-school programs. Others are for-profit, like a reality TV show, sponsoring a boxer, and some serious real estate development. It's a little hard to follow it all, there is so much.
I thought to myself: You can't contain this man in a quick blog post. Somebody needs to take several days or weeks and write a big feature article about all this.
ESPN The Magazine's Anna Katherine Clemmons just did. Here she describes some of the activities of his for-profit Kingdom Homes.
Bender isn't just returning the residences to form; he's improving them, adding oak cabinets, hardwood floors, marble and granite countertops and accent lighting. Bender reviews every detail, ensuring that each property meets his high standards.
"I looked at a house that Jonathan was doing and I wanted to cry, because this young man did a house that he would live in, with nice things," says 58-year-old Barbara Major, a board member for both NORA (New Orleans Redevelopment Authority) and the Bender Foundation. "It's incredible. No one builds houses like that for people who can't afford it."
Once the properties are completed, Bender's real-estate management company makes them available for leasing. He's started with close to 40, and says almost every resident is so happy with their property that they want to buy it. So Bender plans to help them toward that goal as well, having recently partnered with several banks and major corporations to aid in financial assistance and offer the residents free financial literacy courses with community/civic training. "That's why my foundation has started the home-ownership piece, so we can teach," Bender says. "Why would you turn down someone who's going to help you learn about your down payment and managing it?"
To ensure that the work is done efficiently, Bender employs his close friends and relatives. An entourage, it isn't; Bender says the minute someone slacks off, he'll make them pay out of their pocket to correct it.
"My cousin Corrie brought in some of his boys to paint [a property], but when I saw the lines in that wall, I told them they're doing it again, and the money for the paint is coming out of his pocket," Bender says. "It's got to be right. He might fuss at first, but me being tough is doing nothing but helping him." Case in point: Corrie now has his own business based on the initial properties he developed for Bender.
