Athletes Who Are Poorer Than You Thought

Becoming a professional athlete is like winning the lottery, twice. The first jackpot: sports people with world-class abilities get to focus their lives on a game, earning a place of prominence in their high school, getting into a college of their choice, and then moving on to the big leagues or the Olympics. (Okay, okay, so practice, dedication, and sacrifice has a lot to do with that narrative too.) Anyway, going pro also involves getting paid an obscene amount of money. That's when athletes hit the literal jackpot, often earning salaries in the $100 million-plus range, and that's not even counting the beaucoup bucks they earn appearing in sneaker or hot dog commercials. 

However, managing a fortune requires a skill set unto itself. And while some baseball all-stars, basketball phenoms, hockey hotshots, and medal-winning Olympians (among other high-profile figures who dominate popular sports) are in fact beyond wealthy, others were too busy perfecting their skills to take any financial planning classes. Here are some world-class athletes that are much poorer than you thought.

Basketball great Vin Baker was very much a journeyman player — he suited up for six teams in 13 seasons. He averaged 15 points per game over his career and was named to four all-star teams, but those accolades and big stats fizzled in the 2000s. While playing for the Boston Celtics, a coach smelled booze on Baker's breath. The team suspended him, prompting Baker to admit that he was a recovering alcoholic.

Nevertheless, Baker amassed around $100 million while playing professional basketball, including an $86 million contract he signed in 1997. According to the Providence Journal, the Celtics suspended him three times, then canceled the deal (about $36 million remained). But Baker's financial headaches were just getting started. He also invested in a restaurant (Vinnie's Saybrook Fish House) that went out of business, lost a house, and sued his accountant for mismanagement of funds and breach of contract. 

But here's the awesome part: Baker mounted a successful comeback! According to the Providence Journal, he got a job at Starbucks and enrolled in the company's management training program. By 2015, he was well on his way to managing one of the chain's coffeehouses, and has a accumulated a reported net worth of $500,000.

Track and field stars are generally not the most handsomely paid athletes — unless they're Olympic champions who perform so well on the international stage that they become household names and can command huge performance fees and endorsement deals. In other words, people like Marion Jones.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics, Jones won a remarkable five medals, including three gold, but just three years later, she was linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) — a company raided by the feds for allegedly distributing performance-enhancing drugs. According to CBS Sports, Jones racked up a lot of legal fees fighting the doping scandal. By 2006, the disgraced Olympian's finances were in dire straits. A bank foreclosed on her $2.5 million mansion, and she had to sell another home where her mother lived. By 2007, Jones claimed she had a bank balance of just $2,000. That same year, she pleaded guilty to lying about steroid use to federal investigators. As of 2019, her net worth is an estimated $500,000.

Boris Becker was one of the brightest stars in tennis, and he started early. The West German phenom turned pro in 1984, and just a year later, he won his first of three men's singles titles at Wimbledon ... and he was only 17. By the time he retired from tennis in 1996, before the age of 30, Becker had won 49 singles and 15 doubles career titles.

The master of the one-on-one sport also liked to go one-on-one with beautiful ladies. He married actress and model Barbara Feltus in 1993 (and had two kids with her), but he reportedly cheated on her with model Angela Ermakowa (and had a kid with her, too). The financial aspects of Becker's divorce and paternity predicaments cost him about $25 million, reported The Telegraph. He was then convicted of tax evasion and had to pay out another $3 million or so. Becker declared bankruptcy in 2017. He reportedly also declared: "It's crazy to think I'm broke." All that said, Becker reportedly boasts a net worth of an estimated $10 million.

Two of boxing's biggest heavyweight stars squared off in November 1996, when Evander "The Real Deal" Holyfield scored a TKO over the heavily favored Mike "Iron Mike" Tyson. At a rematch seven months later, Tyson was famously disqualified when he bit off a chunk of Holyfield's ear. Tyson's troubles inside and outside the ring (bankruptcy, convicted of rape, domestic abuse) are well-documented, but not everyone realizes that Holyfield also sabotaged his own success.

Being the heavyweight champion of the world won the guy about $230 million, and he clearly had a lot of fun spending it. He dropped a reported $10 million on a 54,000-square-foot mansion on a 235-acre plot in Georgia. The place boasted 109 rooms, a bowling alley, movie theater, stables, and swimming pools. Holyfield claimed the place cost him $1 million a year just to maintain.

According to Redfin, Holyfield was more than $14 million in debt by 2012, when the bank bought his epic house off him for $7.5 million. Another cash drain for Holyfield: legal settlements and child support problems. Celebrity Net Worth notes that he resorted to auctioning off memorabilia from his career, including his Olympic bronze medal and championship rings, to rid himself of debt.

"Losing everything was hard," Holyfield told BBC Sport. "... The Bible says the second half of your life is going to be better than the first half. I made $230 million in the first half, so I've still got reasons to live."

Diego Maradona, aka "The Golden Boy," is just about the best soccer player that ever was. The Argentinian national hero is literally right up there with Pele. (In 2000, FIFA jointly named both men the best soccer players of the 20th century.) Maradona's finest moment is probably what became known as "The Goal of the Century." In a 1986 World Cup quarterfinal, he drove the ball 180 feet down the pitch, blew off challenges from five English defenders, and scored for Argentina. 

As the biggest soccer star in the world in the 1980s and early '90s, Maradona brought home the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, but he doesn't have much of that in his possession anymore. According to the Daily Mail, the Italian government seized about $50 million of his assets, alleging he didn't pay his taxes during his pro soccer years in Italy. (Adding insult to injury, the gov also reportedly took his Rolex and his diamond earring.) The former soccer pro's net worth is now an estimated $100,000.

Beating the iconic Serena Williams at the 2019 U.S. Open while also claiming her first Grand Slam title proved that tennis star Bianca Andreescu has the potential to continue to win no matter who she faces in the future — and can, therefore, look forward to potentially earning a formidable fortune. Frankly, Forbes reported that same year that she was "closing in on becoming the top prize money earner on the women's WTA Tour this year." And the funds that Andreescu will take in thanks to her time on the court will surely be just a fraction of the amount that she'll make via endorsement deals. Already sponsored by major brands like Nike, BMW, Head, and vegan restaurant chain Copper Branch, she's expected to ink even more money-making contracts down the line. 

However, despite all of that, Celebrity Net Worth estimates that Andreescu only has $4 million to her name, as of this writing, which is largely due to one big win (specifically, that U.S. Open prize money, which reportedly totaled $3,850,000).

According to Global News, the up-and-coming athlete talked to the press in September 2019 about her achievements, explaining, "My mom always says 'don't forget who you are' and 'dream big to get big' and I think I've been doing that for a pretty long time now and I think that's contributing a lot to my success."

After retiring in 2001, Jose Canseco is still considered one of the most recognizable names in the world of baseball. However, he's yet another athlete who is only estimated to have $500 thousand despite earning $45 million in salary. Unfortunately, the player who was known for his powerful swing spent that money as quickly as it came in.

Canseco has since tried to boost his bank account by stepping over into the realm of reality TV, including popping up on The Surreal Life and VH1's Hollywood Exes. Fans may have also spotted him on The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011. However, he quit the show due to a family emergency and didn't take home a paycheck, but instead earned $25,000 for his charity, the Baseball Assistance Team. Canseco has also tried his hand at celebrity boxing. However, ESPN reports that this ended in a breach of contract lawsuit after he sent his twin brother, Ozzie, to fight in his place. Perhaps all of this is why Canseco decided to sell his 2000 New York Yankees World Series ring, among other treasures.

In 2008, he explained to Inside Edition (via East Bay Times), "You know my life, this financial thing, is a very complicated issue." That's surely putting it mildly, especially when you're talking about this much (and this little) money.

Antoine Walker made more than $108 million as an all-star NBA player, but eventually filed for bankruptcy with $4 million in assets and more than $12 million in debt in 2010. "I thought I was set for the rest of my life," he told CNN Money. "My story is sad. It's sad to see other guys work so hard throughout their life — and then they just lose it in two or three years." 

Walker also talked to CNBC about his money troubles, admitting, "It was my darkest hour." He added, "It's a tough lesson to learn. I wanted to take care of my family; I wanted the best for them. I really didn't have the word 'no' in my vocabulary. It was something I was not used to saying."

Now with around $250,000 to his name, according to Celebrity Net Worth, Walker wants to save others from his fate — which is why he became a consultant for the Morgan Stanley Global Sports & Entertainment financial literacy initiative. Along with offering other valuable tips, he had some advice that younger athletes can take to heart (and take to the bank), saying, "You worked so hard to get to this point. Don't blow it. Don't blow the money that comes with it. Remember how hard it was for you to get to that level. Take care of it. Build your team, make sure you preserve it."

After retiring from the MLB in 1998, Lenny Dykstra's life became a non-stop storm of reportedly scandalous behavior and iffy endeavors. He not only faced allegations that he used steroids during his career, but also attempted to run a jet charter company and became the publisher of a magazine that failed (via Forbes). Dykstra then filed for bankruptcy in 2009 (at the time, claiming just $50,000 in assets and $10-50 million in liabilities), before being found guilty of federal bankruptcy fraud and sentenced to three years in prison in 2012 for grand theft auto. In 2018, he was charged with drug possession along with allegedly making terroristic threats.

Despite his troubles and reported net worth of minus $25 million, Dykstra told reporters outside the courthouse around the time of his 2018 arrest: "I feel great, man. I mean, like, I could play center field tonight." We wonder what the judge would have had to say about that.

These days, Dykstra uses Twitter to keep his followers updated on his thoughts on the state of the game, but considering how his messages are often perceived as offensive, he likely won't be scoring any new business deals anytime soon. That is, unless those running the show are the kind of people that feed off of controversy and are willing to work with someone who is dealing with more debt than others could possibly fathom.