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You may have never heard of Orlando Magic center Adonal Foyle. The average sports fan couldn't tell Adonal Foyle from aluminum foil. Most athletes outside of the NBA don't know who he is, either. They should. Everyone should.
Is it OK for a heterosexual male to say this: I heart Adonal Foyle.
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| Foyle is too smart to wind up broke. (Getty Images) |
We throw up our hands in disgust when it comes to sports and think it is filled with spoiled babies and woman beaters. We think the entire enterprise will one day be sucked into an endless black hole.
Then someone like Foyle comes along and there is a brief re-energizing. Our hope for sports is no longer comminuted.
Foyle has long been known within the NBA as a thoughtful and bright person. His quote in Florida Today proves just that and more.
"Guys talk about having to have this car and that car, but I tell them, 'One car is plenty for me. I grew up riding a donkey,'" Foyle told the newspaper. "When you grow up with so little, it teaches you discipline. And you learn not to want for what you don't need. You learn how to do with what you have. It's a lesson a lot of guys in the NBA need to learn because this is an unrealistic way to live your life."
A-freaking-men.
Foyle's donkey was named "Country." It's too bad Foyle doesn't still have Country ... with the price of gas these days and all.
Of course not all athletes, particularly NBA players, are self-indulgent and financially asinine. For every Mike Tyson or Kenny Anderson there is a Grant Hill or Foyle.
Yet it's scary what's quietly occurring in basketball. The Toronto Star reported in January how a member of the player's union told the Raptors team that 60 percent of NBA players lose all of their money five years after they retire. Sixty percent go broke five years after leaving basketball.
"Sixty percent is a ballpark," former Raptor and current player rep Roy Hinson told the paper. "But we've seen a lot of guys who've really come into hard times five years after they leave the league. The problems are, for a lot of guys, they have a lot of cars, they have multiple houses, they're taking care of their parents. They're taking care of a whole host of issues and the checks aren't coming in anymore."
My guess is that number isn't isolated to the NBA. It might be similar across many different sports.