From MBA to NBA?

Tim Abromaitis, the Notre Dame basketball star who was arrested along with Joe Montana’s son for underage drinking last year, is about to complete his MBA in May. He’s also an NBA hopeful: Sportswriter Paul M. Banks says he’s heard “firsthand from scouts who believe he could be a tremendous overseas player, and in midseason I read his name in the second rounds of NBA mock drafts. So if/when earns professional money from basketball, I'm sure he'll be good at managing it.”

Pro athletes are notorious for their lousy money-handling skills, almost like there’s some sort of race to penury. From SI:

• By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

• Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

It’s a good thing, then, that Abromaitis took an interest in behavioral finance.

"One class I particularly liked in undergrad was a behavioral finance class. It's kind of like a mix of psychology and finance and economics all thrown together, and it was a view of how people behave in finance and some of their irrational behaviors."

Maybe Abromaitis can write a case study on what led Lenny Dykstra to go from stock-market tycoon and publishing mogul to a man who lives out of his car.  

[Chicago Now]

[Photo Credit: AP/Seth Wenig]