Meaningful Returns

Christian Laettner is undisputedly the most despised college basketball player of all time, and plus he played at Duke, and I despise Duke basketball with every fiber of my being. I say all this only as a matter of disclosure, and as a matter of principle.

I was, therefore, interested to see a piece in the latest Business North Carolina magazine entitled: “Crying Foul,” which is a great, punny title given the content below it. Basically, Laettner and another Duke alum tried their hand at real estate development, did pretty well on one project (West Village in Durham), and then pretty much stunk up the joint with all the other ventures and have for the last several years been mucked up in a bunch of lawsuits and bankruptcy issues with investors (many of which are high profile athletes in their own right).

There is a simple moral to this story: being famous and professional at one thing (whether sports or business or politics) says absolutely nothing about your skills in another thing. Actually, it often says that your skills in another thing might be very unlikely to be professional, since being a professional requires a good bit of time and effort and even talent.

So, if you’re going to pay someone to invest your money, it’s probably best not to look for a former professional athlete. And ESPECIALLY not Christian Laettner. I mean, come one guys.