Former NBA star Sebastian Telfair reveals he’s ‘back in the projects’ after making $19M over 10 years
Sebastian Telfair’s journey to NBA stardom appears to have been a round trip, as it eventually ended at the same place that it all began.
“I played over 10 years in the NBA and made tens of millions of dollars. I had everything I ever dreamed of,” Telfair revealed in a YouTube video entitled Sebastian Telfair: Final Days of Freedom (1). “But after a series of legal issues and personal problems, my life has become something I could never imagine.
“I’m right back to where it all began — back in Coney Island, back in the projects, back in the fire.”
Going from multimillionaire status to essentially broke, Telfair’s cautionary tale offers a sobering reality check for young high-income earners about the fragility of sudden wealth.
Over the course of his NBA career, Telfair — who is affectionately known as “Bassy”— earned an estimated $19 million, according to Sportrac (2). He also had a few endorsement deals from companies like Adidas, which signed Telfair to a deal worth more than $10-million when the promising hooper’s career got started in the mid-2000s (3).
By all accounts, the point guard seemed to be set for life, but a series of post-retirement legal issues ended up severely damaging his wealth. In 2017, Telfair was arrested in New York after a routine traffic stop led police to discover marijuana and several firearms in his vehicle (4).
Two years later, his wife, Samantha, filed for divorce, which added another layer of financial strain. Then, in 2021, Telfair was one of 18 former NBA players indicted in a health care fraud case tied to the NBA’s benefits plan (5).
Without a steady source of income in retirement and facing a lengthy list of legal fees, it didn’t take long for Telfair to run out of money.
“Fighting the Feds and my divorce affected my finances. Now I’ve got to run around broke,” Telfair said in the documentary while standing outside the Surfside Gardens projects in Coney Island, Brooklyn, where he was raised.
“This right here is the same building y’all seen through the fire that I grew up in. It’s crazy, to go through my whole NBA journey, go through everything I went through, and end up right back in the same spot.”
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For young high-earning professionals, Telfair’s return to the projects underscores a distinction that some may fail to understand: income is not the same as wealth.
If you’re at the height of your career in a relatively lucrative industry like tech, finance or law, it’s easy to feel wealthy and invincible. But a combination of lifestyle inflation and debt can leave you with little to no savings, which can be dangerous if you find yourself facing a sudden personal or legal emergency.
A whopping 29% of individuals earning more than $200,000 a year said they were either struggling to keep up, falling behind or just covering the basics with little to no room for errors, according to a 2025 survey by The Harris Poll (6). In fact, about 31% of respondents said unexpected emergencies or one-time expenses had recently drained their finances.
That unexpected emergency or one-time expense could be a divorce, and researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis discovered that divorce leads to an average income dip of 9% for women and 17% for men (7). And just like Telfair, high-income individuals can struggle to recover financially after a messy split.
Although there are several legal maneuvers to protect yourself during a divorce — including litigation insurance or postnuptial agreements — there are also a few financial moves that anyone can make to protect their money while they still have it.
For starters, try to avoid the temptation to inflate your lifestyle as your paychecks increase. Lifestyle creep — which is the tendency for a person’s spending to increase as their income rises — is a thing, and it can easily destroy financial progress if you allow it.
Next, try to minimize debt, especially the high-interest variety. This will allow you to reduce your exposure while giving you money to set aside for an emergency fund, which can serve as a shock absorber if or when you’re hit with a sudden expenditure.
Once you cross a certain threshold of income, preserving wealth is nearly as important as creating it.
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Antoinette Media – YouTube (1); Sportrac (2); Basketball Network (3); Reuters (4); NBA.com (5); The Harris Poll (6); Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (7)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
