“Tim Duncan trusted someone and got screwed over $20 million”: When Spurs legend learned his lesson the hard way losing around 10% of his $220 million career earnings

Being one of the most intelligent guys to ever play the game of basketball couldn’t help Tim Duncan save himself from a $20 million fraud.

Tim Duncan is probably the greatest power forward in the game of basketball. The leading man in Gregg Popovich‘s San Antonio Spurs, being one of the best clubs in the NBA for the past two decades, had an incredible 19-year career.

While collecting all the individual and team accolades there are in the grandest basketball stage, Tim also made around $220 million in salary throughout his career.

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Towards the end of his career, this humble, generous, but one of the most intelligent players ever was betrayed by a man on whom he had a lot of trust.

In the middle of his second to last season in the NBA, at the start of 2015, the 5x NBA champ filed a lawsuit against his adviser, Charles Banks, on the basis of being pushed into bad investments because of conflicts of interest.

‘Lesson Learned’: Spurs Player Tim Duncan Once Defrauded Over $20 Million Due To Financial Adviser https://t.co/R9L5ZYr56w

— Black Enterprise (@blackenterprise) April 28, 2022

When Tim Duncan lost more than $20 million to his 17-year old financial adviser

The 15x All-Star made his NBA debut in 1997 and hired Banks as his adviser in his first year. The trust made over 17 plus years resulted in Tim losing in surplus of $20 million.

The then 39-year-old spoke frankly about the matter during the trial and said the loss wouldn’t significantly impact his life moving forward, “Luckily, I had a long career and made good money. This ($20 million) is a big chunk, but it’s not going to change my life in any way. It’s not going to make any decisions for me.”

He continued, “I thought, for the most part, I was keeping an eye on things. You have to have people checking on people checking on people. I did that for a while. Obviously, I got to a point where the people I trusted were checking on themselves.”

“The bottom line is this – You can’t be angry at yourself. I keep going back to this word, but I trusted someone, I was wrong about it. I got screwed over for it. I’m not mad at myself for that. That’s a lesson learned. I’ll never put myself in that situation again.” The Spurs Big man finished.

— John Palminteri (@JohnPalminteri) July 1, 2017

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This story, to this date, remains one of the biggest fraudulent stories in the States, with people still citing it as an example for any financial matter related to advisors.

About the author

Akash Murty

An Electrical and Electronics Engineer by degree, Akash Murty is an NBA Editor at The SportsRush. Previously a Software Engineer, Murty couldn’t keep himself away from sports, and his knack for writing and putting his opinion forward brought him to the TSR. A big Soccer enthusiast, his interest in basketball developed late, as he got access to a hoop for the first time at 17. Following this, he started watching basketball at the 2012 Olympics, which transitioned to NBA, and he became a fan of the game as he watched LeBron James dominate the league. Him being an avid learner of the game and ritually following the league for around a decade, he now writes articles ranging from throwbacks, and live game reports, to gossip. LA Lakers are his favourite basketball team, while Chelsea has his heart in football. He also likes travelling, reading fiction, and sometimes cooking.

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