Andray Blatche Is Not So Good with Money

In the wake of Andray Blatche's arrest for soliciting an undercover cop for sex, Ivan Carter, one of the Wizards beat reporters for the Washington Post, has some interesting background on the young player's personal life. Despite making NBA dough, the dude is so bad with money that for a while he resorted to sleeping at the arena after failing to come up with rent money:

If he were a true knucklehead, I'd say so. He's not. But he is extremely naive and he's displayed a stunning lack of judgement which is not all that amazing considering his age. He's rolled through money (I heard from a good source that the kid was sleeping at Verizon Center for several nights as rookie because he couldn't pay rent), he's out on every single road trip whether there's a game the next night or not and he obviously doesn't have a good read on females.

[...] I was told that Ernie pulled Andray aside recently and told him to be careful about where he went out and who he went out with. I know for a fact that Gilbert, Antawn, DeShawn, Caron and Roger Mason have had the same conversations with Andray.

[...] I had a conversation about Andray with a player recently and the player nailed it: "He's wild with the money he has now so what's going to happen if you give that guy millions? I have no idea what's going to happen but it's gonna be interesting because someone is going to pay him. God don't make 6-11 with those skills too often."

The unnamed player is right -- as we mentioned before, the Wizards apparently had a five-year, $12.5 million offer on the table at the time of the arrest. It's unclear if that exact offer still stands now, but it's doubtful the Wizards would completely turn their back on a guy for simply pulling a James Worthy (or, since we're talking about our nation's capital, "acting like a senator"). Even so, you have to hope he sets aside a chunk of that money for both a financial adviser and a smarter entourage that knows how to keep him out of trouble.

(via TrueHoop)