Joe Dumars Proves It's Never Too Late to Go Back to School

Any way you measure it, Joe Dumars is a successful man. He won two NBA titles as a player, had the league's annual sportsmanship award named after him, won another title as a general manager and has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

And that's the stuff everyone knows about -- what most people don't know is that for 10 years after retiring as a player he served as CEO and president of a successful automotive supply company he founded. And as a father, he raised a son who just earned a scholarship to play Division I ball.

But for all that he's accomplished, there was one thing missing on his resume: he never finished college. This past May, he finally crossed that item off his list. From William Rhoden of the New York Times:

"Not having the degree was a void that I simply had to fill," Dumars wrote in an e-mail message. "My wife has her master's in education, and we've always stressed the importance of education to our two teenage kids. I just felt if I was going to stress the importance of education, I had to show them exactly how important it was."

So he completed the work. And last month his name was called along with more than 700 other graduates at McNeese State University's spring commencement ceremony. He said that earning the degree, a bachelor's in business management, was one of his greatest accomplishments. That's saying a lot.

I find this amazing: if anything, Dumars is proof that you don't need a college degree to be extremely successful in life, but he valued education so much that he put the time and energy into pursuing a diploma simply for the principle of the matter.