National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts told Yahoo Sports that Lamar Odom's crisis has "reignited" discussions to create a program to aid NBA players who are transitioning toward retirement.
"There are a lot of things that we need to repair with the NBPA," Roberts said a day after speaking to law students at the University of California-Berkeley. "There has been a dearth of services in terms of adhering to the guys' needs. One of the things we spend a lot of time dealing with is the complete absence of any type of transition program for the guys. On one hand you would say that's the responsibility of the [National Basketball] Retired Players Association, but they don't have the resources.
"We're sort of deciding how we can fill that space. Technically, our players are paying dues for services of current members. So there will have to be some buy-in. There is also clearly a lot of buy-in from the membership in terms of our operating health insurance for any retired player. The desire to be supportive of retired players is there among the current members. But what we need to figure out and create is a transition program under the auspice of the NPBA with the collaboration of the NBRPA. Lamar is a great example of why it needs to be done."
Sounds like a good idea. Beyond situations like Odom's, it's clear that a lot of former stars have difficulty adjusting to life after professional basketball, and end up broke in retirement.
