The Story of the 2nd Richest NBA Player Ever!!
Meet Junior Bridgeman, the 2nd richest NBA player of all-time behind Michael Jordan. Now if I were to ask you ‘Who do you think are the top 3 richest NBA players of all-time?’ You’d most likely answer with Michael Jordan, Lebron James and, Shaquille O’Neal. The average NBA fan probably doesn’t even know who Junior Bridgeman is. We are now going to get into the story of Junior Bridgeman’s NBA career and what happened afterwards that gave him the title of the 2nd richest NBA player of all-time.
Starting with the 1975 NBA Draft where Junior Bridgeman the 6’5 Shooting Guard/Small Forward was being highly looked at by NBA teams and was projected to be drafted in the Top 10. The Lakers had the 8th pick in that draft where they drafted Junior Bridgeman to pair up along with Gail Goodrich. But no less than a couple seconds later one of the craziest trades in NBA history went down including Junior Bridgeman. The trade featured Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters, David Meyers and, Elmore Smith being sent to the Milwaukee Bucks for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. For the next 9 seasons of his career he spent with the Bucks and was a really really good 6th man for them all 9 seasons. But unfortunately the NBA didn’t start handing out sixth man of the year awards until 1982. All 9 seasons he scored double digit points and finished his career with 11,517 total points. He played in 711 games for the Bucks which leads them in games played still to this day, beating Sidney Moncrief by 16 games. The Bucks retired his jersey number 2. Now let’s get into the start of the major income of his 600 Million Dollar net worth.
During NBA off seasons, Junior would study and learn the business of Wendy’s. It was his favorite fast food restaurant and after his NBA career he dreamed of working with Wendy’s. Immediately after his NBA career he invested in many many Wendy’s restaurants and Chili’s restaurants. But in 2016 he sold every single one that he owned and became a bottler for the Company of Coca-Cola. In 2018 he signed a letter of consent that gave him every single Coca-Cola bottling operations in Canada.
I know that this article is different and shorter than usual but I thought this was so cool. Junior Bridgeman put so much time and effort into the game of basketball and still had a backup plan the entire time. Shoutout Junior Bridgeman and his success outside of the NBA. Thank you guys so much for reading this. Hope you have a great rest of your day!
