kenny anderson finally trying to be a dad to his 7 kids with 5 different women

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092401766.html?hpid%3Dartslot&sub=AR[/url]

[QUOTE]He ran the production like a former point guard, which Kenny Anderson is, and as if his life depended on it, which, in a way, it did. He lined up the consents of five women - the mothers of his seven kids, some of them more amenable to the idea than others - and coordinated the kids' flights, same days, same arrival times, so as to minimize the waiting-around time at the airport. There was no time to waste. He was finally getting his kids together.

They came in two waves - the boys first, 11-year-old Kenneth and 8-year-old Devin, in from New Jersey for a three-week stay with their dad. Then, after they left, the four girls: Danielle, 19, flew in from Georgia. Christy, 17, had the longest flight, all the way from L.A. Lyric, 14, and Jazz, 12, who, unlike the others, had never traveled alone to visit their father, came in from New Jersey.

Meeting them all at the door of Anderson's house were 8-year-old Kenny Jr., of whom Anderson has full custody, and 8-year-old Tiana, Anderson's stepdaughter. Hugs, kisses, smiles. Whatever awkwardness there might have been among the various Anderson kids, some of whom had never spent time around the others, it soon melted away.

From the comfort of his home, Anderson, who didn't know his own father until his early 30s, contemplated the blessings of fatherhood and beamed. In the faces of his kids, he could see the evidence of his own past mistakes - the womanizing, the failed marriages, the hollow attempts at fatherhood he made during a 14-year NBA career that ended in 2005.

But over the course of those few amazing, late-summer weeks, he could also see the seeds of his new beginning, a new chapter for Kenny Anderson, now a 38-year-old, full-time, stay-at-home father to Kenny Jr. and Tiana, and an aspiring college basketball coach who wants nothing more than to distance himself from those past failures as a father, as a husband, as a man.

The magnitude of the moment absolutely blew him away.

"It was awesome," Anderson says. "Now they could all see how their daddy really is. They can see for themselves. I'm involved in their lives, all of them, but this was the first time I got all of them together.

"My mother, she'd be rolling over in her grave, she'd be so happy."

The transformation began with trauma - the threefold explosions of career exile, maternal death and financial ruin.

In March 2005 Anderson, the former No. 2 overall pick of the New Jersey Nets in 1991, was waived by the Los Angeles Clippers, his ninth team, effectively ending his NBA career after 14 seasons, 10,789 points and 5,196 assists and one all-star team (1993-94).

In October of that same year, Anderson lost his beloved mother, Joan, who had raised him alone in poverty in the sprawling Lefrak City housing complex of Queens, N.Y., and whose comfort and happiness in her later years provided Anderson his primary motivation to succeed.

That same month, mounting financial woes, much of it the result of child support issues, forced Anderson, who earned more than $63 million in the NBA, to file for bankruptcy. To many of those around him, it was inevitable and it was necessary.

"I believe he had to be at the very bottom to be able to say, 'Wow things are different,' " says Natasha Anderson, Kenny's third wife, a clinical social worker at a psychiatric hospital in Miami. "He had to do this."

Thank God for Tasha, say those who are closest to Kenny Anderson.

They met during the 2004 NBA playoffs in Miami: Kenny in street clothes, injured, on the Indiana Pacers' bench. Natasha, beautiful and bubbly, a graduate student in social work sitting courtside in the seats of her best friend's father.

"He asked for my number" Natasha says, laughing, "and it's history from there."

Within a few months, they were a serious enough item that Anderson was ready to introduce Natasha to his mother. It was a step he always dreaded, because Joan was hard to please.

But this time when Kenny showed up with Natasha at his mother's ranch house in Glen Cove, Long Island - which Anderson had bought for her within a week of signing his first NBA contract - she leaned close to Kenny's ear, he recalls, and said: "You've got something here, son. You gotta keep that woman right there.'"

"Me and my wife that's unconditional love there," Anderson says. "My other wives: infatuation. It wasn't love. It was just something to do."

Natasha, to be sure, was unlike any other woman Anderson had had in his life. She was salt-of-the-earth. She was strong. She "held Kenny accountable for Kenny," as she puts it.

"She just loves Kenny," says Dick Gilbert, Anderson's longtime mentor and friend. "Some of the other ones didn't love Kenny. They loved what Kenny could bring."

"Meeting Tasha," says Irwin Levy, Anderson's longtime attorney and friend, "was huge."

For as long as he has been on this planet, Anderson has had one strong woman in his life, and for a short while he had two. But then Joan passed away of a heart attack within a year of her meeting Natasha -- leaving Anderson, according to Gilbert, "inconsolable" and he was back down to one.

Yes, thank God for Tasha.

"I loved Kenny unconditionally," she says. "The only other woman who's ever done that was his mother. And I think he first saw that after he realized he wasn't making millions anymore, and he didn't have all the cars and the houses - and I didn't turn my back on him. We were going to do it together. If you fell, I fell.

"I think that's really what it was- having that one person who loves him just like his mother did."

The money came in fast, and went out faster. Salaries that peaked at $9.2 million in 2002-03. But also: Houses. Cars. Monthly expenses of $41,000, as claimed in Anderson's 2005 bankruptcy filing.

"The thing people don't understand is, it sounds like a lot of money, 60 million but there's Uncle Sam," Anderson says. "There's agent's fees, financial advisers, houses, allowances for family members who don't even work."

Anderson signed his first pro contract with the New Jersey Nets on Nov 7, 1991: five years, $14.5 million. He had just turned 21.

"He was too young," says Gilbert. "He was single. And when you have that kind of money coming in every month, I don't know too many kids who could fight that off for very long."

He soon became known around the league as a big spender, someone who liked bling, pretty women and, especially, fancy cars. At one time, he had 10 or 11 of them, he says now. He shakes his head when he says it.

"It was my fetish," he says. "It was ignorant. My accountant and my people told me - and I should've listened - like, 'Yo, you only need two cars.' But I was a kid."

Meantime, around the neighborhood back in Queens, and around his extended family, Anderson became known as someone you could turn to, someone who would "loan" you -- which is to say, give you -- three or four grand to dig you out of some hole of your own foolish making.

"I was generous," Anderson says. "I didn't say no. I used to have it bad, people calling me, crying. I used to be like, 'Aw, damn, man.' They were struggling. It's hard. My accountants, they were like: 'No!' I'd be like, 'But they're getting ready to get thrown out of their house!' So I helped."

Levy, the attorney, used to warn Anderson that if he continued to spend indiscriminately, he was going to wind up bankrupt. But Anderson wouldn't listen.

"It was frustrating from my vantage point because we wanted to make arrangements so that his children and grandchildren would never have to worry about financial matters - if he would just follow the guidelines we set for him," Levy says. "But he was so ridiculously generous. He learned, but he learned after the horse had left the barn."

Gilbert adds: "He was just too young. I couldn't reach him. I tried."

Anderson wants to be careful how he says this: He's doing just fine financially. Better than fine. But there's only so much he can say. "I don't want to get in any trouble," he says with a laugh. But this much is observable: He drives a Cadillac Escalade. He and his family live in a modest, three-bedroom house purchased in 2005, according to real estate records, for $415,000.

"I ain't no millionaire like I used to be, but I'm well off," he says. "I did some foolish things, but I'm blessed to be in the situation I'm in. My house is paid for. I'm in a nice neighborhood. I'm good. I'm the same old Kenny. I haven't changed, money or no money."

Natasha says: "He'll be the first to tell you, he's the happiest he's ever been. No, he doesn't live in a mansion. But his home is a home. He had mansions, and he was never in them. He never spent time with his family there. We have our vehicles, but we don't have five or six of them. He's comfortable."

Here's one other thing about the money: Anderson doesn't seem to miss the days when it was plentiful.

"Money didn't make me," he says. "Did I spend a lot of money? Yes, I did. Foolishly? Yes, at times. I helped a lot of people, donated a lot of things. I ran a Kenny Anderson basketball tournament in Lefrak City for 10 years straight. No sponsors, no nothing. That's out of my pocket - like, 30-, 40 grand a summer. Did anybody say anything? No, it don't matter.

"You know what? All that stuff? Everything that's gone, and everything I've got now? It'll all come back to me. I just know it. You can always get money. You can work. But my character, my integrity - they're not going anywhere."

It's a beautiful life Kenny Anderson leads these days, beautiful in its simplicity and its structure.

He gets a call every morning, between 6 and 7 am, from Al Taylor, his pastor back home, whom Anderson has known since junior high, and who married him and Natasha back in July 2007.

"Sometimes we talk about Scripture, but sometimes there's something else in his heart, and I just wind up listening to Kenny," Taylor says. "Sometimes, Kenny is going deep."

Next, Anderson drives Kenny Jr. and Tiana -- Natasha's daughter -- to their public elementary school and finds something to do until it's time to pick them up again at 2:15. He's a prolific Twitterer, particularly between, say, 8 am. and 2 pm.

"My life," Anderson says, "is so simple now."

Anderson says nothing woke him up to the realities of his new, post-basketball life quite like seeking custody of Kenny four years ago, just as his own career wound down.

"That was the turning point in my life," he says. "He was a big savior. He changed me. I'd never had custody of any of my kids. I was like: 'All right, I got my son. This is real here. I gotta teach him how to be a man, how to be better than me.' Every time I look at him, I look at stability."

Like the majority of successful athletes, Anderson struggled with the transition into retirement -- perhaps more so because his transition involved a wife finishing up her degree and preparing for her own career, and two kids who were suddenly his full-time responsibility.

"I was still being selfish," he says. "I said, 'I have to be home with them all day?' It sounds crazy, but I'm just being honest. I love my kids, but I was like: 'I gotta be with them all day? I don't know how to do this.' But I learned."

Natasha says, "Coming down off that pedestal is hard. When you're an athlete who has been glorified for your entire life, and then it's gone overnight, it's like, 'Now what?' You're grasping and struggling. It took almost a whole year for Kenny to be like: 'Oh, wait. I've gotta wake up. I've gotta get motivated.' "

He found his motivation, ultimately, in the quest for a college coaching job.
[/QUOTE]

the article is too long to post it all but its pretty interesting.
typical follies of some nba players- multiple kids, reckless spending, etc but at least he now seems happy

Not sure what some other people think, but Kenny Anderson was a Beast. NYC Legend for sure.

Hope he gets a job at St.Johns once Roberts is fired.

[QUOTE=Interminator]Not sure what some other people think, but Kenny Anderson was a Beast. NYC Legend for sure.

Hope he gets a job at St.Johns once Roberts is fired.[/QUOTE]

he was a beast but ultimately i don't think he met expectations. i thought he was going to be amazing in the nba, which he wasn't. he was still very very solid for many years.

rod strickland is everything kenny anderson ever wanted to be.

Shawn Kemp called. He says 'Good Luck, Kenny'

Its good that at least there are some athletes who choose to be accountable for their mistakes in life. He screwed up multiple times. Marrying multiple woman, having multiple kids, spending like theres no tomorrow and then finally going bankrupt. But so many guys would just run away from the responsibility of being in their children's lives. I'm sure he is not a great father, but at least he is trying to rectify his mistakes and he is trying to be apart of their lives. Lots of athletes could learn from him and stop being deadbeat dads. Or at least if you are a deadbeat dad, try to change and do something about it. Good luck to him, he seemed to be at a very happy place while reading the article

[QUOTE=AmoebaD]rod strickland is everything kenny anderson ever wanted to be.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqM8ugxPJE[/url]

too long to read, but good for him

Hopefully he's truly getting things in check. I remember him half joking during the '98 lockout about things getting so bad financially that he might have to possibly sell one of his cars.

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/26/sports/pro-basketball-when-millionaires-are-laid-off.html?src=pm[/url]

I shudder at how much he must pay a month in child support. :milton

Its amazing to me how many people who overspend, file bankruptcy, and then somehow end up still living rich or very well after bankruptcy. It seems to happen all of the time with celebrities. Even if you watch that housewives show that Italian couple was in debt hundreds of thousands, the wife was still going on $20k shopping spree's, and getting a multi million dollar house built, and even after they file bankruptcy they still live well and got to keep a lot of it.

While the taxpayers are paying off their debts. I don't know if i've just seen one side of it, but it seems like every irresponsible person that wastes away all of their money just files for bankruptcy to clear debt, and has some hidden nest egg where they live well off of afterward.

Antonio Cromartie's idol

[QUOTE=DuMa]Shawn Kemp called. He says 'Good Luck, Kenny'[/QUOTE]
yeah i think the call went the other way around.

His daughters name is Lyric and Jazz :facepalm

[QUOTE=Naruto-sama]Its amazing to me how many people who overspend, file bankruptcy, and then somehow end up still living rich or very well after bankruptcy. It seems to happen all of the time with celebrities. Even if you watch that housewives show that Italian couple was in debt hundreds of thousands, the wife was still going on $20k shopping spree's, and getting a multi million dollar house built, and even after they file bankruptcy they still live well and got to keep a lot of it.

While the taxpayers are paying off their debts. I don't know if i've just seen one side of it, but it seems like every irresponsible person that wastes away all of their money just files for bankruptcy to clear debt, and has some hidden nest egg where they live well off of afterward.[/QUOTE]
Do taxpayers really pay off peoples debt after they declare bankruptcy? I don't think so...

[QUOTE=bluechox2]too long to read, but good for him[/QUOTE]

Agreed.

I hope he does well with his kids. Kids need a father. Too bad he missed the days then were babies, those are the funnest imo.