Christian Laettner is famous at Duke for his heroics during the 1992 NCAA tournament, but he also contributed to Duke’s student life after he graduated—by putting together the initial $36.5 million funding to turn West Village into student apartments in the mid-1990s. But his Duke basketball career and his real-estate exploits have begun to collide in an unpleasant fashion.
Laettner and former teammate and current business partner Brian Davis will appear in court this week, where a judge will decide whether to hold the pair in contempt of court for failure to repay loans made to their real-estate company by, among others, Duke legend Johnny Dawkins, former NBA All-Star Scottie Pippen, and former All-Pro linebacker Shawne Merriman.
In Jan. 2011, a Washington, D.C. judge ordered Laettner and Davis—whose real-estate partnership is called Blue Devil Ventures—to pay Dawkins $671,309. Laettner and Davis have claimed that they lack the funds to make the payments, but creditors have questioned those claims, especially given that Laettner earned more than $61 million during his 13-year NBA career, according to Basketball-Reference.com. Among some $26 million in total debt, Laettner and Davis owe $2.5 million to Pippen and an additional $3.7 million to Merriman, according to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press.
Laettner, 42, currently works as an assistant coach for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA Developmental League, and his current employment is not the first time he has tried to get involved in sports management. He and Davis—whose own NBA career lasted just a single season—led a group of investors that reportedly reached an agreement to purchase a 70-percent share of the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies in 2006, but the deal fell through when Davis failed to meet a deadline to demonstrate to the NBA that he could produce the $252 million necessary to purchase the majority stake. The duo was also set to pay $33 million for Major League Soccer club D.C. United, but ended up purchasing just a minority share in the team.
The sale of the West Village development is underway to satisfy the creditors of Blue Devil Ventures while Laettner and Davis prepare to take a different kind of court in Washington, D.C., this time with Johnny Dawkins on the other team.
—from staff reports
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