Former NBA star Adrian Dantley's lawsuit filed against two
of the top agents in sports, Donald Dell and David Falk, as well
as several other former associates of ProServ, is profiled in
this morning's WASHINGTON POST. Ken Denlinger writes that in a
$10M lawsuit filed in DC Superior Court in March, amended to $15M
in early August, Dantley alleges that over a nine-year period
starting in '79, "the defendants invested in excess of $1.5
million of Dantley's earnings in speculative real estate and oil
and gas ventures which ... for the most part are now worthless."
The defendants deny the allegations. In a three-page statement
to the POST, Dell noted, "It is important to remember that the
money Adrian chose to invest in [the investments in question]
amounted to only about 18 percent of his career NBA income." The
suit claims it was not until Dantley's career ended in July '92
that he realized how much money he had lost. He requested
information and documents related to his monies and was told by
Falk the information would not be given to him. Falk says he had
resigned from ProServ by that time and denied the allegations.
The other defendants, Francis Craighill, Lee Fentress and William
Dean Smith (all now with Advantage) were also "out of the picture
by then." According to Dantley, "I just want to get my money
back so I can go on with my life" (WASHINGTON POST, 11/30).
