Team inside jokes can be the best.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have a good one — that backup point guard Jose Calderon is heir to a $2.2 billion bottling fortune. It all started with Channing Frye (while he was still a Cav) and has continued to this day.
Dave McMenamin of ESPN tells a great story (with great reporting) on this.Frye, who even by NBA player standards spends an inordinate amount of time on his phone scrolling through social media, came across an unexpected Google search result. Cleveland’s 36-year-old backup point guard was listed as the heir to a $2.2 billion fortune, thanks to his father’s stake in a Coca-Cola bottling company named FEMSA....
The problem is, it’s not true.
“It’s not,” Calderon said. “I wish. I wish I could say, ‘Yeah, it is true. ...’ But, no, no, no. No, it’s not.”
The actual billionaires are brothers named Jose and Francisco Jose Calderon Rojas. They are Mexican. Calderon is Spanish.
That hasn’t stopped the falsehood from spreading around the league (that something not true has legs and will not go away is one of the defining characteristics of the last few years in America). Players from other teams ask him about it.
Also, the Cavaliers are not letting it go, true or not. Doesn’t matter. He’s the billionaire now, he’s going to have to pick up a lot of dinner checks.
Go check out the entire story, there are a lot of great tidbits in there.
