NBA player Junior Bridgeman became a big name and died at the age of 71.

Junior Bridgeman passed away Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky after 10 years of stakes in hundreds of fast food restaurants, Coca-Cola bottle-making business and minority stakes in the Milwaukee Bucks, following the NBA's powerful career in an astonishing entrepreneurial run.

The cause was a heart event, a family spokesman said. A spokesman said Bridgeman was talking to a local TV reporter at a charity event at the Garthouse Hotel when he said he felt he was suffering a heart attack, and he was taken to the hospital.

Bridgeman's business success has brought him a net worth of $1.4 billion this year, Forbes magazine described him as “the only NBA player with ten-digit destiny alongside Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and LeBron James.”

Johnson wrote in X after his death, but he added that Bridgeman, a former small forward, had “one of the sweetest jump shots in the NBA,” he added.

Bridgeman has been a major star for 12 seasons in the NBA, 10 of 10 and two seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers. However, he stood out as the sixth man who boosted scoring from the bench of the Milwaukee team, primarily under coach Don Nelson. From 1975 to 1987, Bridgeman averaged 13.6 points.

“Junior is coming out of the bench for us, so we're going to start him,” Nelson told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. Juniors still get a few minutes so who doesn't matter. ”

Bridgeman's first major taste of business success invested $150,000 in 1978 in a new cable television business run by Jim Fitzgerald, the majority owner of the Bucks. A few years later, Fitzgerald handed him a check of $700,000.

Around that time, Bridgeman was fascinated by the fact that Bucks general manager and former NBA player Wayne Embry owns the Milwaukee McDonald's franchise. Bridgeman came to believe that ownership would appeal to him rather than work for others when he retired.

In 1984 he invested in Wendy's fast food restaurant in Chicago. Three years later, he and another former NBA player Paul Cyrus started a business together at another Wendy outlet in Brooklyn, which proved to be a money loser. After retiring from the Bucks, Bridgeman attended Wendy's Training School and learned everything he could about running the franchise.

In 1988 he invested an estimated $750,000 to buy five Wendy's restaurants in Milwaukee.

“He would have worked in the restaurant like an hour's worker,” former Bucks teammate Sidney Moncliffe told ESPN in 2024. And he wore those working pants. ”

From that very beginning, Bridgeman built an empire of around 450 fast food restaurants in the United States. In 2016 he announced that he had sold those chunks (120 chili peppers and 100 wendy) to individual buyers, and had agreed to buy territory from Coca-Cola companies in Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, and set up a bottling company to produce and distribute the company's BOMERAGE brand.

In 2018 he added to his beverage holdings by investing in a joint venture that acquired Coca-Cola's Canadian bottling and distribution business. His partner, Larry Tanenbaum, is chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, owns several professional teams, including the Toronto Raptors and Maple Leafs, and is also chairman of the NBA committee.

“I was introduced through a mutual friend in the NBA,” wrote Ken Tanenbaum, executive chairman of the sons of Coca-Cola Bottling Canada and Larry, emailed. “My father and I cherished him as a partner and friend,” said Bridgman, who was a small partner, but Tanenbaum, “we were always running as a true partnership.”

Ulysses Lee Bridgeman Jr. was born on September 17, 1953 in East Chicago, Indiana, to Ulysses Lee Bridgeman Sr. and Delores (Meader) Bridgeman, Delores (Meader), who worked at an iron factory.

He led Louisville Cardinals University to the final four of the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 1975, losing 36 points to UCLA against Rutgers in the 1975 Midwest Region quarterfinals game. That same year he averaged 16.2 points and 7.4 rebounded the game. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1975.

In the 1975 NBA Draft, he was selected eighth overall by the Los Angeles Lakers. Less than a month later, however, he was sent to the bust trade Bucks, which brought future Hall of Fame centre Kareem Abdul Jabber to the Lakers.

Bridgeman played for the Bucks, along with Sydney Moncliffe, Marquez Johnson and Bob Lanier, among other things. The Bucks won six division titles in 60 games with Mr. Bridgeman of Milwaukee in the 1980-81 season, but never passed the conference final.

After nine seasons with the Bucks, Bridgeman was traded for the Clippers in 1984. He returned to the Bucks for the 1986-87 season.

He spoke to the New York Times in 2004, thinking about what to do with basketball.

And he said the food business was interested in him.

“I felt that one of the things people always try to do is eat,” he said. “So I was trying to invest in something, so I thought food would be the safest investment.”

He added Ebony and Jet magazines to his restaurant and bottling portfolio. He bought it from Bankruptcy Court in 2020 for $14 million. Both magazines have moved to digital-only platforms after they stopped printing and publishing.

“When you look at ebony, you look at US history as well as black people,” Bridgeman told the Chicago Tribune at the time of purchase. “I think that's something that generations lack, and we want to take it back as much as we can.”

Mr. Bridgeman was survived by his wife, Doris (Paine) Bridgeman. His daughter, Eden Bridgeman Screnner, is the CEO of Ebony and Jet. Ryan, president of his son, Ryan, Mana, owns Justin, executive director of the family's remaining 240 Wendy outlets, Fazoli Restaurants and Golden Coral Restaurants, and Bottling Business, Heartland Coca-Cola. his sister, April Bridgeman. his brothers, Daryl and Samuel. and six grandchildren.

Last September, Bridgeman returned to his Milwaukee basketball roots and won a 10% stake in the Bucks.

“When this opportunity presented itself,” he said at a press conference, “it seemed like a natural thing to do to get the opportunity to participate not only in the minds of the organizations that are coming, but also in the physical form.”