With all due respect to the Portland Trail Blazers’ season, head coach Chauncey Billups plans to take a leave of absence to pay respect to Junior Bridgeman whenever his homegoing service take place. The late Bridgeman, a billionnaire businessman and 12-year NBA veteran with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Clippers from, was a mentor and business partner of Billups.
“I don’t care when it is. I’m going,” Billups told Andscape in a phone interview on Wednesday hours before his Blazers hosted the New York Knicks. “I don’t care. This is somebody that is extremely, tremendously important to me and my life. And I wouldn’t miss it for anything just to be there and pay my respects. He would have done it for me.
“He’s enhanced my life in a major way. And I’ve run a lot of major decisions by him. And that’s just how I feel about him. He was the man, bro. I can’t believe this.”
Bridgeman passed away in Louisville, Kentucky, at the age of 71 on Tuesday after suffering a heart attack at a luncheon. The former University of Louisville men’s basketball star had an incredibly lucrative business career after retiring from basketball. He owned over 450 restaurants nationwide, including Wendy’s and Chili’s franchises, became a Coca-Cola distributor, and owned Ebony and Jet magazines.
Bridgeman played 10 seasons with the Bucks and two with the Clippers. Milwaukee retired his No. 2 jersey in 1988 after he averaged 13.9 points in 711 games with the franchise. Bridgeman also purchased 10% of the Bucks in 2024.
When Billups played with the Denver Nuggets in the late 2000s, he met Bridgeman who spoke to the team about business after basketball. After receiving several years of mentoring from Bridgeman, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer joined forces with him to own as many as 33 Wendy’s and Blaze Pizza chains in St. Louis, Kansas City and Illinois together. The 2004 NBA Finals Most Valuable Player added that he was also once involved in Bridgeman’s failed bid to buy the Atlanta Hawks in 2015.
The following is an Andscape exclusive interview with Billups about his relationship with Bridgeman.
Troy Fields/NBAE via Getty Images
How are you holding up after getting the tragic news Tuesday?
It was a rough day, man. Rough day. But I’m hanging in. I’m good though. I found out from one of Junior and I’s mutual friend who actually has been working for Junior for years and years. He was actually at the event with him, called me right away and it just blew my mind down. I was in shock.
How did you meet Mr. Bridgeman?
I met Junior in 2008 or 2009. I was playing for the Nuggets and we had these business of basketball meetings. He came and spoke to our team and talked about his journey through the league and his journey through business. He was obviously uber successful at the time and I was coming towards the end of my career and I always had this interest in business and had been looking for a mentor for quite some time.
I talked to [NBA legend and successful businessman] Magic Johnson at one point. Set up meetings with him. With Junior, I took his card afterwards and went to visit him three summers in a row. I just flew down to Louisville, Kentucky, his headquarters, got a hotel and just went and spent a week with him, just kind of learning the business, just being mentored by him, learned everything I could learn.
I would go to Wendy’s with him and he went in there and worked. I would just go sit there for hours and just watch him, listen and learn. And the fourth year we talked, he told me we may have an opportunity if I was interested. I was down there right away and we started talking about going into business together in Wendy’s and spent time going to go look at a couple markets. One was St. Louis, one was Phoenix, and we ended up doing the deal, buying [in] the St. Louis market.
And from then on, we just got closer and closer and he became one of my biggest mentors and obviously business partners. But he was just a friend and confidant. I just run everything my whole life by him. I trusted him to the fullest and he’s one of the best people I ever met in my life.
We bought [in] the St. Louis market for Wendy’s restaurants. We bought 30 stores together. It was just him and I as partners. And we grew it a few since then. We bought Blaze Pizzas together in the same market. Just a lot of different business things we went in together on.
“All the important decisions in my life, he had a hand in it.”
– Chauncey Billups on Junior Bridgeman
Why do you think he was comfortable doing business with you?
Everybody reached out to Junior because they heard about him, his success, this and that. But 99 percent of the people that reached out to Junior, nobody ever went down there, took their time, spent their own money to go and just learn and sit back and learn. Get to know him. Get to know his family. Learn the business. Learn why.
They just saw that big number and that success and said, ‘Oh man, I want to get to know this dude.’ That was never my approach. I wanted to get to know the guy, why he chose this business. I heard so many stories from him. So, I think that just my level of engagement and commitment to try to learn is what made him say this, ‘I want to pour into this one.’ ”
What was the one thing that he said during that meeting when you were with the Nuggets that resonated with you?
I don’t know if it was one thing. I just think just his level of humility. From the day I met him, I just saw him as a ‘man’s man.’ He was just so humble, yet so, so successful.
Most people don’t know how good of a basketball player he was. Every generation, the two before that, those guys fall off. You don’t even remember those dudes. But his number is retired in Milwaukee, just to let you know the level of player that he was. People don’t even know that. But it was just who he was. It was his presence.
He reminded me of [ex-Nuggets and Detroit Pistons teammate] Antonio McDyess as a person. Like an older version of Antonio McDyess. Just so humble, so quiet, kind of shy. Doesn’t like really being in the public. He handles his business. He’s very quiet about it. But uber-successful. I just loved that about him. And I felt like the next part of my life, I needed to learn from somebody that I feel like can teach me every single thing and has been through every single thing. I would love for it to be him.
Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
How good a basketball player was he?
He was a bucket. And it’s funny. He was a big-time golfer. Golfed a lot of places. I played a lot of golf with him. And some of his former teammates would play with us. And so, I get all the stories. And they all said, ‘Junior, he was definitely a bucket when they say he didn’t want to pass that ball.’ So that would be the joke.
I’m like, ‘Not the most unselfish person I’ve met in my life. What do you mean?’ So, he was a scorer, but in the heyday with Milwaukee. He was a sixth man type of dude that could just come in and get buckets.
What kind of life advice that sticks out to you about him that he gave you?
We talked a lot about family, spirituality, things like that. He’s married to Doris, who he’s known [for a long time]. I’m obviously married to my high school sweetheart. Doris is basically like his college sweetheart. So, we talked about that. Just kids. A lot of things we talk about in terms of being a father is growing up.
One of the biggest struggles you will always have when you do have means is how much to give your kids and how much to make them earn because you want them to have more than you ever had. So, he just mentored me on so many things like that. Relationships, personal business, everything. My decision to go into TV for a little while and take a deep breath, decompress from the game, talked to them about that. Talked to him about when I wanted to start coaching. All the things, all the important decisions in my life, he had a hand in it.
Do you remember the last time you visited with him?
It was probably about six weeks ago. We talk about going to St. Louis to go to the stores and have meetings and just do what we do after the [NBA] season was over for me, something that we always kind of do. And we were going meet and play some golf and just do what we do. Just a normal little thing.
Had he given you any encouragement about coaching with the Blazers and your team’s improvement of late this season?
He was excited. He was happy for me. I’ve talked to him several times over the last few years about just the difficulties coaching and what I’ve learned, what I didn’t know coming in and how tough it is, the rebuilding process. We’ve talked, and he met me in Toronto last year, came to the game and we had dinner right after. He’s seen us really struggle and he was just like, ‘Chaunce, it looks like those guys are growing up and starting to learn a little bit.’ And he was just happy for me.
And I was happy for him when he finally bought into the Bucks. He told me that was his birthday present to buy into the league, into ownership.
What could you say about Mr. Bridgeman’s attempt to buy the Hawks in 2015?
For years, Junior had been really, really contemplating getting into ownership in the NBA. He was in a deal where he was very close to maybe buying the Hawks at one point. He offered me to come in on the group with him. That meant a lot to me. That’s how he felt about me, to allow me to come in and be a part of the ownership group with him. So, he tried to buy it and it didn’t go through because Tony Ressler outbid it.
There have been a lot of things like that that we have been through on a lot of different levels. He is going to be severely missed in my life.
For someone who’s never met him, what should learn from him?
One thing that I would say about Junior, he’s seen the best in everybody. And that’s kind of how he judged you, knowing that everybody has some weak moments.
The reason why I picked franchising to go into is because Junior always told me, ‘The fast-food business is a people’s business. A lot of times you hire people who most of the world deem second-class kind of citizens. And you give them opportunities to not only have a job but have a career. And they’re going to work as hard as they can for you. Always treat them properly.’ But I fell in love with that, and that’s just kind of who he was, and he’s changed so many lives because of that.
