Mark Wright

Junior Bridgeman made about $2.95 million in his entire twelve year NBA career. Never more than $350,000 in a single season. He died worth $1.4 billion. And the way he did it started with him working a drive-thru window while he was still an active player. Here's the whole thing. Bridgeman went 8th overall in the 1975 draft, then got traded to Milwaukee in the deal that sent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Lakers. He was never a star. He was a sixth man, one of the best in the league at it, long before there was an award for the job. Twelve seasons, 13.6 points a game, zero All-Star appearances. Solid pro. Nothing that makes you rich. So in the late 1970s, during the offseason, Bridgeman got a job at a Wendy's in Milwaukee. Not as an owner. Not as an investor. As a cashier. Working the window, taking orders, handling complaints, watching how the kitchen timed tickets during a lunch rush. He didn't need the money. He needed to know how the business actually worked. Then in 1988, a few years after he retired, a woman walked up to the counter at a Wendy's in South Milwaukee and a tall man handed her a tray. She recognized him as an NBA player. Later that week she called a local radio station to complain about it. Bridgeman was driving to his downtown office when he heard her on the air saying it was a shame that a former NBA player had to work fast food. He owned the restaurant. And several others in the city. His first attempt at it had actually failed. He and teammate Paul Silas opened a Wendy's in Brooklyn together and it went under. He started over in Milwaukee with a handful of locations and just kept buying. At its peak his company owned more than 450 restaurants across the country. Wendy's, Chili's, Fazoli's, Golden Corral. At one point he was the second largest Wendy's franchisee in America. In 2016 he sold most of it for a reported $250 million. Then he did the thing that made him a billionaire. He took that money and bought Coca-Cola bottling territory. Heartland Coca-Cola, covering Illinois, Kansas and Missouri, and later a stake in Coke's entire Canadian bottling operation. Bottling is unglamorous, protected, and enormously profitable. Heartland grew toward a billion dollars in annual revenue. In 2020 he bought Ebony and Jet magazines, two of the most important publications in Black American history, for a reported $14 million, after they'd gone through bankruptcy. And in September 2024, Junior Bridgeman bought a 10 percent stake in the Milwaukee Bucks at a $4 billion valuation. The team that traded for him in 1975. He went from a bench player on that roster to an owner of it. In February 2025, Forbes put his net worth at $1.4 billion. Only four men who ever played in the NBA have reached a billion dollars. Michael Jordan. Magic Johnson. LeBron James. And Junior Bridgeman, who averaged 13.6 points a game. He is the only one of the four who wasn't a superstar. The other three built on fame. He built on knowing how a kitchen runs. On March 11, 2025, Bridgeman was in Louisville doing a television interview when he said he thought he was having a heart attack. He died at the hospital that day. He was 71. The Bucks retired his number 2. A sixth man who never made $350,000 in a season spent his summers learning to run a drive-thru window. Fifty years later he owned a piece of the franchise. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap