Name: How basketball’s biggest prospect became a health businessman
Uploaded: 2014-08-04
Duration: 5 min 20 s
Description: After being forced to leave the NBA because of injuries, Jonathan Bender decided to design a product to help athletes heal more effectively.

Jonathan Bender was a six foot eleven guard, hadn't gone to college, and there was a lot of hype around him when he was entering the NBA draft. So Bender got drafted by the Pacers in '99, huge prospect, and then in his first game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, scores 10 points, very good for an 18 year old, and it started to seem like the hype was all merited and he was gonna be. A huge start in the NBA. Coming from a very small town, never had anybody in my family that did anything outside of the norm, so I thought that I was set, that was a done deal, not only me, but my whole family, everybody was set. In his first couple of years, Jonathan Bender did not live up to the hype, some of it was a. Of injuries that plagued him his entire career. He struggled his first few years in the league. And he's, he's very open about that. unfortunately Bender had this ongoing knee problem, so he got extended by the Pacers, got a new contract. And then maybe, 6 or 7 years into his time in the NBA he suddenly had to have knee surgery. It became a mental and physical game. From that point own. About my 11th time of going back to rehab mode, coming back, going back in rehab mode and coming back, we thought it would be best just to walk away and take some time off. And that's when I decided to do it right around 2006. [ MUSIC ] Here's this guy in his mid. 20's. Basketball was going to be his life, and everyone expected him to be a huge star. And now this injury has sidelined him. And going in and out of rehab and he started to think, what do I do now? You know I wanted to invest in things that I could control and that had the capacity to build and grow. I love music so I was trying to follow areas that I had passion in. Music company. I did a couple concerts, couple shows, Mary J. Blige, Chris Brown. And, took some losses through the way. That felt like it gave me high blood pressure. So, that didn't work out. I tried real estate. And, that's a very expensive game. I was losing so much in the game of business, with me it was more like, okay, I may need to go ahead and get myself prepared to go back, but I still have pain. Let's see if I can solve this problem, and that is when I decided to set out to develop a device that can help me, and can assist me in that rehabilitation. He's been in and out of rehab. He doesn't have a medical degree, he doesn't much education outside of high school, but he's been to so many doctors, so many trainers and if he gets to have his epiphany, hey, I have an idea of how I might be able to develop a rehab product and this all a function of living. My whole thought was quad reactions, glut reactions while I was doing basketball type movements. So if I have pressure on your core, I'm able to take pressure off your lower back. When I saw the way a person picked up their leg and put it down. I kind of drew it in my head. I drew these vans going down, and I said, okay, what can it wrap to? I thought about a shoe, thought about some sort of brace, so I was thinking of the pieces that I would need. So he goes home, and he starts building and comes up with what would end up his first prototype of the JB intensive trainer. I had to make these one at a time. It took a little while, but, you know, I was able to get my point across. I had to go through several different generations of it, just trying to see what worked, what didn't work. And, that's basically what I did throughout three years. So it's like I take all the pressure off your lower extremities. But I'm redirecting all that pressure to the muscles that matter. I was using it on myself, and as the months and years went by I became a whole lot stronger, so I knew the effects it would have on someone with a knee problem. I didn't really know how to bring it to market, I didn't have that knowledge. But I knew that it would serve big later on if I was able to make a comeback and also mentioned that a product that I developed helped me make a comeback. So, it was sort of a save yourself. But, at the same time, this was a good marketplace. When I walked away from the game in 2006, I always knew I would at least try again. 2009- 2010 season, I was able to get my leg strong enough. I was able to come back and play a full season for the New York Knicks. And, was actually offered a second year. Deal after my second game, and I didn't take it because my goals were different, and I wanted to stay true to myself and continue what I had started. My goal in year one was to do a half a million. In the first week we did about $ 50, 000 in sales. But obviously weve blown through that, it's doing real well and definitely exceeded the goals so far. I think Bender is a true entrepreneur, he built the prototype himself. He did all the experiments on his own with no background in the field. If you think about it what's so impressive about Bender's story isn't just that he's succeeded in business after pro- athletics which is hard enough. But that with no college degree, the business he went into was the medical world, and now he's offering free clinics and he's got a medical device that helps people recover from knee injury. It's pretty amazing.

After being forced to leave the NBA because of injuries, Jonathan Bender decided to design a product to help athletes heal more effectively.