Dudley’s right on the money

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Mar 21, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Chris Dudley was always a little sharper than your average NBA player. Now the ex-Blazer, who made more than a few greenbacks during his 16 years in the league, is poised to share his knowledge.

Dudley, 41, has accepted a position as vice president of Portland’s M Financial Wealth Management, a division of M Financial Group. The man who has raised more than $1 million for children through his Dudley Foundation endeavors now is responsible for making money for clients.

“I’m very excited,” says Dudley, an economics major at Yale University who began his new job last week. “I’ve always been interested in investing and personal finance. I knew if I wasn’t involved in basketball, this is the area I would go when I got done playing.”

The former center isn’t sure if he will return as volunteer assistant coach at Lake Oswego High, where he has worked with Laker prodigy Kevin Love the last two years.

“I’ve had a great experience the last two years,” Dudley says. “Time permitting, I’d love to do it again. But I don’t know if time will permit.”

• Joey Kaempf is going to play another year of college basketball. Was there any doubt?

“It was too good an opportunity to pass up,” says the Jesuit High grad, who burst onto the scene as a walk-on at Santa Clara this winter, elevating from nobody to star status in a matter of months. “I’ll never have another chance like this.”

The 6-1 Kaempf Ñ who will graduate in political science this spring but retains another year of basketball eligibility Ñ was discovered when he was playing a pickup game against some players whom Santa Clara coaches were considering for walk-on status last fall. Kaempf, a first-team all-state tournament selection in 2002, was the best player on the floor, and coaches asked him to turn out for the team.

An undersize shooting guard, Kaempf didn’t play much early until a 13-point outburst against San Diego midway through the season, a game in which he hit 4 of 5 shots from 3-point range.

Kaempf gradually earned more playing time, made five starts and proved his mettle in a season-ending loss to St. Mary’s in the West Coast Conference quarterfinals. Kaempf hit 6 of 9 3-pointers in the game, including one at the end of regulation that forced overtime. He wound up with 21 points and seven rebounds, and soon thereafter decided it was worth it to play another season Ñ at his own expense.

“We have a chance to have a real good team,” says Kaempf, who will take graduate courses next fall and winter terms. “Last year, I didn’t even know I would be playing until mid-October. I’ll have a whole year to prepare this time. Everything’s going to be different.”

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