That's still nice by the standards of most, but it's like falling one number short of the big lottery jackpot.

By comparison, consider ex-Jazz guard Derek Fisher — picked 24th in Livingston's '96 draft, one in which Allen Iverson went No. 1 overall — has three rings and will have pocketed more than $45 million by the time he's finished. Even journeyman Jacque Vaughn, who went 27th the next year to the Jazz, has made about $10 million.

But so be it.

Because, really, it's not about the ceiling of money for Livingston. It's about what could have been — on the floor.

"I chose to take that road, and so I don't really have any regrets," said Livingston, a married father of one daughter and one son who now makes the family home in West Palm Beach, Fla.

"I'm happy that (others) got an opportunity to get paid like they did. But you know you're better than them, and you perform better, and didn't get the break. But it just wasn't in the cards for that type of situation to happen.

"The toughest part of the experience," he added, "was just really knowing that you belong — that even after all the injuries, and all of the mishaps, and all the times getting waived, and then working as hard as I did in the minors, not making it, never really truly getting an opportunity to run (an NBA) team."

Playing abroad

Livingston was so desperate to keep playing at times, he even made the leap overseas.

Like so many NBA hopefuls playing in the Revue, the trips amounted to one disastrous experience after another.

One time he went to Russia and wound up spending several weeks in a Moscow hotel without any contact from the team that supposedly wanted him. Another time he went to Greece and played one game there, only to be chased away when it was falsely leaked that he had failed a drug test.

"I've never smoked pot in my life," said Livingston, who successfully managed to overcome the lure of such temptation by a mother who steered her son from the trappings of an infested New Orleans neighborhood.

Then there was the time in Turkey, where the pay didn't exactly turn out to be what was billed.

"After three months," Livingston said, "all the money was gone — mysteriously."

Hit by hurricane

Nothing was more troubling for Livingston and his family, though, than the tragedy of 2005.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out much of New Orleans and scattered Livingston's family members throughout the country.

His home was spared, but his mother — whom he steered clear this time, away from the horror that was the SuperDome, thanks to a fortuitously timed phone call — wound up evacuating on a plane to she-wasn't-precisely-sure-where.