Crying foul.

• Author: Lea, Amanda
• Position: NC TREND: Triangle Region - Christian Laettner faces debt claims from creditors - United States. Bankruptcy Courts

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Christian Laettner's venture into real-estate investing never proved as successful as his time on the basketball court, where he led the Duke Blue Devils to two NCAA championships in the early 1990s and then earned more than $60 million during his 13-year career in the pros. Now he faces a different kind of court, with five creditors, including Carolina Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart, pressing Laettner's assets into a voluntary restructuring in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court's Middle District of North Carolina. Unless Laettner is able to pay debts totaling $14 million or negotiate an agreement, which was being considered at press time, his creditors could take possession of his remaining real-estate holdings.

Laettner, former teammate Brian Davis and developer Tom Niemann started Blue Devil Ventures in 1995, using historic tax credits and other incentives to buy five tobacco warehouses in downtown Durham and convert them into apartments. Several years later, the real-estate firm bought and redeveloped more nearby buildings, leading to the 609 apartments and 104,000 square feet of commercial space now known as West Village. But between 2011 and 2013, Blue Devil Ventures had sold most of the project to Maryland-based Federal Capital...