That's true enough, parent should have been more careful in word choice. But it doesn't change the fact that even the worst players get paid a significant amount of money and should be able to retire just fine, if they knew how to manage their money.
I was going to argue with this but after some research, NBA players really do get decent minimums. In other sports, you can be the last pro who managed to not get cut and only get $100k per year, which is nice but isn't "retire after five years of it" money either. In the NBA, the minimum salary for a rookie is still $490k and it goes up to $788k after one year. That really is "retire after five years of it" money.