Dahntay Jones was sitting at lunch when he came close to landing his first real estate client.

He was in a restaurant and ran into someone he knew. He told the acquaintance he was in town for an NBA Job Shadow Program and working with the real estate firm Douglas Elliman when a woman turned around and said she was in the market.

“[She] asked me what my involvement was with the company because they were trying to get me to help sell their property if I had my license already,” Jones said.

Jones doesn’t have his license, but he joined 13 other NBA players who participated in the NBA’s offseason job shadow programs with the real estate company, Facebook and Google as a way to plan for life after basketball – and just learn about a new business.

“I really didn’t have a vast amount of knowledge about the business so I wanted to learn and see if I could translate my skills to that business,” the 35-year-old Jones said.

NBA players participated in the program with Douglas Elliman in three different cities – New York, Los Angeles and Miami and depending on the city got a chance to meet with different people throughout the company, visit properties, listen to speakers and learn the basics of the business. For Jones, that included having lunch with its CEO – an opportunity that NBA Senior Vice President, Player of Development Greg Taylor turned into a pretty important opportunity if Jones ever does want to change careers and try real estate.

“Watching them enjoy [lunch] was a really great moment. He realized his celebrity is interesting to the CEO of the Elliman, she realizes here is a guy who is interested in real estate and just wants to connect him to resources,” Taylor said. “She picked up the phone and said if Dahntay wants to be enrolled in the real estate program that Elliman offers, she would make that happen … It’s a tremendous opportunity for him.”

CJ Watson, who participated in a job shadow program at both Google and Douglas Elliman said he learned a lot of practical real estate tips from his time at Douglas Elliman. Once he got to Google, they spoke with employees about the hiring process, learned about what the company was working on and sat in some meetings. Watson said he was most struck by how their meetings weren’t exactly how he pictured them to be.

“They had different interactive meetings, like have a meeting on a big circle bicycle, meetings like that around campus around the city, when you’re riding on a bike which is kind of cool,” he said, “and different than what you see in any other company.”

He said it was far from his first time in an office though – his mom had him do internships and mock job interviews throughout his childhood and basketball had never really been his only option.

“I never wanted to really play basketball for a living. I wanted to be a barber – or my dad worked at the trash company – so that was something I wanted to do,” he said. “I just played basketball because it was fun and it just kept me out of trouble. But I’ve been doing internships all my life. My mom works for the city and she just wanted me to be better, even if I did play basketball. She just wanted to make sure that I was smart and I did things that a person who wouldn’t play sports would do.”

The players who spoke to For The Win were unanimous in their desire to keep with their basketball careers for now. But having some options whenever they’re done, said Taylor, is really just what the league wants to provide. The programs are based on what career areas players said they’re interested in learning more about.

“The mandate on our staff is to find top notch partners to help us develop and design substantive programs to expose guys to all aspects of real estate,” he said, “really with the intent to inspire those guys that really do want to pursue a career and to understand and then take steps to be a leader in that career industry.”