Here’s a new way for the ex-basketball player Jason Caffey to keep score: ten children by seven “baby mamas” and one wife. He filed for bankruptcy last August. That didn’t stop a judge in Atlanta, Georgia, from handing down a ruling on Wednesday that Caffey, because he didn’t show up in court, owed one of them, Lorunda Brown, $17,088.87 in legal fees.

The judge dismissed Caffey’s motion “with prejudice.” That ain’t good.

It was a response to Caffey’s failure to turn up in court on his own motion to modify child support to Brown.

Caffey was a professional basketball player in the NBA until 2002. When he filed for bankruptcy last fall, his papers stated he owed $1.9 million, mostly in long overdue child support.

He said he made $11,500 a month from – get this – a string of daycare centers and a sportsbar in Alabama.

He also listed assets of two NBA championship rings (worth $10,000) and a 2006 Dodge Charger (worth $34,000).

His problem, his lawyers said, was that his expenses are $15,000 a month. Thus, he is bankrupt.

His wife, mother of two of his children, filed for divorce last year.

Coincidence?

Bankruptcy does not cancel child support obligations, but it does put a hold on collections until the person filing for bankruptcy sets up a payment plan.

That tripped up another Caffey baby mama, Karen Russell, in April. Russell is baby mama No. 1, having given birth to a son 15 years ago. (She and Caffey met at the University of Alabama.)

Caffey began missing child support payments in, ahem, 1995, she says.

He did, however, make regular payments, when the child support was deducted from his NBA salary, which ran as high as $5 million a season.

(And wouldn’t we like to see those pay stubbs? That must have been a way for him to remember all of the baby mamas’ names.)

Last July Russell sued Caffey in Alabama for overdue child support of $82,000 plus lawyers’ fees.

Caffey was found in contempt of court last July, and a judge issued an arrest warrant for Caffey in August.

And here’s where Russell made a mistake, according to an Alabama judge this April.

She accepted a cash settlement in October from Caffey’s lawyer that would allow Caffey to get out of jail.

Foul Ball! The judge ruled.

She was not allowed to accept money from Caffey, even if it was done through a lawyer, in order to get him out of jail, because Caffey had filed for bankruptcy, and therefore no creditor is allowed to collect money until the bankruptcy proceedings have finished.

Penalty!

Russell was ordered to hand back the $40,000 she had received. According to her lawyer, that was a year’s salary for her.

Other disgruntled baby mamas live in and around Atlanta, in Illinois and in Louisiana.

Meanwhile, Caffey’s bankruptcy lawyer told the judge that his client had been “saddled by these payments that are absolutely astronomical.”

You know, you have eight children, bub, it ain't no free throw line.

And ladies: It may have seemed that you were hitching your wagon to a high-rolling star back when he was a pro. But did you really expect he would take care of all of those obligations?

Did he seem like that kind of guy?