madness
Taking my talents to South Beach
In the middle of this fantastic Jamal Crawford profile on ESPN’s ‘The Undefeated,‘ there’s a tremendous story of the last night the NBA point guard shot dice. It involves Michael Jordan, Ray Allen and some professional gamblers who won a lot of money off the then 20-year old Crawford.
Then he went down. Way down. Into a hole there was no coming back from. He began making bets with money he didn’t have on hand with a group of professional gamblers used to getting paid on the spot.
As Crawford tells the story, it’s one we’ve all been in on a trip to Atlantic City or Las Vegas, but never at a private game with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.
Over what is believed to be a two-day span, he said, he lost in the neighborhood of $100,000. A person with intimate knowledge of the game claims Crawford lost several hundred thousand and Allen lost even more. And that, days after the dice game, a call was placed to Goodwin, Crawford’s agent, to inform him that Crawford had not yet squared his debt with one professional gambler.
“OK,” Goodwin said, according to the person with intimate knowledge of the game. “What does he owe? Jamal is good for it.”
“No, you don’t understand,” the go-between said. “If he doesn’t pay now, these guys will kill Jamal.”
“Kill Jamal?!! He’s an NBA player. He gets paid as soon as the season starts. Give me the dude’s number.”
The story says that Crawford’s agent squashed the matter, but also that Crawford hasn’t gambled since that night. [via The Undefeated]
Michael Jordan talks to Jamal Crawford
