{"id":27973,"date":"2007-02-16T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2007\/02\/16\/news-flash-professional-athletes-do-it-for-the-money\/"},"modified":"2007-02-16T10:00:15","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T10:00:15","slug":"news-flash-professional-athletes-do-it-for-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20070216-15\/?p=27973","title":{"rendered":"News flash: Professional athletes do it for the money"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend is NBA All-Star Weekend 2007<\/a>, because just having a game isn’t enough; you need to make it a weekend-long festival.\n Tyrus Thomas, invited to paricipate in the slam dunk contest, which comes with a top prize of $35,000, was quoted as saying<\/p>\n

I’m just going to go out there, get my check and call it a day. … I’m just into the free money. That’s it. I’ll just do whatever when I get out there. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet, there was a huge uproar over the shocking revelation that (news flash!) professional athletes are in it for the money. Thomas was fined $10,000 by his team for his remarks—rather ironic that the way to teach him that it’s not about the money is to impose a monetary penalty—and issued an apology some days later<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I truly feel honored to be invited to participate in this year’s slam dunk contest during next week’s NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas. The opportunity to represent the Bulls and the city of Chicago on a global stage is a privilege that I do not take lightly. I regret the extent to which my comments indicate otherwise. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He explained that “it was a miscommunication and understanding of words.” Huh? Under what possible rules of interpretation was “I’m just into the free money” intended to be understood as “The opportunity to appear on a global stage is a privilege that I do not take lightly”?<\/p>\n

Only a Game<\/i><\/a>‘s Bill Littlefield took up the matter in his Weekly Warm-up podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend is NBA All-Star Weekend 2007, because just having a game isn’t enough; you need to make it a weekend-long festival. Tyrus Thomas, invited to paricipate in the slam dunk contest, which comes with a top prize of $35,000, was quoted as saying I’m just going to go out there, get my check and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[110,103],"class_list":["post-27973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-news-flash","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

This weekend is NBA All-Star Weekend 2007, because just having a game isn’t enough; you need to make it a weekend-long festival. Tyrus Thomas, invited to paricipate in the slam dunk contest, which comes with a top prize of $35,000, was quoted as saying I’m just going to go out there, get my check and […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}