> The ball had grown to mean so much to him. It wasn't the signatures, or that he thought the ball might be worth something like $20,000 ... The ball became a family heirloom over the next three decades. But not in the way you'd expect. Calhoun never locked it up in a vault or even put it in a protective case in the house. He left it in the basement of his house, and Clarence and Calhoun's other three kids would dribble it and throw it around. He wanted his kids to be able to touch and feel something that had altered the trajectory of their family.
I think its pretty amazing that, assuming its true (and I have no reason to think this is a lie so far) that the team (and specifically, Michael Jordan, who alone had enough clout to shame anyone into paying) were adamant about Calhoun being made whole. Such a great moment where celebrities actually shine.
And such a great story overall. I feel Clarence also made the absolute best out of all of it, the money, the legacy, the signed now family heirloom basketball.
Jordan also had an exceptional understanding of his personal brand by that point.
It was his court, his team (the Bulls), his stadium, his fans, that were all in part being represented by that event happening. Its an ownership mentality that has rewarded Jordan extraordinarily well throughout his career.
His reputation and brand were all associated directly to whatever was happening to the Bulls franchise and happening in that stadium (which includes the fan experience). Now, Jordan might not notice if something trivial happens in regards to the fan experience, but something big enough to make the nightly news (and for which he was there when it happened anyway), he's going to take notice.
If they don't honor that, it reflects poorly on the Bulls franchise. This was a Bulls fan making a life-altering one in a thousand shot on Jordan's court. Jordan's on video celebrating with the guy. The fans, broadly, are going to be largely ignorant of the ins and outs of what was going on with the payout - what the fans know, is someone hit that shot and is getting screwed, and that it was a promotion that - as far as the average fan understood - was being put on by the Bulls. When it comes to brand, it doesn't only matter what's factually correct, Jordan understood perception. If that guy gets screwed out of his money, it might as well be the Chicago Bulls doing it (even if they put out press releases trying to disassociate in regards to responsibility).
When Jordan gets to the point and asks the winner: did you get your money? What he meant is: did those rat bastard businessmen pay you, because if they didn't, it reflects poorly on me, my team, my franchise, and I take that personally.
This assumes too much about Jordan's psychology. Yes, he was aware that a great deal of money was riding on his image, and he was could be very shrewd and even his cynical when it came to business, viz., his remark that "Republicans buy sneakers, too." But this picture of Jordan as ruthless utility-maximizer and PR savant doesn't square with other things he's done, such as the raw spectacle he made of himself in his Hall of Fame induction speech. The man does not think like normal people.
Jordan's dark side includes people accusing him of millions in unpaid golf debts, bookies showing up dead with handwritten checks from Jordan, and the mysterious circumstances about his dad's murder.
The most interesting thing about this story isn't the shot, it's his son at college.
> "Tutoring?" Calhoun said. "I'm struggling to learn everything myself. How can I teach others?" Siniak thought this would give Calhoun an extra nudge to learn the material and boost his own command.
Siniak recognized something in Calhoun, and got him to excel by giving him more responsibility; not less. People often are good at being load-bearing, but if you never give them a load they never realize it.
My understanding of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu really shot up once I started teaching.
Teaching forces you to put things into words that you only had an implicit understanding of prior. It reinforces your existing knowledge and forces you to seek answers to questions you didn't know you had.
> "Teaching forces you to put things into words that you only had an implicit understanding of prior. It reinforces your existing knowledge and forces you to seek answers to questions you didn't know you had. "
Bears repeating! When node was originally released years ago, I decided to force myself into public speaking because I knew it was a weakness of mine. I also wanted to learn node, so I signed up for a code camp talk on "real-time" websites with node and websockets. Previously I had "learned" languages like Pascal, C++, C#, Python, etc. But I'd never had to learn those languages to a point where I could explain them in simple terms. The fact that I was going to be presenting on the topic took me to depths of node that I hadn't had to explore with other languages. There's a big difference between being able to leverage a closure effectively and being able to communicate what a closure is and how and when it's useful and when to avoid it. I've been a fan of public speaking and mentoring (and node) ever since.
Funny you mention that; my son and I trained together and we would drill at home. Common stuff that noobs need, like side control escapes etc. it was amazing how much more sense it made live after “teaching” him at home.
it is not the load bearing or responsibility. it's simply another way to approach the material. teaching someone forces you to organize your thoughts and also consider questions you may not have thought of yourself.
montessori uses this to let older kids teach younger ones. and many others take advantage of it too.
I recently saw a video about this in /r/Documentaries on Reddit. He Made A Million Dollar Shot And They Didn't Want To Pay Him - https://youtu.be/Lk4N2epJzgg
The ESPN predates the YouTube video (April 11th vs July 14th)... possibly the inspiration for the video. Still a neat watch with other background information about how the insurance factors in.
Interesting, this video has been consistently pushed to me by the YouTube recommendation algorithm for the past 3 weeks. It looks like the recommender pressure is so strong it's influencing HN headlines.
I think instead it's that of the tens thousands of people who saw the video recently, maybe one of them posts it on reddit, and another posts it on HN.
This is a common phenomenon, exactly like how the kid making the shot made similar contests more popular.
Its an interesting story that checks some boxes (michael jordan is still 11/10 popular, big organization refuses to pay, etc)... and the story is fairly brief... and has a good ending. I think the algorithm is just doing its thing.
Which causes more people to watch it, which increases the odds someone posts it to a different site and also increases the odds someone on that third site has already seen it and comments, etc. etc. A big surge in one site can affect multiple sites pretty easily, especially if they share a large proportion of their user base and/or users can easily bounce between them even if they're not regular users of one or the other. It's kind of tin foil hat territory to assume it's a "coordinated push" and not just how "the algorithm" + the internet works in general.
It's an interesting story. Either OP watched the documentary and then posted the story, or an acquaintance of OP watched the documentary and then sent the article to OP.
The way that title is worded reeks of very low quality “chum” articles. Can’t put my finger on it but there’s a very distinct clickbait style that I deliberately avoid.
> The first thing out of Jordan's mouth? "Did you get your money?" Jordan asked.
> Calhoun said yes, and Jordan told him something that caught him off guard. "We made them give it to you," Jordan said. "We were upset that they were trying to not pay you."
> ...
> As they got to a set of doors, Calhoun knew Jordan's car was waiting for him on the other side. He asked whether Jordan would sign his ball, and MJ said no, that he had to stick to his principle of no autographs at his kids' stuff. "Bring it down to my steakhouse and drop it off, then I'll sign it," he said.
I'm not sure why, but I like the idea of a larger-than-life sports star being so stubborn in his convictions, being adamant that a regular person should get his fair due but also not bending his personal rules for him. I have to imagine that sticking to your principles helps stay grounded when you reach that level of fame; moving too far in either direction and you either lose your sense of self or you lose your values.
It's also pretty important that he stick to those rules because if he bends them once and it becomes known he would get all sorts of people who think they have a similar good reason for Jordan to break his rule. It honestly might also be an agreement with the school to avoid attracting a circus every time he goes to his kids' games, if he did turn it into an Event it might be necessary for the school to ban him from events for safety.
It's pretty scammy the way these contests advertise a jackpot when the net present value of 20 annual payments of $50k is ~$625K with 5% interest. In a world in which they can make interest of 5%/year, they only need to pay the winner the interest on the prize amount.
Correct. Indeed, even things treated as gambling aren't taxed, such as financial spread betting.
(Apparently this makes sense because if gambling wins were to be taxed then gambling losses should also be deductible, and since gambling is inherently a losing proposition, the tax authorities would lose more than they gained. I don't really buy this argument since they could just tax winnings and offer no deductions, but hey ho.)
> I don't really buy this argument since they could just tax winnings and offer no deductions, but hey ho.
I don't think this would make sense. If I walk into a casino with $200 and then proceed to lose $100 and win it back 10 times, then I lose it all and walk out, that tax law would say I had "won" and had to pay taxes on $1,000 even though any reasonable person would say I had actually lost $200.
In practical terms, I think it would absolutely ruin gambling addicts. This makes it effectively impossible to actually net profit, and I'm doubtful they'll stop.
They are taxed, but losses are deductible. It's taxed basically the same as everything else. At the end of the year you tally your earnings and losses, subtract the losses from the earnings and pay taxes on that amount or $0, whichever is higher (i.e. you can't deduct more losses than you had in winnings).
I googled because I was curious and found an article about it [1]. It's similar to PayPal/Venmo/etc. Once your winnings meet certain criteria, the casino has to give you an IRS form (W-2G) and they presumably send another copy to the IRS.
The withholding part isn't super clear, but I guess under some circumstances they also withhold 24% of those winnings to pay federal taxes.
> He called his treatment by the authorities "disgusting" as the administrators were aware that he actually made a loss, but nonetheless they claimed almost all of his savings. "Nobody is responsible for such craziness."
Welcome to the modern Western society, in which employees have been reduced to litigation-avoidance automatons. No wonder so many people hate their jobs, stripped of any power to help or even just follow common sense.
Well the bettor losses are income to the book so they could be taxed there. The interesting thing there is if the book and the bettor are taxed at different rates.
I know in some lotteries and sweepstakes they tax the pool, and so the winnings are tax free to the winner and the taxman invisibly still gets his cut.
Yes. The government actually owns a bank, NS&I, that offers a special account "premium bonds" that effectively pays interest in the form of winnings from a lottery which make it tax free.
Anthropic's Claude summarized this, too (the article was too long for ChatGPT):
In April 1993, Don Calhoun made a miraculous full-court shot during a Chicago Bulls game to win $1 million. He was an average office supply salesman but felt calm and destined to make the nearly impossible shot.
The shot went viral and sparked a boom in in-game contests at sporting events. Companies like SCA Promotions started insuring these big-money contests, which remained popular crowd pleasers.
Calhoun initially feared he wouldn't get the money because he had played some college basketball recently. This violated a common rule that contestants couldn't have played the sport recently.
The Bulls held a press conference saying they would pay Calhoun the $1 million regardless of the insurance outcome. Later, Michael Jordan privately told Calhoun that the Bulls players had pressured the insurance company to pay him.
Calhoun got Jordan to sign the winning ball years later after persistence. He kept the autographed ball not as a collectible but for his kids to play with, symbolizing how the shot changed their family's trajectory.
The $1 million was paid out as $50k checks over 20 years. It provided a nice supplement to Calhoun's middle-class lifestyle but did not make him wealthy. The experience and memories were priceless.
Kinda fascinating, it almost surgically removes the entire human interest angle which is the soul of the story that makes it land so strongly. This summary is flat and boring, like a summary of a quarterly SEC filing.
It is an amazing game but it is very hard to find young people willing to devote 40 hours to become even slightly proficient at the bidding systems. I've currently designed a card game that aims to have "a lot" of the complexity of Bridge but with simple bidding system. It has been going well in testing thus far.
To find young players, try posting something with college math departments. I met the most young local bridge players through the area community college.
I'm interested in trying your game if testing is open. I find simpler trick games (hearts, euchre, spades, some branded card games like The Crew) get people ready for simple bidding using bridge rules, but they don't do anything to teach the concept of using bids to communicate beyond the bid's face value.
Like contract Bridge, there is always a Dummy which adds a lot of strategic depth. The Dummy is played via a very simple automata that players can leverage against the other players. This game is not teams, but is basically everyone against the Declarer. It also contains a doubling step pre-play that pulls in some of the strategy of vulnerable/double/redouble from Bridge. It uses a larger deck size similar to Bridge so you have a lot of information about what remains when trying to make your contract and make others miss theirs.
While I mostly agree, especially that I've scrolled past this video's clickbait thumbnail and title before, I suggest using this tool: letsblock.it/filters/youtube-channel
Instead of blanket filtering verified accounts, I spent a few minutes one day plugging in all the obnoxious channels that show up on YT's homepage when signed out.
I'll buck the trend here and agree with you. It's great that this family has a heartwarming story, but ideally circumstances shouldn't be so bad to begin with that we celebrate the rare and extraordinary occasion of escaping those circumstances.
> It’s astounding to me that Americans accept this constant death and destruction as part of a transportation system.
Just to be explicit-- do you think the impending growth of self-driving vehicles (as they are currently implemented) over the next decade will a) add to this constant death and destruction or b) subtract from it?
Probably reduce deaths if the deployed systems are sufficiently capable. This may be offset somewhat by an increase in miles travelled as driving becomes easier.
Because the current capabilities are insufficient, yet people are using those capabilities as if they are self-driving options. So when Tesla owners get overconfident about their assisted driving mode it ends up adding to the problem.
I even saw a video where a Tesla owner was letting a Youtuber drive and tried to goad him into leaving the car in assisted mode at a dangerous intersection, just to "see what it would do." I think the Youtuber was wise to not do that.
If recognizing that society is unfair is an indictment, might I suggest opening a history book, or even spending some time reading about the current affairs and policy news from literally any part of the globe? Human existence is unfair. Arguably, the mere fact we exist is a series of random occurrences that align to a local optimum for natural incentives evolving to our current state of existence. Randomness is an expression of the basic entropy of the universe and touches on the individual lives of not just humans, but every atom in every living and non-living entity on this planet (and beyond). This sometimes expresses it in the unfairness encounter in some person's life. It is hardly an indictment of society.
If you’re willing to appeal to the intrinsic randomness of the universe at the atomic level then you’re basically arguing that every nuance is random and meaningless.
And if you’re not, then you’re just cherrypicking things that suit your fancy.
The universe has sufficient structure to observe its properties even if the underlying mechanisms are random.
I’m about halfway through TDoE and it’s pretty reactionary and disorganized. They do provide many interesting pieces of information but so far have not woven them into a compelling narrative. In fact they often fleetingly admit that their examples could be counter to their hypothesis or that it’s simply impossible to know.
I do eventually also want to read Debt, but unsure I need to spend any time on Bullshit Jobs, as my assumption is that it’ll be myopically focused on the idea that some wizard behind the curtain has made the world economy the way it is, instead of it being an emergent phenomenon; an interconnected web of Chesterton fences that the author, in his usual condescending way, will be all too happy to burn, while providing no meaningful alternative.
I mean I’ve had some jobs that felt like BS but I don’t need to spend my precious free time being preached to about it. It comes off as pandering, just more high brow than the tract material you find for cults and religions that seem to zero in on their target population’s biggest qualms with society and offer the promise of a better way.
I’m sorry my thoughts on the article so distressed you.
Inequality in education and traffic death have been on my mind lately and this article touched on them in an unexpected way, so I posted to share my thoughts. I understand that’s more or less the purpose of online forums.
Why would inequality be the important metric, and not absolute quality of life? If we killed a few billionaires, there would be less inequality in America, but I don't think anyone's life would actually be better for it.
Oh the results of colonialism 'Canada, Australia, New Zealand' and the countries brought to power specifically due to the US 'Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan'?
Yes, let's just conveniently alter the stats by leaving out all of the countries that are worse.
This isn't reddit, tone down the anger please. Also, maybe look up the definition of mostly before going off in rage commenting mode.
If you think South Korea and Japan are the lane of opportunity you basically invalidated everything you have argued with your ignorance of these nations current cultural situations.
SK makes american capitalistic inequality and unfairness look like a playground. Japan is literally dying of its frozen cultural mobility issues.
"First, two young people have their lives taken when car drivers crash into them. It’s astounding to me that Americans accept this constant death and destruction as part of a transportation system."
Are there countries that don't have car crashes? Please list them, I'm sure everyone would like to know how they've prevented this.
"Second, one person takes a pretty irrational interest in the success of a student with a 1.6 GPA and gives them some basic confidence and support they had apparently never received from the education system. That struggling student is now a medical doctor and the first person in their family to graduate from college."
This is an indictment on the American system how? It seems like the opposite to me. Is your stance that no one should ever have to struggle? You believe regardless of success in secondary education everyone should just be sent to medical school? You do realize that EVERY country that provides "free" higher education has pretty stringent requirements to get in. In the US, anyone that has the money, wants to take out a loan, or does well in school can go to college. All that would happen if everyone though the way you do, is that you would just dilute the pool of applicants and you'd still have people that didn't get successful jobs. You're already seeing this with the federal loans letting everyone into college in the US.
It's obvious you just hate the US, but at least come up with some logical stances for the reasons. You failed miserably at describing any legitimate reason for your staunch hatred.
"The pandemic years weren’t outliers, though. Pedestrian fatalities have been on the rise for more than a decade. Increasingly, the United States stands alone, with an overall traffic fatality rate that’s 50 percent higher than comparable nations in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia. According to the Urban Institute, Americans are now almost three times more likely to die in a car crash than their counterparts in France."
Before you blame cell phones, note that other countries also have cell phones.
It's pretty obvious for anyone who has traveled and driven in other countries that drivers in the US are utterly terrible. We have effectively no licensing standards, and effectively no enforcement of basic safe driving practices. The only thing that's generally enforced in the US is speed limits, and this is only done for revenue purposes, especially since most speed limits in the US are set artificially low to help local authorities meet their budget.
It's both possible that the US is uniquely worse and that the same sort of unfair and senseless outcomes are not only possible but happen in other countries. The fact the US is worse doesn't actually change the point of the person you're responding to.
I could write a much better indictment of driving in the US than pointing to a single random occurrence and actually talk about the completely fucked way people drive here on a daily basis. That said, the same basic reason why things are the way they are won't change for the outcome of my screed, as it is a simple matter that the US is so heavily car-centric as a society that it is impossible for the average person to participate in daily life without driving and therefore it's seen as unnecessarily punitive to restrict people's driving privileges except in the most egregious circumstances (and often not even then). We'd have to massively change the attitude towards cars in the US to effectively change anything about our current situation to make it possible to enforce reasonable standards of driving skill.
I think US's car fatality problem stems from the "driving classes" you take at 16 for one day to become a driver. You don't really learn to deal with all possible scenarios doing 3 left turns and parking. There's 2 other big reasons the roads are unsafe due to the states just not taking care of their own roads. The other reason is the popularity of bigger SUVs and trucks. 90% of big vehicle owners feel safer due to the weight of their vehicle as if they truly intend to total anyone else's vehicle that they hit. When I was in Europe I noticed cars are a lot more popular than SUVs or trucks. Getting in an accident with 2 cars is a lot less destructive than a 4,000 lb car hitting a 6,000 lb truck or SUV.
Regarding car accidents, the US does have a higher rate of deaths per 100k inhabitants [0] than most other countries of similar development. I imagine that's largely because of the lack of public transport and therefore increased number of miles driven by US inhabitants (as well as lower population density perhaps).
The U.S. has nearly triple the automotive fatality rate of other western nations. With the large vehicle preferences common in the U.S. this may be as much of an idictment on consumer taste as the transportation laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
I think the commenter wasn't remarking on the availability of higher education, but that that public education had failed to prepare this person and apparently a whole community for higher education. He didn't know a single person who attended class after high school and the high school curriculum was so weak that he was failing out of community college.
> but that that public education had failed to prepare this person and apparently a whole community for higher education. He didn't know a single person who attended class after high school and the high school curriculum was so weak that he was failing out of community college.
Our education system is failing, but it's failing because it's not an education system, it's a system to monitor and contain young people for some set hours per day so their parents can theoretically work, regardless of their behavior or outcomes. The education in this country has huge cultural and community disparities that almost perfectly correlate w/ wealth disparities, racial disparities, and family life disparities. Most of these things are symptoms rather than causes, but they're symptoms that accelerate a negative feedback loop. The causes are pretty straightforward, but intractable: 1. Lack of cultural and racial integration in broader society 2. The failure of families (as a concept) in America, with this failure more heavily concentrated in lower class households with a racially disparate distribution.
You do realize the US doesn't have the public transport of massive cities in western Europe right?
Maybe think a bit and you'll realize that Americans have to drive more to get places.
Regardless, the crashes have nothing to do specifically with the way America has implemented anything.
"but that that public education had failed to prepare this person and apparently a whole community for higher education"
The comment was specifically about how the US has done it badly. Not everyone needs to be prepared for higher education. Countries like Germany that have "free" higher ed decide that certain kids will go intro trades early on. Are you going to flag Germany as not preparing a whole demographic of kids for "higher ed" ?
I don’t hate the US. I love living here. I think fewer of its citizens should die in car crashes and that more should be able to achieve their full career potential.
Regarding free college, I think a good system would have high standards for graduation and low penalties for failure. This is the system currently afforded to rich people in the US, who can afford multiple tries at good schools without being saddled with lifelong debt. We should extend this ability to more people. I love Americans, they have enormous potential, but so many of them get shunted off to unsatisfying, low productivity careers because a few bad circumstances or choices push them off the very narrow golden path
I believe this was the point that all of the so-far higher-voted sibling comments have missed. Or am I the only one seeing the sarcasm emanating from parent?
I'm not a basketball fan and know very little about the sport and this was an incredibly moving and well-written story about the human tale behind a transient sport moment. I guess you need to know that getting a ball-sized object through a ball-sized opening from 80 feet is an INCREDIBLY unlikely thing to occur, something the article spells out, but it's only the entrypoint into a story about how sporting event contests and insurance work, how players relate to fans, how players protect themselves, and how normal people's lives can be changed by even those transient moments. It's beautiful writing.
There are perhaps two parts that you might not understand - the rules of the sport (or specifically this trick shot), and the celebrity players on the team of the 1993 Chicago Bulls.
The rules are mostly discussed in the article - you have to loft a large ball (larger and firmer than a soccer ball) into a hole (technically "hoop", a horizontal metal rim, with a soft netting underneath that slows the descent) that's a bit bigger than that ball, without getting closer than 80 feet to the target.
For the sake of this discussion Michael Jordan is analogous to Pelé or Messi of football (soccer) fame.
I'm not into basketball, it made 100% sense. I assume most people have played basketball at least once in their childhood, even if not from the US. And also mentioning names like Michael Jordan who is known worldwide by most people regardless of if they know basketball well or not.
Not every article/thing posted on HN is made literally for you. Chill.
I know absolutely nothing about basketball and don't live in the USA. I can't say I found any part of it basketball-centric enough to challenge my enjoyment of the overall piece and story it told.
This doesn't really have anything to do with Michael Jordan playing basketball tho, nor is it one of his famous "shots" -- for example, a fadeaway buzzer beater he hit later this year in the playoffs that became iconic.
I don't know, I'm from France like you, barely know anything about basketball (besides playing it a few times at school), yet I still know who Michael Jackson is and understood what the shot was.
If you write something you assume some base level of reader knowledge. As you say, if you go back to first principles for everything, 1.) You now have 1,000 words of boilerplate that will make the average reader turn the page very quickly and 2.) It probably still won't work for someone with zero knowledge and probably not much more interest.
I’m not a “sportsball” person myself - but you’d be surprised at the number of extreme tech geeks that live and breathe the statistics of sports (particularly baseball). For them it’s about the mechanics and statistics and not the personalities.
The best baseball game I ever saw was Greg Maddux's 77-pitch complete game. There are a distressing number of people who would consider it boring (MOAR HOME RUNS!), but it was an absolute masterclass in trajectories, velocities and psychology.
This whole contest sounds like a racket trying to get money from the Bulls. The Bulls were selling out games left and right back them. They didn't need to spend money on these contests to get butts in seats after all the money they spent on Jordan (to get butts in seats). The fact that they try to renege on the payout on any little technicality shows it's all a con.
Right. You have a LOT of captive butts in seats. During the breaks in the game, the Sports Team can sell their eyeballs to the highest bidder. In this case it was Coca Cola and Lettuce Entertain You.
Yeah, I wonder, too. There's plenty of possible reasons that involve someone in the Bulls front office having more budget than sense at best or getting a kickback at worst, but I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure the people selling the game gave a hard sell.
> The ball had grown to mean so much to him. It wasn't the signatures, or that he thought the ball might be worth something like $20,000 ... The ball became a family heirloom over the next three decades. But not in the way you'd expect. Calhoun never locked it up in a vault or even put it in a protective case in the house. He left it in the basement of his house, and Clarence and Calhoun's other three kids would dribble it and throw it around. He wanted his kids to be able to touch and feel something that had altered the trajectory of their family.