2000 Team USA Had A $1 Million Bounty For Dunking On Yao Ming

2000 Team USA Had A $1 Million Bounty For Dunking On Yao Ming

 

Even though some of you may have been too young, or not even born yet, to remember the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where Team USA went undefeated and took home the gold medal, I bet all of you have seen footage of the event, and I literally mean all of you.

During these 2000 Olympics, Vince Carter had the best in-game dunk in basketball history, when he jumped over 7-footer Frederic Weis of Team France.

 

 

If Carter had dunked on another center though, he could have made some big money. In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Carter’s teammate Kevin Garnett talked about the dunk and revealed that the Olympic team had a bounty for a posterizing dunk, but only on Yao Ming. A bounty of $1 million!

 

“Everything just paused. First of all, people didn’t know, we had a bounty out on Yao Ming. The whole USA team had a bet. We had a million dollar bet on who was going to be the first person to dunk on Yao Ming. None of us did. We all tried to dunk on Yao, but he would block it or we would miss.

“So, the first thing I thought of when I saw Vince dunk over Frederic was oh (expletive), you won the million dollars. But then I realized it obviously wasn’t Yao. I pushed Vince, and if you look at the clip, he almost punches me in the face by accident. But my first thought was, oh (expletive), you won, you got the million.”

 

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