We all know about the “friendly” gambling that goes on between NBA players and other professional athletes. In most cases, everyone laughs and jokes about the few dollars that exchange hands. Then on the other hand, there are times where guys bite off more than they can chew landing them in a deep hole of debt. This is exactly what happened to NBA veteran Jamal Crawford during his rookie year.
According to LarryBrownSports.com, there is a story recently published in Mike Wise of The Undefeated the breaks down the day Jamal Crawford almost lost it all at a restaurant owned by Micheal Jordan over a dice game. Crawford started out hot winning a few thousand dollars but things quickly turned and Crawford didn’t know how or when to call it quits.
“He brought about $2,000 in cash that night and remembers being one of the first shooters. There were maybe a half-dozen players, most of whom were professional gamblers. Crawford was up and down for a while, once holding about $10,000 in cash, more than he had ever won before.”
“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.”
“They would be like, ‘OK, you bet two grand on this one, OK lost,” Crawford recalled, agreeing to discuss his own role that night but refusing to confirm the identity of anyone else involved. “Then they’d say, ‘Now we will bet three on this one [roll]. Oops, lost. Now you down 15 [grand].” So it wasn’t like cash was coming out, it was like air money. But it was money I was going to have to pay somehow eventually.”
A person close to the situation says Crawford lost “several hundred thousand” in a two day span which led to his life being threaten. Crawford’s agent Arron Goodwin was contacted after a few days went by without Crawford paying up.
The exchange with Goodwin went something like this.
“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.”
Goodwin was able to pull some string buying Crawford some extra time. He worked out payment arrangements making sure the debt was paid. Crawford doesn’t deny this story or that he had an issue with gamble but does dispute the amount of the debt. Just know it was enough for Crawford to have never shot dice since.