Somewhere in the world, on almost any given day, there’s a sports event where a fan gets to try some really difficult challenge to try to win a prize.
They almost always come up short, but today in 1993, a guy in Chicago stepped onto the basketball court for a million dollar shot… and he made it.
His name was Don Calhoun; he was 23 and sold office supplies for a living.
The staff at the Chicago Bulls game that night had to choose somebody to step on the court for the nightly Million Dollar Shot contest, and they chose Calhoun because they figured his shoes wouldn’t scuff up the court.
Nobody had made the Million Dollar Shot up to that point: of the 19 contestants so far that season, 16 had thrown airballs; the others had hit the rim or the backboard, but hadn’t come close to sinking the shot.
Which was understandable, since they were shooting a basketball from behind the free throw line toward the basket on the other side of the court.
Even the pros don’t hit that one too often, and Calhoun wasn’t exactly a pro.
But he stepped onto the court, quietly dedicated the shot to his late brother Clarence, and threw the ball, more like a quarterback in football than an NBA player.
He was sure that throw was going to sail over and past the hoop, but it started falling at just the right time and went in.
The Chicago Stadium crowd erupted.
The Bulls players rushed around Calhoun to congratulate him; Michael Jordan himself came over to say “great shot, kid.”
And you’d expect that Don Calhoun would head home soon after with one of those big checks worth a million bucks, a dream come true, right?
Not exactly.
The insurance company that covered the costs of the Bulls’ contest pointed toward the rules, which said, among other things, that no contestant could win if they had played organized basketball in the five years before taking their shot.
Calhoun had, in fact, played basketball while he was in community college, though only in a handful of games.
The total number of shots he took in college basketball: 12.
He’d been up front about it when the organizers asked, and they’d let him onto the court anyway.
But the insurance company was balking just the same.
When word got around that this guy who made the Million Dollar Shot – the one who’s been on the news and become a local celebrity – might not get the million dollars, there was a big backlash from the public, and, apparently, from the Chicago Bulls too.
ESPN reported that Michael Jordan said that the team was pretty upset when they heard what was happening, so maybe he or his teammates made it known that they wanted a happy ending to Calhoun’s story.
Several weeks later, the team held a press conference where they said that if the insurance company wasn’t going to pay out, they would.
Calhoun got his money: $50,000 a year for 20 years, minus taxes, and a story he could dine out on for even longer.
Today in 1983, the release of “Murmur,” the first album by rock greats R.E.M.
The band famously did things its own way, whether it was commercially successful or not.
But during the recording sessions for “Murmur,” they did get a little commercial.
In the next studio over, down the hall, a producer needed some whistling for a commercial for Dodge pickup trucks.
And who ended up doing that whistling but R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry.
He even got a hundred bucks for the effort!
The $1 million shot that changed sports contests forever (ESPN)
R.E.M. Share Memories Of Debut Album Murmur Released 40 Years Ago Today (Stereogum)
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Photo by Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar via Flickr/Creative Commons