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NBA Star Refused $400K Per Year for 50 Years Straight From Post Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls Due to a ‘Crazy Super Lawyer’

Published 06/26/2022, 5:30 PM EDT

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Chicago Bulls during the 90s dominated the NBA. Led by Michael Jordan, the Bulls won 6 NBA championships in a span of eight years. While winning these six championships, they achieved two different three-peats. But things started to go south after their final trophy in 1998. Michael Jordan retired for a second time, Phil Jackson left the team and Scottie Pippen was traded.

It was during this rebuild it looked like Chicago had started to figure it out when led by Eddy Curry. They qualified for the playoffs in the 2004-05 season. Chicago selected Curry as the fourth overall pick in the 2001 NBA Draft.

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The unique situation of Eddy Curry

Eddy Curry led the team in points average in 2004-05 before being hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat. The Chicago Bulls wanted Curry to take a DNA test to get his heart checked out for a congenital heart condition, but he refused on privacy grounds.

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During a recent interview. Curry talked about that particular time and an offer from the Bulls. The Chicago Bulls offered him $400k per year for fifty years if he took the test. He elaborated in the interview on why did he refuse the offer, “Yeah, but the thing was, the crazy thing was my agent had did the math. He’s a super, like, he was a lawyer before all of this, Leon Rose.”

He continued, “He was a crazy super lawyer before this. But like they did the math on this. The Bulls owed me like, I don’t know what it was for that next year. I had option that year to get like $5.7 or $8(million ) or whatever. Whatever it was, they basically were gonna put that money up and pay the interest of that money. That’s all they were really doing… I felt like that wasn’t really honest of them to do that.

Curry said that the Bulls said that he won’t play that season and the next season as well. And asked him to find an interested party for a sign and trade scenario. The New York Knicks offered him a deal the following year, which he accepted. Curry had to go through multiple tests now and then to play and had a long NBA career.

The Chicago Bulls’ offseason outlook

The Bulls were last offseason’s, one of the heaviest spending teams. Their major signings were DeMar DeRozan, Lonzo Ball, and Alex Caruso. A season before that they traded for All-Star center Nikola Vucevic. This was the front office’s effort to keep star Zach LaVine happy as he enters free agency.

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For some time, it looked like the team was coming along, as Chicago was near the top of the table in a top-heavy Eastern Conference.

USA Today via Reuters

It was before the injury bug would bite the team. Lonzo Ball went out for the season, and Alex Caruso was in and out of the lineup multiple times. The team never really settled into chemistry. The front office has a huge decision on its hand with LaVine’s impending free agency.

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Do you think Zach LaVine will leave the Bulls? Let us know in the comments.

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Written by:

Nirjhar Sharma

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Nirjhar Sharma is an NBA writer at EssentiallySports. He is a sports enthusiast who follows all major sports and has been watching the NBA for the past 7 years now. A firm believer in the 'Greek Freak' being the best player in the league right now, he believes that the Bucks are primed for another championship run unless the injury bug bites them.
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Edited by:

Bagavathi Eswaran