It’s probably no surprise to you that Carmelo Anthony loves money. He did choose a five-year, $124 million contract with the lowly Knicks rather than take less money to play with the playoff ready Chicago Bulls. But just how much Anthony loves money might shock you as he tells this story about refusing to give up $20 while being robbed at gunpoint.
ESPN the Magazine did a lengthy interview with Anthony and oddly enough money is mentioned more than actual basketball. In any event, Anthony tells a story about staring down the barrel of a gun.
Anthony had always been passionate about money — not just the cash itself but the luxuries it afforded him and the ways in which it signified success. He’d grown up with none of it, first in a housing project in Brooklyn and later in Baltimore, where his mother worked as a housekeeper and received food stamps. As a 14-year-old, he was held up at gunpoint for $20 and decided he would take his chances and run rather than hand over the cash.
Now everyone knows that running from someone with a gun is NOT the thing to do, a bullet travels way faster than you do. You shouldn’t fight an armed robber either, risking your life isn’t worth it, especially for $20. In any event Anthony was lucky and got away. But it does shed an interesting light into his personality, as well as the hard times he was going through when he was younger.
