Former NBA All-Star forward Kevin Garnett opened the vault of his Olympic memories to share an anecdote surrounding former Team USA teammate Vince Carter and his dunk over Frederic Weis in the 2000 Sydney Olympics:
The Big Ticket recalls being the first to celebrate with Carter, but revealed the team had placed a bounty on soon-to-be Houston Rockets center Yao Ming.
Yao was 7-foot-6, just as tall as former Dallas Mavericks longtime center Shawn Bradley, an imposing frame to clear and naturally the prized trophy that any high-flyer would dream to make his next poster:
“Everything just paused,” said Kevin Garnett of the dunk over Weis, according to Alex Wong of Yahoo Canada Sports. “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 s**t, 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 shit, you won, you got the million.”
Unfortunately, Weis was the wrong 7-footer, and four inches shy of the giraffe-in-sneakers Team USA was looking to put on a poster.
As fate would have it, Weis, who was once an NBA prospect due to his sheer size at 7-foot-2, would never make it to the league — with most suspecting the ridicule of being dunked on by the 6-foot-6 Carter having a lot to do with that change of heart.
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