Anthropic's Claude summarized this, too (the article was too long for ChatGPT):
In April 1993, Don Calhoun made a miraculous full-court shot during a Chicago Bulls game to win $1 million. He was an average office supply salesman but felt calm and destined to make the nearly impossible shot.
The shot went viral and sparked a boom in in-game contests at sporting events. Companies like SCA Promotions started insuring these big-money contests, which remained popular crowd pleasers.
Calhoun initially feared he wouldn't get the money because he had played some college basketball recently. This violated a common rule that contestants couldn't have played the sport recently.
The Bulls held a press conference saying they would pay Calhoun the $1 million regardless of the insurance outcome. Later, Michael Jordan privately told Calhoun that the Bulls players had pressured the insurance company to pay him.
Calhoun got Jordan to sign the winning ball years later after persistence. He kept the autographed ball not as a collectible but for his kids to play with, symbolizing how the shot changed their family's trajectory.
The $1 million was paid out as $50k checks over 20 years. It provided a nice supplement to Calhoun's middle-class lifestyle but did not make him wealthy. The experience and memories were priceless.
Kinda fascinating, it almost surgically removes the entire human interest angle which is the soul of the story that makes it land so strongly. This summary is flat and boring, like a summary of a quarterly SEC filing.
