Richard Jefferson pledged $3.5 million to the University of Arizona for the purpose of helping it build a brand new basketball/volleyball practice facility, which will in turn be named after Jefferson. This donation exceeds Carmelo Anthony's $3 million donation to Syracuse as the largest by a NBA player to their college university.
According to the AZ Star, the impetus for Jefferson's donation might have been his well-known competitiveness with former Arizona teammate Gilbert Arenas:
But
Jefferson, who is in the middle of a six-year, $78 million contract with the
New Jersey Nets, also noted that he donated in part so the athletic department
"wouldn't ask Gilbert."
"No hard feelings,"
Greg (Newport Beach): Do you still stay in contact with your UofA teammates Ricky Anderson and Jason Gardner. How competitive are you with former teammate Gilbert Arenas?
Richard Jefferson: I still keep in contact with Ricky and Jason I see them alot during the summer. Me and Gilbert are very competitive. He gives me trash about making the All-Star game before me, but I get back to him with some stuff I don't really wanna say here, because some people my interpret it as my being conceited.
Arenas has also mentioned this competition between him and RJ on his blog:
Me
and Richard, for some reason, always end up having a bragging session when
we're around each other and try to out-do one another. For some reason, he thinks
he's better than me. He can't fathom that he's only the third best player from
Big Tip of the Hat to ESPN for reporting the story, as well as Cosellout and Larry Brown Sports for both making posts about it on their sites. Big ups!
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You know LP, I did have the same thoughts... like the University really needs it? Don't they clean up off student athletes? Don't they make enough from exploit athlete scholarships into million dollar TV contracts?
But my logic was that U of Arizona is a state school, not a private university (right?), so it is probably in need of money. Better that they get the money from private donations from those same athletes that Lute Olsen has helped make great pros (of all the big name college coaches, f*ck Mike K and those guys - Lute probably has produced more legit NBA stars than almost any other coach) than from the state gov't.
But yeah, RJ could definitely impress me by giving money to more worthy causes, like some of the other guys I've profiled - Alonzo, Marbury, even Carmelo. Melo's donation to Syracuse aside, he's given money for community centers and causes in both the Syracuse and Baltimore areas.
This donation by RJ is probably fueled by ego and competitiveness. Still, at the end of the day, it's not a generous act, even if he could have done better with that money....
I, too, commend pro athletes for giving back to their alma maters, but with one small caveat: why not give millions of dollars to the communities form whence they came, especially if they came from difficult socioeconomic conditions?
I know that Carmelo and some others have done this; and I know that Jefferson may not, in fact, hail from a lower-income community. I guess my point is that large, state government-financed institutions of higher learning don't necessarily need 3 million dollars from pro athletes, especially those schools with very successful athletic programs like Arizona and Syracuse. But poor folks in inner-city and rural areas do need the money.
No disrespect to Jefferson, Carmelo, Steve Smith, or any other athlete, but Lute Olsen, Jim Boheim, and Tom Izzo are also millionaires (shid, Izzo wasn't even the head coach when Smith was at MSU), they're going to be fine, and the insitutions they represent are going to be ok financially.
What about the kids? That's all I'm saying.