It was either drop 10,000 on the lottery or blow it in a club.
BIGGEST LOSER – WASHINGTON WIZARDS GUARD CHRIS SINGLETON
By Sean Pendergast
Houston Press Hair Balls
April 4, 2012
There are so many things that I could type about the idiots who stood in line for Mega Millions tickets last Friday that, frankly, not having done so until now has been like holding in a sneeze. Late last week, people were blocking out entire afternoons to stand in line for a one-in-176 million chance at financial security.
What a country.
The stakes were high enough for one of the three winners to stab her co-workers in the back claim (perhaps falsely) that her winning ticket did not, in fact, belong to a pool of tickets on which she collaborated and purchased with her McDonald's co-workers. She is now in hiding.
The odds of winning were ridiculously infinitesimal enough to where they were longer than the odds of being hit by lightning, a trauma that actually befell a Kansas man just after he purchased a bunch of tickets from a local store.
And, of course, the graveyard is full of stories of people who got all but one number right, a fate which would torment me mentally till the end of my days.
While losers all, none of these people qualify for their own write-up as one of my Biggest Losers. That Mega Millions spot is reserved for Washington Wizards rookie Chris Singleton.
Last Friday, Singleton tweeted the following: "I'm about to drop 10000 on the lottery and cross my fingers #halfwaytoabillionaireifiwin"
Yes, Singleton spent last Friday purchasing $10,000 worth of Mega Millions tickets in an attempt to reach the "halfway to a billionaire" milestone and take home the $656 million jackpot. He supposedly drove around to dozens of stores in the greater D.C. area, presumably because the superstition of the lottery dork says you have a better chance of winning if you spread out your buys among different stores, as if the random-number generation functions residing inside the microchips of the various Mega Millions ticket machines are all breathing organisms that somehow conspire and inject logic into an entirely random process.
So do those things unto themselves make Singleton one of our Biggest Losers? No, they merely make him just a regular loser.
Where he takes the quantum leap from regular to "Biggest" is in his response to the post-drawing question of whether or not he regretted his purchase. His reply, according to Michael Lee of the Washington Post: "[It was either] that or blow it in the club," Singleton said.
In a business where the gap between the regular fan and the wealthy (at least until they blow it all) player continues to widen, Singleton's assessment of the lottery aftermath probably wasn't the smartest P.R. move. With a rookie contract that pays him $1,485,000 this season and slightly more next season, with no guarantees after that, Singleton's "investment" was reckless lunacy typically reserved (ironically) for the champagne room at some skank club.
But hey, it's his money. Whatever.
To me, the funniest part is how Singleton implies that the $10,000 he spent on lottery tickets was somehow earmarked for "the club," as if "the club" is somehow going to get $10,000 less from Chris Singleton than they would have normally gotten because he made the lottery ticket purchase. It's funny to me to think about Chris Singleton actually having a written personal budget with a line item for "THE CLUB" and a line item for "LOTTERY TICKETS," and that he actually took out a pencil and erased the dollar amount in the "CLUB," lowered it by $10,000, and then erased the "LOTTERY TICKETS" line and added $10,000. Like the "blow it in the club" option was somehow sacrificed for the prudent decision to drop five figures on a one-in-gazjillion shot at a nine-figure payday.
By the way, never mind the fact that Singleton is employed in one of a small handful of vocations where if you actually apply yourself, you can experience near Mega Millions payout-type wealth.
Admittedly, I know nothing about Chris Singleton other than what I've read in the last 24 hours and what I've seen on a basketball court. But if the Web site existed where I could place a futures wager on athletes going broke, then I think I have enough information where I think I'd put $10,000 on Chris Singleton to go belly up in five years.
The odds wouldn't pay off nearly as handsomely as one of Singleton's lottery tickets if he'd won, but I think I'd stand a good chance of cashing my ticket.
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