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SALT LAKE CITY — Joe Ingles may now be a $52 million man, but he still has the same attitude toward life that he did three years ago when he was a training camp invitee who had just been waived.
"I mean, I’m not going to change. I am who I am," Ingles told the Australian paper The Daily Telegraph in an interview. "I’m about to turn 30 now and I’ve been like that my whole life."
So after signing a 4-year, $52 million contract to stay with the Utah Jazz, Ingles wants to give some of that back to the communities that supported him.
"We are going to do a lot of stuff with underprivileged children and families," he said. "We’ll start in Utah because we are going to be there in a few months, but then we’ll do some things in Australia."
The "we" in that sentence refers to his own family, with wife Renae and twins Milla and Jacob, who turn 1 on Tuesday.
So why is Ingles helping out his community?
"I mean, we don’t need that much money," Ingles told the Telegraph. "Nobody in the world needs that much money."
International Jazz
While Ingles enjoys Australia for a bit, his other international teammates are participating in camps and basketball events around the world.
Rudy Gobert has been running his basketball camp in Saint-Quentin, France, for the last two weeks, from July 9 through July 22. Teammate Raul Neto has been attending the camp with Gobert and helping teach the kids that come through. And yes, they've been working on their games.
Both will travel to Brazil, Neto's homeland, for an autograph signing at the NBA Store there on July 26.
Spaniard Ricky Rubio is heading to China this weekend for the first few rounds of NBA 5v5, a grassroots 5-on-5 tournament that will pit teams from across China against each other. Rubio will instruct the teams and sign autographs for fans.
Finally, Swiss Thabo Sefolosha is going to Africa to play in the NBA Africa game, having been named a team captain for Team Africa. He'll join Luol Deng, Bismack Biyombo, Clint Capela, Joel Embiid, Serge Ibaka, Luc Mbah a Moute, Emmanuel Mudiay, Gorgui Dieng, Salah Mejri, Victor Oladipo, and Dennis Schroder against Team World.
The second-ever NBA Africa game will take place on August 5 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Proceeds will go to UNICEF, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and SOS Children’s Villages South Africa.
