One Averill Park High School graduate should be placing more futures bets in Las Vegas. Jack Paris, who was a senior in 2018, made this bold prediction in his high school yearbook: “Milwaukee Bucks 2021 NBA Champions.”
Earlier this week, the Bucks became just that, winning their first National Basketball Association championship in 50 years, besting the Phoenix Suns in a six-game series. The team’s young phenom, Giannis Antetokounmpo, was named Finals MVP (he had previously won back-to-back league MVP awards in 2019 and 2020).
Called it Back in 2018 @Bucks pic.twitter.com/Mev6uBJ5zh
— Jack Paris (@Jparis36) July 21, 2021
Paris, wise to his apparent psychic abilities, tweeted out a photo of the yearbook prediction on July 21, and the tweet has since garnered a whopping 1.3K likes and 200 retweets so far. The tweet has even earned itself some national attention, getting a mention on the air on CBS’ Milwaukee, WI affiliate.
It turns out it was no fluke that Paris predicted the team’s victory. “I’ve been a Bucks fan for a very long time,” Paris tells Capital Region Living. “I wanted my quote to be something different than everybody else, and being a Bucks fan was my thing in high school, so I figured that was the perfect thing.” Incredibly, too, the year Paris picked for the team to win it all wasn’t random either. “It’s kind of a complicated thing,” says Paris. “Giannis [Antetokounmpo] was due for a contract extension in 2021, and everyone said that he wasn’t going to do it, that he was going to leave, and I just knew he wasn’t going to leave. So I said, He’s going to sign it, and in that same year, he’s going to win us a championship. That was my reasoning behind it.”
Paris, who currently works at a Capital Region furniture store, says he’s a gambling man—but sadly, wasn’t of legal age to do so in December 2017, when he had to submit his yearbook quote. So he was unable to make a futures bet based on his prediction. He didn’t bet on his team this time around either. “I was enjoying the championship without any money on it,” he says. “I just wanted to watch it.”
Given Paris’ apparent Nostradamus-like streak, CRL wanted to know if he had another earth-shattering prediction to make, one that might take place three years from now. “Maybe a Cowboys Super Bowl,” he says, with a chuckle. Yeah right.
