Pacers Rookie Jarace Walker Has Relatable Reaction To Getting Handed $9K Bill At Team Dinner

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High schools and colleges have made a concerted effort to crack down on the hazing that used to come with the territory for unproven student-athletes, but the pros tend to have a bit more leeway when it comes to initiating new members of a team—a lesson Indiana Pacers rookie Jarace Walker recently learned the hard way.

Earning a spot on the roster of a professional sports franchise for the first time is obviously a dream come true for every person who gets the chance to realize that lifelong dream, but it can also come with some downsides—including the wildly expensive “rookie dinners” that have become a fairly hot topic of discussion in recent years.

Those meals usually involve the entire team racking up a massive tab at a restaurant before handing the check to guys who haven’t paid their dues in the league but are expected to pay for the food and drinks everyone else ordered.

The size of NFL teams (as well as the size of the guys who play for them) can lead to some incredibly pricy tabs some players have taken a stand against, although some squads have started using them to prank newcomers instead of actually forcing them to fork over their money.

Jarace Walker ended up on the Pacers after the former Houston Cougars forward was selected with the eighth overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, and he ended up doing pretty well for himself after inking a four-year contract worth upwards of $27 million.

This week, Walker and his teammates headed to Nashville for some workouts and bonding time prior to the start of training camp and opted to hit up Halls Chophouse for dinner on Thursday.

Based on a video Tyrese Haliburton shared on Instagram, the Pacers spent a grand total of $8,685.40 at the restaurant when everything was said and done, and while Walker can probably afford it based on the deal he signed, he was still understandably less than thrilled to see the final tally when the bill was handed to him.

As Sam Dekker notes, Walker’s first NBA check won’t actually hit his bank account until the middle of November, so while he’ll make much, much more than that once the money starts rolling in, it probably puts him in a bit of a rough spot for now (Nuggets guard Christian Braun encountered a similar issue when he inadvertently stole the parking spot of the team’s owner prior to that start of his rookie season).

It’ll all work out in the end, but it’s hard not to relate to Walker’s reaction.