{"id":1859160,"date":"2024-10-01T15:30:14","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T19:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=1859160"},"modified":"2024-10-01T15:09:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T19:09:10","slug":"former-duke-player-aj-griffin-exits-17m-contract-to-follow-jesus-the-lord-was-calling-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=1859160","title":{"rendered":"Former Duke player AJ Griffin exits $17M contract to follow Jesus: &#8216;The Lord was calling me&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Third-year NBA player AJ Griffin, who played at Duke, is giving up professional basketball to serve in ministry full-time. Just ahead of the 2024-25 NBA season, Griffin announced on his YouTube page that he would be stepping away from basketball after reaching an agreement to be waived by the Houston Rockets. &#8220;I gave up basketball to follow Jesus,\u201d Griffin said. He was an honorable mention All-ACC selection and member of the ACC All-Freshman Team in 2022. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/fearless\/aj-griffin-retires-follow-god?\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Please click here for more<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Third-year NBA player AJ Griffin, who played at Duke, is giving up professional basketball to serve in ministry full-time. Just ahead of the 2024-25 NBA&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1859161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1859160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duke-blue-devils","category-featured-stories","wpcat-82-id","wpcat-79-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1859160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1859162,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859160\/revisions\/1859162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1859161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1859160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1859160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1859160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}