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Pacer Paul George bought every ticket for Fresno State’s home opener to give away for free

Kelly Dwyer

Your chances to watch Nov. 16th’s Fresno State/Cal State Northridge men’s basketball game in person just got a lot tougher. Thanks a lot, Paul George.

Not content with scoring the first basket of the NBA’s season on Tuesday night, The Indiana Pacers All-Star, fresh off of signing a contract extension that could reach $90 million over five years, decided to buy each and every one of his former college’s tickets to their home opener. The Fresno Business Journal reported as much on Monday:

George purchased the tickets for the Save Mart Center’s full 15,596-seat configuration.

All season ticket holders will have their same seats for the opener.

Fans will need to print off a voucher at http://imgur.com/8fxYsZm, then redeem those vouchers at the Save Mart Center ticket office. Vouchers are available immediately and are redeemable for one ticket each.

Fresno State Athletics Director of Development Jennifer Jory tweeted out the good news soon after:

Indianapolis Star beat reporter Candace Buckner dug in a little deeper to try and figure out just how much George spent on the ducats:

Let’s do some math. Adult tickets for Fresno State Bulldog men’s basketball games start at $17. So, just using that low figure – and again, prices do go up – we can estimate that George spent roughly $265,132 for the tickets.

The problem with that estimation is that it doesn’t include the season tickets that were already purchased, so it’s likely that George isn’t on the hook for a full quarter of a million dollars. Still, even if half the stadium is filled with season ticket owners (an unlikely event for a small’ish basketball program), that’s still quite the donation from Paul.

It’s a rather unique way of giving back to the program, too.

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Kelly Dwyer

is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!