He did what most can only dream, and maintains he hasn't had one nightmare because of it.
Olden Polynice left $2.4 million on the table.
It was there for the having last summer, and all Polynice had to do was sign on the line. Exercise his own contractual option to return to the Jazz last season, and the money was his.
Instead, Polynice rolled dice. He opted to test the free agent market, hopefully to make more money. As one of the NBA's lowest-paid starting centers, he figured, why not?
Perhaps because no team in the league was willing to pay him a dime in 2001-2002, not even the Jazz, who were not bound to re-sign Polynice once he opted out.
Still, the 14-season NBA vet insists he has no regrets.
"I'm not kicking myself. I can't do that," Polynice said Saturday, just before scoring four points and pulling down five rebounds for the Toronto Raptors in their 91-73 Rocky Mountain Revue summer league win over Cleveland at Salt Lake Community College Saturday.
"See, God puts you in positions. I didn't make that decision. God made that decision. OK? That's what He wanted for me at that time. And that's how I look at it. That's what He wanted," Polynice added. "The script has already been written, you know? Every now and then you are going to have some people try to throw a wrench in the whole thing, but, pretty much, I'm not making decisions. God makes decisions."
Even amid rumors that his wealth isn't exactly what one might think it should be after a decade and a half of pro basketball, Polynice contends missing out on the money just doesn't matter.
"I spent time with my family, kids. Finally got to see everybody's birthdays, and holidays. So it was great," Polynice, the father of five aged from 10 months to 15 years old, said of his season of unemployment.
"The year off, it was a positive. I think a lot of people are like, 'He gave away 2 1/2 million dollars.' You know what? They can give me $100 million; it won't ever replace the time I have lost with my kids. So, that's just ignorant people looking at stuff from a monetary point of view . . . It was $2 million well-spent."
Then why come back?
"Because I want to. Because I took care of what I needed to take care of; I did what I wanted to do. And I didn't go out the way I wanted to, per se," said Polynice, who also has spent much of the past couple of years dealing with legal issues, including two cases of impersonating a law-enforcement officer that resulted in probation and community-service sentences, and a misdemeanor assault allegation stemming from an incident on a local golf course.
"See, I couldn't dwell on (not returning). If I had dwelled on it, I would have been miserable. OK?" the 7-foot Haitian added. "I'm not gonna stand here and lie and say I didn't miss it. I missed it."
Polynice came to that realization during what normally would be the dog days of the NBA season.
"Maybe right around March, my kids were like, 'Dad, how come you're not playing?' " he said. "They started asking, and that's when I started thinking about it a little bit more."
Polynice, who is playing in the summer league without any sort of guaranteed deal, hopes to latch on with an NBA team.
"I'm in good shape," he said, though it did appear Polynice labored a bit getting up and down the floor in his Revue debut. "People know what I can do."
Should an NBA return not be in the cards, Polynice said, there may be opportunities overseas. Accepting one would be like returning to the beginning.
Following his junior season at the University of Virginia, Polynice played 30 games for Rimini of the Italian League. He then embarked on an NBA career that would take him to Seattle, the Los Angeles Clippers, Detroit, Sacramento, back to Seattle and finally to Utah, where he averaged 5.3 points and 5.1 rebounds in two seasons from 1999-2001.
The Jazz could have brought him back last season even after he opted out, but they instead signed free agent John Amaechi and, eventually, gave Polynice's old starting job to second-round draft choice Jarron Collins.
Over that, Polynice is adamant he holds no grudges.
"A man of God does not hold anything against anybody. Like I said, the script was written. It wasn't the (Jazz's fault). It wasn't me. It wasn't my agent (Dwight Manley at the time). That's just how things played out," he said. "I mean, I still respect the Jazz organization. I respect everybody there . . . No bad feelings.
"I mean, I can't hold grudges. It's a business. Everybody makes business decisions. My agent and I, we made a business decision. It didn't work out. But I moved on, just like the Jazz moved on."
In the interim, Polynice followed the Jazz like a fan: "That was the last team I played for. I mean, I hurt every time they lost."
He also worked with his wife to start a women's accessories and jewelry business.
"The one thing we didn't want to do is feel like we're dependent on anything," Polynice said. "It offered us an opportunity to see what life is going to be like once I'm done, for real."
It was a taste of the retirement Polynice knew some day would eventually bring. It just happened to come sooner than he once thought.
"It was a good feeling. It was really was," Polynice said. "Just waking up in the morning, being with my kids."
E-MAIL: tbuckley@desnews.com