Common appeared in the 2010 NBA All-Star Celebrity Game. Playing alongside the likes of Mavs owner Mark Cuban and Hall of Famer Becky Hammon, Common iced a pair of free throws late in the game to secure the win for the team coached by Magic Johnson and Drake. The iconic rapper has appeared in a total of eight All-Star Celebrity Games, even being named MVP in 2020. He had a 10/5/5 stat line in his MVP performance.
However, that Celebrity Game prowess game in spite of some harsh words from an NBA legend back in 2010. Speaking with Men’s Health, Common recalled how he ran into Michael Jordan soon after the game. “I just played in the celebrity game and hit the last free throws to seal the game. In this picture, when I greeted him, he told me to stick to rapping. He grounded me in this picture, for sure,” he said. The incident occurred after Jordan had watched Common perform in concert.
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Common Considered A Basketball Career
Soon after telling his MJ story, Common also revealed that he once considered a career in basketball. However, he reportedly switched his focus to music after suffering an injury in his junior year of high school. While he is undoubtedly a major contributor to modern hip-hop, Common took time to talk about how he valued the major contribution that Nas had made to the genre.
“That’s why we related to when Nas talked about what he talked about on Illmatic. He experienced it, and the way he told it was just beautiful. In ‘One Love,’ he talks to his boy in prison. That’s one of the greatest songs ever written,” Common said in reference to the trip to an abortion clinic that later inspired his song “Retrospect for Life”. It’s not the first time Common has lauded Nas either. “His mentality was on a whole other level, so it just made me start thinking on a different level. Illmatic is one of those things, it was like, okay — and I was probably 20, 21 — that was like life changing for me,” he said on the Bridge Podcast last year.
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