The worlds of rap and basketball are intricately intertwined. Rappers and NBA stars share off-court relationships, and these relationships are often based on the mutual respect that each party shares for the other’s craft. Former NBA 6th Man of the Year Jamal Crawford elaborated on how he also shares a relationship with a rapper and revealed that Michael Jordan was responsible for forming it.
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Jordan was a huge fan of J Crossover, and the former Clipper claims that he was able to use his friendship with him to meet HOV. He elaborated on how the relationship came to be as he recalled the story for Paul George on Podcast P. According to Crawford, he was preparing for an ACL surgery after his rookie season when he met the rapper for the first time.
Crawford remembered how he was walking around the city of Chicago, strengthening his knee for his surgery, when he met William Wesley, a senior executive for the Knicks, who is close with Jay Z. Crawford said that Wesley was standing next to a car and that he made a beeline for the senior exec when he saw Jay Z for the first time.
“I’m like ‘MJ I wanna meet Jay-Z.’ And he’s ‘OK’. And then he tells Wes, I’ll never forget. I tore my ACL, we’re in Chicago one of those summer nights. and I’m walking to Wes and he’s standing outside a car, and I’m not realising that. It just looks like any other car on the street. When I get to Wes, the window rolls down, and it’s Jay and I say, ‘Oh sh*t!’ I’m like that’s my guy and that caught me off guard.”
From that moment on, Jamal Crawford and Jay Z became close friends. The rapper would come to watch Jordan and Crawford play gym runs and even ended up playing for Jay-Z’s team during the Rucker Park games during the NBA lockout. He also remembered receiving Jay-Z’s signature basketball shoes after they came out because he was a contracted Reebok athlete.
“I was already with Reebok I went played for him in the Rucker. when I played for him in the Rucker, our relationship really took off. That whole blackout game and all that. and then from there, when he got S. Carter, Jalen Rose and I always got Reeboks, we were Reebok athletes. And I had a box, black and grey, he didn’t have them. I opened them up, it was the S. Carters. I wore them in-game and our relationship really took off.”
However, the signature shoes weren’t all that Crawford got from HOV. Jamal Crawford revealed that the 24x Grammy Award winner also gave him a Roc Nation chain, that he’s proudly sported at multiple events.
