The late Prince was a noted basketball fan who surely would’ve enjoyed watching the NBA playoffs this year, and it sounds like his basketball skills once matched his fandom.
The legendary artist was the subject of a “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” skit on Dave Chappelle’s Chappelle’s Show in 2004 that detailed an outlandish story about Prince challenging Murphy and his brother, Eddie Murphy, to a game of basketball and absolutely destroying them on the court.
It turns out that the skit wasn’t just a tall tale, as ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk spoke to some who grew up with Prince in St. Paul, Minnesota, and knew about his prowess on the basketball court. The pop icon even drew a comparison to a two-time NBA MVP.
Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images
“Dave Chappelle’s story is true,” said Jim Petersen, the longtime Timberwolves TV analyst and a star high school and college hoops player in Minnesota. “That’s a true story.”
“He was basically like Steph Curry,” added James “Jimmy Jam” Harris, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame producer and die-hard Timberwolves fan who had known Prince since junior high. “He had great handles, could shoot the lights out. When he’d come up to court [in high school], all the girls would go, ‘Ah, Prince!’ They’d all scream.”
Youngmisuk noted that Prince played basketball during his teenage years at Bryant Junior High in Minneapolis and was a member of the junior varsity team at Central High School in St. Paul.
Prince was known for his incredible skills on an array of instruments, but Harris added that Prince’s creativity extended to the basketball court as well.
“I remember when we were recording at Sunset Sound [recording studio in Los Angeles], he used to play all the time,” he said. “He basically would play HORSE. He could do a shot like, ‘I’m going to bounce it off the roof’ and kill everybody at HORSE. That basket is still there.”
