The Playmaker
Slam|June 2017

A Hall of Fame wide receiver with the Dallas Cowboys and one of the most animated NFL analysts on TV today, MICHAEL IRVIN was once a two-sport HS star whose love for hoops remains strong.

Peter Walsh
The Playmaker

SLAM: Did you play basketball in high school? 

MI: I played at St. Thomas Aquinas and I went down to the Beach Ball Classic, where guys like Kenny Anderson were playing, and took home MVP, broke rebounding records and was the leading scorer. I was physical—the way I played football was the way I played basketball. I almost went to Indiana to play football and basketball. Lorenzo White and I—he played for the Oilers—we went up to IU for a skills camp in high school. The camp went well and then we went and played basketball. I remember I came down and dunked on Uwe Blab, who was a center on the hoops team. I thought I was going to play both sports at Indiana. It was a tossup for a while.

You and Mitch Richmond know each other from way back, right? 

When we were kids, we used to travel around all the time and challenge all the brothers in the hood. They were putting up beers, [and] we would put up our milk or something and we would beat them down! I would be talking trash and Mitch used to calm me down.

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