Take a look at many of the famous NBA players currently competing at the highest level of their sport today and remember that many of them share one common fact in the history of their rise to stardom…they all started out in a cramped dorm room at one time or another.
The list of NBA stars that once lived in dorm rooms as college players includes many, from Ray Allen to Wilt Chamberlain and so many others. It’s hard to imagine these players who now live in posh and stylish homes worth millions of dollars used to deal with the same cramped living situation that many college students fact today. We look back at old pictures of them studying at a desk or lounging in their beds shooting crumpled up paper balls into a waste basket and it makes them look a little more human…a little less distant from where we are now.
While it could be easy to assume that these dorm rooms were the places of wild and crazy parties that lasted through the night, the pictures and reports we hear paint an entirely different picture.
Take Wilt Chamberlain for example. Considered by many to be the one of the greatest and most dominant players in NBA history, Wilt Chamberlain is the only player to score 100 points in a single NBA game. That is just one of his many NBA all-time records that remain intact and unbroken even today. But before he became the legend he is known to be in the NBA, he started by playing basketball at the University of Kansas. There are even pictures showing Wilt studying hard in his Kansas dorm room circa 1956, sitting at a desk that is much too small for his 7 foot 1 inch frame. His desk and dorm room look similar to what they look like today.
Then there is “His Airness” Michael Jordan from the University of North Carolina. Most of us are familiar with MJ’s accomplishments over his long career in the NBA. Even more prevalent in today’s world is talk about his fame and wealth that has made him one of the most successful sports figures in the history of the world. If you were to visit Michael in his dorm room back in 1983, you would see firsthand his humble dorm room beginning. One thing that stands out about Jordan’s dorm room is how tidy it was. Pictures show a very small and cramped dorm room that is clean and well organized.
So the next time you walk into your room after a tough day of midterms and lectures in the middle of a long semester that feels like it may never end, consider what you, Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan all have in common…your wonderful, little dorm room.
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