"Any loose ball, any call, he getting it or he trying to fight people" - Nick Young shares what it was like to play basketball with 'The Game'
Nick Young wasn’t the greatest player to set foot on the court in the NBA, but he was a solid player who made a career as a spark plug scorer off the bench. The highlight of Young’s career was undoubtedly winning a championship with the Golden State Warriors in 2018.
After growing up in Los Angeles, California, Nick spent nearly half of his career playing for teams in his home state. Along the way, Young met some pretty big stars from all around the world, and it even led to him playing basketball with popular hip-hop artist 'The Game.'
Nick dishes on playing basketball with the star
Growing up in L.A., Young was exposed to the West Coast rap scene, and one of the more popular rappers for the past two decades has been 'The Game.' Many hip-hop artists are big basketball fans, so they take their talents to the court every once in a while.
Jayceon, who is from Compton, California, ended up playing pickup games with Young on several occasions. According to Swaggy P, 'The Game' played basketball with reckless abandon, which often resulted in him trying to pick fights with his opponents.
“'The Game' play just like somebody in jail, jail ball,” Nick Young said VladTV. “He used to try to punk us too because we was younger and stuff. When we played with him, we couldn’t call fouls if he wasn’t getting no fouls. If he called a foul, he’d still get it. Any loose ball, any call, he getting it or he trying to fight people.”
Young shares how intense those games were
Given his outspoken personality, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that 'The Game' is a vocal player on the court. While it was (usually) harmless fun when he was on the court with Nick, that wasn’t always the case.
There was an incident during one of their encounters that saw the rapper get arrested for punching a police officer in the face. This obviously saw 'The Game' find himself in hot water, and he took a second to open up on what happened during this incident on a previous occasion.
“Yeah, man, I gotta stop playing basketball,” Taylor said in an earlier VladTV interview. “I was trying to do whatever I had to do to not go back to jail, because like I said, when you go to jail in this position, it’s just not cool. I didn’t care what money I had to pay, or what I had to do, but yeah, I ended up getting probation, which was worse."
“I think I might have taken whatever jail time and not got probation, because going to report bi-weekly and p*** in cups and sit down and be interviewed about what you doing when you ain’t really doing s*** for, I think it was three-and-a-half years, might have been five, I don’t f***ing know,” 'The Game' added.
Young knows how chippy basketball games can get in the NBA, but it sounds like playing with 'The Game' takes things to a whole new level. And if you somehow end up finding yourself on a court with Jayceon, it may be wise to avoid picking any fights with him.
