3x NBA Champion’s Life Trajectory Took a Turn Towards the Grammy’s After Kanye West Realization

It is not unheard of for NBA players to try their hand at different sports or even new career paths. However, the most popular choice for a side-hustle still remains the music industry. Many NBA icons like Shaquille O’Neal a.k.a ‘DJ Diesel’, Damian ‘Dame D.O.L.L.A’ Lillard, and others like Marvin Bagley have dropped some tracks over the years. Another notable NBA player recently opened up on his tryst with music after a bizarre Kanye West realization.

Dallas Mavericks star JaVale McGee has attracted some attention recently due to his journey as a budding music producer. After earning a credit in a Justin Bieber hit and a Grammy nomination, fans have displayed interest in his craft. The three-time NBA champion recently appeared on Draymond Green’s podcast to talk about a lot of things, including his accidental discovery of a music career.

JaVale McGee explains how a bizarre realization kickstarted his music career

During his appearance on the Draymond Green Show, McGee talked about his rocky career start and how joining the Golden State Warriors changed the path of his career forever. However, the conversation soon shifted to his music career and how it started.

The NBA champion started off at the very beginning by revealing how his first beat was created. He shared, “I’m a big tech guy so once I [saw] online that you can make music through your computer, I was like wait, you don’t need a whole mix board and all [these] crazy machines that you see [on] the videos on your YouTube of Kanye making beats and he goes runs over here [and] makes another beat.”

“I’m just like I can’t afford to get all that stuff, but as soon as I found out…. I bought a $600 laptop [and] downloaded FL Studio and I made some beats,” he added.

McGee went on to express how naive he was in terms of not realizing how the production of tracks worked. Subsequently, he went on to create beats for about ten years because it was just something he was interested in for a long time. In fact, the only thing that stopped him from jumping into his new projects was a complete lack of knowledge about the way things worked.

Once the Mavs players got the hang of how a track is created, he started spending his free time off-the-court in local music studios. Meanwhile, during a trip to LA to play for the Lakers, he met Justin Beiber’s songwriter Pooh Bear. 

McGee gave Pooh Bear 13K to write him 2 songs.

The NBA star just wanted to learn about song-writing, but never imagined he’d be writing one for Justin Bieber. He also shared on the podcast how a house robbery led him to find out about the Grammy nomination. 

The songwriter called McGee after his house got robbed as well and during the conversation started talking about the music album. Upon the player’s confusion, Pooh Bear clarified that the track he produced was added to Justin Bieber’s album ‘Changes’, which went on get nominated for the Grammys.