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Before reality TV fame, Caitlyn Jenner was more famously known as the ‘World’s Greatest Athlete.’ Between the Olympic gold medals and creating the blended Kar-Jenner clan, Caitlyn was an NBA player for a blink-and-miss-it moment. Her former (step) son-in-law and current podcast co-host brought back this lesser-known tidbit of Jenner’s decorated, multi-faceted athletic career. But is it true?
Lamar Odom rightfully said on The Breakfast Club that no one has more stories to tell than Caitlyn Jenner. “Caitlyn was drafted in the NBA. Lot of y’all probably didn’t know that.” Indeed, the hosts’ reactions were a lot like ours, and they prodded Odom for more information. He got the timeline a little wrong, though; it wasn’t 1979 but 1977. And the team wasn’t called the Sacramento Royals.
By then, the Decathlete from Graceland had won gold medals in the 1975 Pan American Games and the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. The Kansas City Kings (now the Sacramento Kings) selected her in the 1977 NBA draft. She was the 139th pick overall in the seventh round. The Kansas team presented him with a jersey bearing the number 8,618. That was the Olympic decathlon score Jenner recorded, which was the world record for a while. A quick search online will show Jenner in the Kansas City jersey.
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It was a different time, as Odom put it: “They had like a lot more rounds in the draft, and at that time they were just picking the best athlete.” So it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Olympians to get drafted into the league. But did Jenner qualify? The erstwhile Bruce Jenner was a multi-sport athlete in high school. He did play basketball and earned a football scholarship to Graceland. It wasn’t uncommon, as even OJ Simpson, whose connection to the Kar-Jenners was through the late Robert Kardashian, was also an Olympic track athlete before entering the NFL. But Simpson could hold his own in the league. Could Jenner stand a chance to play against someone like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who dominated the ’70s NBA?
Caitlyn Jenner’s NBA career was an honorary one
Jenner apparently knew that playing high school basketball was nowhere near the same as playing in a league that had Kareem and Pete Maravich. So the Olympian never suited up for Kansas City. However, Jenner was already a national hero by then, with unprecedented brand appeal (like, even running with a flag became an Olympic tradition thanks to him). Selecting him was all a publicity stunt orchestrated by the early incarnation of the Kings.
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Before they moved to California, the Kings were outshined by the home NFL team, the Chiefs. They needed a massive publicity boost to survive. By then, Bruce Jenner had become a household name after the Olympics. The new draft pick was signing autographs for the entire team while the Kings were planning a whole campaign. Wheaties was even sponsoring a Bruce Jenner Night where everyone in attendance would receive a mini box of Wheaties.
Jenner played along for Bruce Jenner Night and was on the Kings roster for a single day. He didn’t even shoot any hoops for the heck of it. He chose to focus on his decathlon career, which was at its peak at the time. An old news outlet claimed that the Kings’ staff had been eating the surplus wheaties for months. The closest Caitlyn has come to the NBA very recently has been through Kendall’s relationship with Devin Booker, some of Khloe’s relationships, and now her podcast, Keeping Up With Sports, with Khloe’s ex, Lamar Odom. Fingers crossed, she reveals what it was like to be an NBA pro for a day.