 I'm with the Brooklyn Nets right now. A lot of people know that I grew up in Indiana. And so it's a struggle to talk to a Kentucky guy to a certain extent, to a certain extent. Now, not a lot of people may understand this because times have certainly changed even back in Indiana. You know my son's there, right? You know my son's at, no, my son's in Brooklyn with the Nets. Oh, I didn't know that. In the video room. In the video room. Zeke Chapman. How long has he been in Brooklyn? Just this year. He and Steve, Steve Nash. Steve was a rookie. And when my son was three or four years old, they'd been big buddies since. How shocking has it been for you to see your Twitter page blow off the way it acts? Yeah, it's weird. It's weird. You know, again, these are not my videos. These are other people's videos that people send me. And, you know, I asked to amplify them, which I'm like, this is crazy. Because, you know, only seven, eight years ago, I was living in my car for a bit, living on friends' couches and whatnot. So it's a bit surreal, especially when people know me more for that and this than them from basketball. So yeah. Do you remember the first video that blew up? Yeah. I was just, I wanted off social media. It was a couple of years ago, toxic political climate. It was just getting me down. And one day I came to a video and it was a school of dolphins swimming into the shore and a guy paddle boarding out, standing up. One of the dolphins jumped up, hit him in the chest and knocked him off his paddle board. I said, that's a charge. And that was just my reaction. So I tweeted it out. People thought it was funny or whatever. And that's it. That's all there is to it. It was a complete accident. Oh my gosh. What are your favorite kind of videos that you'll post? Oh, the feel good stuff, man. The heartwarming stuff. You know, the last year has been so terrible for everybody, for everybody. And, you know, and we were all isolated. We're all at home watching TV or on our phones. That's all we had to do, you know? I said chaos was, chaos was really gonna happen when the internet went out. If internet went out, people would have been in the streets. No doubt. Right? No doubt. So we were all sitting there and, you know, it was just kind of nice to, you know, it was also nice to connect. It's nice to connect with kind of like-minded individuals. It seems like on social media, you'll recognize a person that's following you, maybe. And you'll be like, man, that's how they're gonna move you. Oh, they kind of, we kind of, you know, we kind of, you know, get along. Like, if we were real life, maybe we would be friends. You know? So there's something real, there's something real kind of, I don't know, comfortable about that. You're missing this early. So many people knowing from, you know, the social media. I was in Vegas one time and Shaq was DJing. He's known as DJ Diesel. And I think it was my fiance overheard some young people saying, oh, you know, it was a DJ. And someone said, no, he played basketball. They go, what? Like, they didn't know Shaq, ooh. I mean, come on. Does it? It's hilarious. That's hilarious. I mean, you have that same vibe with so many people. Yeah, but I'm not 7'1, 300. I'm not 7'1, 300. Yeah, that's extreme. But yeah, that is weird. I remember I was at the NBA Combine a couple years ago and I'd do basketball stuff still for NBA TV and for Kentucky basketball and whatnot. And so I'd been watching them play in the SEC all year long. And one of the young men from came out on the floor, came out on the floor. His name is, oh my goodness, played at Tennessee. I'm drawing a blank, Grant Williams, Grant Williams. And so Grant comes out and he came up to me, saw my name tag and said, Rex Chapman. I said, yeah, man, what's up? He said, from Twitter, right? Okay. He's a ball, he's a basketball player. Yeah, he's a basketball player. Plays for the Celtics now, right now. Plays for the Celtics, yeah. It was from Twitter. Yeah. Before I move on, tell me this is completely random. Your Twitter photo is Prince spinning the basketball. Where it's come from. Is it Prince? That's not me. It's not. Please tell me that's not Prince. Oh, no, that's my guy. I've loved him from early on. And then just from early on, from controversy and everything. I mean, right, I was probably 14. And you couldn't get, you had to go to the record store. And in Kentucky, it wasn't easy to get a Prince album in a record store. But we found it. And so from that time with the music. But then a couple years later, I was in high school and I was wearing the number three. And only reason I was wearing three because it was one of the two smallest uniforms on the team. And everybody, you know, so me and another guy, he got double zero. He was a little bit smaller than me. But then I saw that Prince wore number three when he played basketball. If you've ever seen that picture of Prince kneeling down on his squad from when he was probably 15, I was like, I'll never not wear number three. Because anyway, that's my guy. I love it. I love it. I love it. Tell me about your new podcast, Georgie, so thanks. Yeah, you know, I'm kind of excited about it. And I don't get real excited about too much, but I try not to. But yeah, Steve Nash, my buddy, Stevie Nash, two Weber teammates from, gosh, it's 25 years ago now. God, that's hard to say out loud. Is that right? 25 years. Yeah, so he called me about a year ago, and we've been close friends for that long. And he said, hey, I got an idea for a show, a pod, some kind of something. Would you be interested? And when he laid it out to me, I couldn't really understand it because I'm kind of an idiot. But when they explained it a little bit more, I was like, oh, man, that's pretty cool. And it's really just, it's become, I'll interview the first episode was me being charged, being in trouble, rehab, trouble with the police. I played a career. I told about that, and then talk about all the hard stuff, all the terrible stuff, when it's feeling in your worst. And then what you're doing now, I've had the opportunity to interview early on meta world peace, meta sand for our test now. And I played against him. So it's kind of cathartic. Listen, for these guys that are being interviewed, did Ryan Leif last week, Chris Herron coming up. It's cathartic. But it's fascinating to me to ask these, so what was it like right in that moment? Because your whole world comes down. When you get charged with something and you've grown up in the spotlight, it's horrible. It's a horrible experience. But it's beautiful to watch these guys and these guests open up. And you see a side of them that you go, oh, man. And look, these are people who have messed up. And it's not absolving them or us of anything. But it's just saying, hey, there's a human here that you might not understand, maybe going through, may have been going through something with family or mental illness, depression. At a young age, you've got the world by the tail. And not all of us, myself, definitely included, have the mental capacity or mental makeup at age 22 or age 26 or even age 30 to be very worldly and to really have, I didn't know much about anything, my whole playing career. I was just so focused on playing. And because it's hard. And you're doing it in the public eye, but man, it's really beautiful watching these people open up. And because I think it's probably going to be pretty valuable for some people to hear. Because sometimes when you're struggling, you just need to hear something. And these guys are providing some inspiration, I believe. And I don't think you could really quantify. I really put a number on the amount of people that you've already touched and you will eventually touch through sharing the story of so many people. I want to encourage everybody to check out, you know, charges, check out that podcast. And that first episode, you know, you go in detail about your story. We don't have to go through the whole thing here, but could you share a little bit about your story and about, you know, your low point and what helps you turn around? Sure. Yeah, I grew up and born and raised in Kentucky. I was a play to every sport growing up. I loved every sport, but I really liked football a lot. But I was a late bloomer. I was like 5'7", 5'8", as a freshman of high school. And everybody was way bigger than I was. And I could always play basketball. I was always good at basketball. My dad was a coach. That's really all I ever really wanted to do. But I wasn't athletic and I wasn't big, but he's 6'6", and my mom's 5'8", 5'9". So everybody assumed I was gonna grow, but I was still a new girl. But over one summer, I grew about three inches and went from, you know, 5'8", to 6'3", or so. But then my athleticism kind of kicked in and I was a really good athlete. Became a really good athlete. And I was recruited by everybody. At McDonald's, all American, all that stuff. Went to Kentucky. Was at Kentucky for two years. Was all SEC, all American at Kentucky. He picked in the draft for the Charlotte Hornets, the first pick in their franchise history. Del Curry and I, Del was the first pick of the expansion draft. We became best of friends at that point. Stefan Curry was born my rookie year. He's like my little man. And then I was traded from there to Washington after four years, played with the bullets, Washington bullets back in the day for three and a half, four years. I played, it was traded to Miami, played a year in Miami. Had a terrific time. And then finished my career last four or five in Phoenix with the Phoenix signs. Then I retired and within, and a doctor, I had seven surgeries my last three years of playing. And I wasn't a smoker, wasn't a drinker, none of that. I'd go out and have a drink with my friends every now and then, but I didn't really like it. So, but a doctor, right? I had an emergency happen deck to me and the doctor gave me OxyContin. And I still had like three or four years left on my contract, $13 million, I think roughly. And that doctor gave me OxyContin. And in two days, I felt like I was in love and I never played another basketball game, not another one. I retired and spent, you know, there was a time I was taking, within 18 months of that retirement, I was taking 40, 50 Vicodin of the day and 10 OxyContin a day. And yeah, so I went to rehab. Danny Ainge convinced me to go to rehab. I went to rehab, I got off the OxyContin, but for the next 12, 13 years, I battled a painkiller addiction and was in rehab three times. I got in trouble in 2014, shoplifting in an Apple store. And when I say that out loud, every time I want to crawl under this table, every time. It's just, it's crushing. It's crushing to me, it's crushing to, you know, my family, my kids, you know, it's hard. Anyway, so I got in trouble and then I went to rehab that time, took it seriously, I'm 30 or 40, whatever, five at the time. And, you know, really took the therapy part of it seriously. I stayed in rehab for a month or so and then I went and lived in Houston with John Lucas, who's renowned and we've been friends forever and John has a long history. Everybody should know John Lucas' story if you don't look him up. But, and he really helped me get, you know, right. I was out there helping, you know, basketball, just out there on the floor helping young kids, just back in a gym and slowly, but surely, you know, I started developing new habits and lived on Friends couch in LA for a couple of years, a couple of friends. And then I started getting back into basketball. People asked me to, you know, I did Kentucky basketball radio for a couple of years and I've done NBA TV, Turner Sports has been very, very good to me. I do that and I do these pods, but that's really it in a nutshell. I hope I didn't take too long. No, no, no, that's perfect. Cause I, you know, some of the people, and it frustrates me sometimes when I hear people, you know, crack jokes about different people in history alive or dead or whatever it may be. Cause I appreciate and admire, you know, the redemption stories and is it, is it frustrating? I mean, obviously you, you know, you have to stay, you know, on your path and focus on what you want to focus on. But I'm sure you're confronted with that, that people, that some people are more in love with the fall from grace than they are the redemption story. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I think that's just people, you know, I could post, I can post anything really. I could post a fireman up in a tree saving a kid. And inevitably in the comments, somebody's going to put my mugshot up there and say, is this you bro? Well, yeah, that's me, but that's just, I mean, it's, it's mean, but right. It's just mean, that's what it is. Right, right. But you, that's social media too. But it's all, you realize that you, you just realize at some point, all you can do is continue to try to get better. There are some people that are never going to, never going to get over some things. And I can't help them. I can't help them. All I can do is continue to do better. And we've, we've seen this, you mentioned, you know, during the pandemic and a lot of people on their phones and the way things have been over the course of the last handful of years, a lot of people, you know, came out the woodwork and showed their ugliness for sure. What, what, what's motivated you? Cause you, you have the, you know, the videos that put a smile on people's face, make people laugh, the uplifting videos, timeline cleansers, but you use your voice for social justice too. What was the catalyst to that, you know, had it, how, where did that come about? Yeah, you know, I've, I've, I've been fortunate to, I've been fortunate to play basketball, you know. And if you look around, look around the league, black and white, it's a very difficult sport to be racist in, it really is. I mean, you better learn about the people in your locker room, if you want to know anything, if you want to have a chance of being a good teammate, you better know, you better not, not just know them, you better know their family and their history and all of that, if you don't, you're a bad teammate. And so, you know, when you see people like Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich, and those are good teammates. And sadly, sadly, it's powerful when white people speak up that have a platform. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. And so I would feel, you know, I've seen a lot, a lot of stuff growing up in the South. And I would feel like a coward to not stand up for my friends and, and what I know to be true. I really would. I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you with some basketball questions before I do. What, what, to put a ball in this conversation, what gets you going? What keeps you moving and motivated on a day-to-day basis? That's really good. It's my kids and trying to show them better. Cause I lived, I lived my whole life up to the moment that I got in trouble. I had never been in trouble. Like I lived a really, and that, that really, I live with it and it crushes me. It crushes me, man, to know that I did that. That I was capable of doing that. And so my kids just keep me going, you know, they're older now, all of them in their 20s. They're great, but that does because I, my whole life, I've had a tendency to kind of, you know, I reach out to something, I reach a level and get complacent and kind of, but maybe the best thing, I'm sure it is the best thing to happen to me was getting in trouble or cause I was gonna die. I was taking so many pain killers. I wouldn't have picked for that to happen, but it did. And now that it has, it's my story. And, you know, you can only do two things. You can either try or not try and I'm trying. And, you know, that's all I can do. The Indiana, Kentucky rivalry and not even talking about college basketball, but from high school, the all stars used to be a big deal. And a lot of people don't realize that. And you obviously a baller, Mr., you know, Mr. Basketball in Kentucky. And unfortunately for me, beat up on Indiana in that two games, two game series. Yeah. Do you remember that? No, I was, I was, I was young, but I grew up. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, cause it's a good, good one for me. No, that series used to be the thing. Like it was a big deal. They packed it at Market Square Arena is where it was for Indiana. And they packed it at Freedom Hall in Louisville. They alternated, no, they alternated games cause you played two games every within two weeks. In 1986, that's the last time, our year, the last time Kentucky swept Indiana. It's never happened since then. But I'll tell you, it was me, but we had, we had, we had 12 for real legitimate division one players. Felton Spencer was on the team too. Yes. Reggie Hansen, Reggie Hansen. We, we had a squad, but I remember that the first game, cause I got like, I don't know, 36 or something. And, and, and we, we just beat the pants off of them in Indiana, but it was the first game ever. Cause I was like, I looked at the stat sheet after the game and was like, this can't be right. It was the first game that I'd ever played that any of us had ever played with the three pointer. And I had like eight three pointers. So, and I didn't know, but I didn't even, I was just shooting cause they weren't guarding me. It was, you know, it was, yeah, I'll shoot it here. So that was a big advantage, the three point line. Yeah. Cause you're already shooting from there. I mean, yeah, yeah. It would be great for four players. Now in the, in the NBA for sure. And I think I, I think I tweeted this anytime, anytime it pops up on your Twitter, on your feed, I'll reply and we'll say this, the three pointer that you hit with the sons and that just off one leg flinging it. I cannot tell you how many times I practiced that shot in the driveway. Like it was. That's so awesome. What was that? What was that moment like? That's awesome to hear. No, it's awesome to hear. Cause the people say it, people have been saying that for years and I don't, I don't discount it. It's awesome. But I was the other, what I'll say is it was the pass made the shot that passed by Jason kid. The funny part to me is, you know, knowing them as teammates, the play, we'd run that play a couple of times during the year. Only cause I could shoot that way. I could shoot run the runner. That was just, I don't know why, but and I don't know if we'd made the shot during the season, but we'd run the play and knew that we could get a look. The play is, it was initially for me to set a pick on KJ and he was the first option. But if you ever watched the play, Jason never even looked at KJ. He was throwing that thing to me from the get go, never even looked at him. And I almost stopped midway through cause I thought he was going to throw it to KJ. And then I had to catch up to it cause I thought it was going out of bounds and we're not even going to get a shot off. So I just caught it. And really in that moment we, I had been shooting the ball really well. They were going to foul us and we were down three. So I knew if I caught it in cleanly, hercy was going to foul me. But right when I caught it, I felt him kind of nudge me with his hand. And I thought, oh, if they call that and I let this go, they didn't call the foul. But if they had, ooh wee man, that could have been a foreign end to it right there. But the, but the pass, the pass was just heavenly. I could catch it. Didn't even have to put it down right in stride. Jason did, man. Oh, oh, we would practice that whole sequence live. Let it bounce once and then catch it and it's like. Before you wrap your, your, you mentioned him a couple of times that his son, this that relationship with Steve Nash. And the job that you feel that he's done, cause that's not an easy, people felt like, you know, oh, he's coaching Kevin Durant and Kyrie and now James. That's an easy, that's the easiest job in the league about what he's done. Oh man, you know, cause I kind of live in diet. My son's calling me every night, you know, after games and up late and all that. And I've watched all the games. So they haven't had their whole team together, but what, like seven games all year. I mean, those three guys, along with the healthy compliment of, you know, Joe Harris and, and Claxton and all those guys, it's just been, and then Dionne Lamarcus came in and it's just been a crazy year, but they've gotten, you know, from Blake steadiness and, you know, guys that really stepped up. So if, if they're healthy, you know, watching Steve, it's great. And also that Mike is there is a terrific, just a really, cause they're really tight and they trust one another. I think probably, you know, watching at times, knowing Steve and how competitive he is, I watch and I'm like, man, he's letting them go. Okay. Well, he, wow. And so I imagine a lot of Steve's job is just on what to let go and not complain about it, right? But man, if they, if they're healthy, I think they come out of the east. They are going to be absolutely, absolutely tough. So the world of Rex Chapman, very busy. What's, what is the, what is the future? What's the outlook look like? I know Charger's going to continue to blow up the podcast. I'm really, I'm having fun. I'm really, it's, it's great to, to be, you know, through the things that I've been through and be relevant, man. I'm happy to, you know, be getting up every day and really, really happy. Honestly, when you're on those painkillers for that long, you know, you never think you're going to get, you never think you can get off of them and that your life is never going to be really worth much because it's a really sad and bad existence being a slave to those pills. You know, it's just, you, they tell you when to take them at some point instead of the other way around. And just the constant hunt for that to wake up every day and not have to, you know, go to the pharmacy and go, you know, to the guy on the corner and do all, you know, all of that stuff. Man, it's, it's, it's fantastic. And I never thought I'd get out of it. So I'm, I'm good doing this and we'll see what happens from here on. And inspiration, my bad. Thank you so much for your time Rex. I appreciate you. Thanks man, anytime.