Getty Todd Gurley #3 of the Georgia Bulldogs.
Todd Gurley is coming home, or so we thought? It turns out North Carolina is more of a home to Gurley than Georgia ever will be. This makes sense considering Gurley is from Tarboro, North Carolina.
In a recent interview with former Duke basketball player and current director of operations for Duke basketball, Nolan Smith, Gurley joked saying “I tell people, ‘Oh yeah I didn’t go to Georgia, I went to Duke’.”
Gurley added that he used to walk in front of Georgia’s basketball team wearing Duke jerseys saying ‘It’s just a North Carolina thing.”
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As someone who spent a year in Raleigh, North Carolina, it really is a ‘North Carolina thing.’ Nobody loves basketball as much as the Carolinians and there’s absolutely no way you can be a UNC fan AND a Duke fan.
Gurley is a Huge Basketball Fan
Gurley might love basketball a little more than football, or so it seems. When he moved to North Carolina from Baltimore, he had already been rooting for Duke after spending his childhood playing the March Madness video games.
He soon learned after moving that Duke was located in Durham, North Carolina, just under two hours from his tiny town of Tarboro.
Gurley became a die-hard fan and caught as many games as he could, starting with the 2003-04 Blue Devils led by J.J. Redick, Loul Deng, and Shelden Williams.
Gurley Had Dreams of Playing in the NBA
I dug up an interview from two years ago when Todd Gurley had his best back-to-back year. He won Offensive Play of the Year and secured a four-year, $60-million contract extension with the Rams, yet still had other dreams in mind.
Gurley had spoken to GQ’s Kevin Nguyen about his NBA dreams where he revealed he would have rather taken his talents to the court.
Here’s part of the interview:
You said you did track. Did you always want to play football?
I always did football, man. I played basketball. That’s everyone’s real dream, but that didn’t work out too well.So if you could just magically take all your talents and become a basketball player, you would do that?
Oh yeah, most definitely.What team would you want to play on?
Right now? Shit, I’d be on the Cavs, hanging out with LeBron. [Ed Note: This conversation was during the NBA Finals.] I could be that guy that could get at least 15 for him. J. R. [Smith] don’t want to get nothing.
Gurley Hooping in Quarantine
According to social media, Gurley spent a lot of his time hooping while in lockdown. Fans weren’t too happy about it considering he has a bad knee.
However, fans have calmed down a bit now since Gurley finally passed his physical earlier this month.