Before music, Dave East was a basketball star.
East was playing basketball at Springbrook High School in Maryland and ended up on the Amateur Athletic Union with then-future NBA stars including Kevin Durant. During an interview with SLAM Magazine, he explained that after his fall out with basketball, Durant helped him start his rap career.
This is how it started. After AAU and a short-lived college basketball career, he ended up in jail for six months and started to rap. East said Durant got a hold of his first mixtape ‘Change of Plans’ in 2010 and was fascinated. So Durant contacted him and flew him out to Oklahoma City to record his second mixtape ‘American Greed’ in his home studio.
“It was pure motivation. Kevin don’t smoke. I was smoking. So I was like, Yo, bro, I need to go get some roll-ups at the 7-Eleven. He’d throw me the keys to the Maybach like, ‘Go ahead.’ I’m scared to drive it—I don’t wanna crash. I’m in a Maybach, but this is my friend that’s my same age that I started basketball with. So it was just amazing to me that, damn, his mother’s not working no more. My mother’s calling me—she driving a school bus.”
In 2014, Nas signed him to Mass Appeal Records.
Things worked out for East even after moving on from his initial dream of basketball.