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Did Joe Burrow Play High School Basketball?

By: Author James

Posted on  - Last updated:

It isn’t uncommon for a professional athlete to have played in multiple sports before officially hunkering down on one. There are a lot of players that are just as talented in their secondary sport. Lately, reports have been flying around that the quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals, Joe Burrow, wasn’t interested in playing quarterback when he was still in high school. This comes out right before he is about to take place in the Super Bowl! So, clearly Burrow had his eyes on other sports.

Did Joe Burrow play high school basketball? Yes. Joe Burrow, of  the Cincinnati Bengals, did play high school basketball. He attended Athens High School in The Plains, Ohio. It was something that he saw himself doing as a career. He played for more than a season with his high school and was already seen as one of the leaders on the team according to high school teammates. In the run up to him being selected with the first pick in the 2020 NFL draft, he claimed he could get 12 to 15 points a game in the NBA.

Let’s take a deeper dive into his stats during his high school basketball career. We should also take a look at some other big-name athletes that specialized in basketball before ultimately deciding that they wanted to head in a different direction with their talents.

Burrow was a phenomenal Basketball player

Burrow and the rest of his teammates in high school instantly considered him their leader when he joined the team. Some people said that he had swagger when he played that made people want to follow him and work together. His best year was in his senior season. The future NFL quarterback averaged 19.3 points, 6.1 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.8 steals per game that year, while dominating on both ends of the floor. Over the course of his high school career, he averaged 17.1 points and 6.9 rebounds per game. I don’t know about you but those stats aren’t bad for somebody that didn’t even choose to play basketball. To dive a little deeper into his senior season, he averaged the most points on the team that year. His friends on the roster thought of him as the strongest both mentally and physically and he played multiple positions for the team. Not to mention that he was easily the best three-point shooter. At 6ft3 and 220 lbs he would be a fairly small point guard – think a muscular Steph Curry for reference and would have almost no shot at making it as shooting guard at that size. That said, leadership and talent can’t be measured in feet and inches.

Dave Logan- Another Stellar Athlete Like Burrow

Dave Logan is just one of the players that we are going to talk about that played multiple sports, including basketball. Logan was known for his dominance on the football field during the years 1976 until 1984. He was a wide receiver for those nine seasons. Little did you know, Logan was actually drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the MLB before he even attended college. Instead of going and chasing a baseball dream, Logan chose to stay in college and played basketball. He was actually so talented on the basketball court also that he saw his name get called in an NBA Draft! The Kansas City Kings, now known as the Sacramento Kings, selected him. Logan opted not to roll with them either and remained patient until the Cleveland Browns drafted him. It’s easy to forget who Logan was as an athlete, but he also had an uncanny ability to win in everything, just like Joe Burrow in Cincinnati and LSU.

Dave Winfield Has Similar Success

There is just something about Daves and multiple sports. Dave Winfield was a ridiculously famous baseball player. He was in the MLB for 22 long years, becoming a World Champion, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and was a 12-time All-Star. On top of that, ESPN even ranked him as the third best all-around athlete in history. He also found a way to get drafted by multiple associations with his basketball skills. The Atlanta Hawks in the NBA were the first team to try and snag him away from a different sport. Then the Utah Stars, an ABA team, tried their luck right after but suffered the same fate as Atlanta. The exact same year as two basketball leagues tried to grab him, the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL had drafted him even though he never played football at all during his college years. Yep, he was that talented at every athletic game he played. Ultimately, he played baseball but his time in other sports were just as impressive nonetheless.

Sometimes, Confidence is Key

Joe Burrow has endless confidence. The second-year quarterback has already taken the Bengals to heights that nobody ever thought possible and is doing so just one year removed from a major knee injury! Apparently, his team’s success can be credited to the confidence in Joe Burrow’s personality. One reporter spoke to him and claimed that Burrow fully believes he would be successful in the NBA today. When asked to dive deeper into that claim, Burrow went on to talk about how he thought he could average at least 12 to 15 points per game for any team in the league. The reporter asked a few more questions and found out that Burrow also believes that he could shine in the league alongside players like LeBron James and Steph Curry. Apparently, he is convinced that he would be an above average role player in the NBA nowadays. However, it isn’t only Burrow who believes that he would have been able to make it into the NBA. Some people around Athens High School fully believed that he would make the NBA if he really took the time to get better and work on his craft. After all, he scored the second greatest number of points in his school’s history and was First-Team All-Ohio during his senior year. Even his head coach, Jeff Skinner, said that he was certainly on track to being a major basketball talent in the country. I guess ridiculous confidence in yourself and your abilities is what makes Burrow so talented, not just in football but also in basketball.