It’s common to see retired athletes say they miss the competition and adrenaline rush of professional sports after they call time on their careers.
Some, like New England Patriot Richard Seymour and NBA star Paul Pierce hit the poker tables and compete in tourneys like the World Series of Poker. Yet more take to the golf course – Jerry Rice played the Nationwide Tour post-football while Tony Romo has attempted (unsuccessfully) to qualify for the US Open. We know about athletes who have played in multiple sports, like Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson. In basketball Nate Robinson originally went to college on a football scholarship before switching game, potentially an odd choice at 5’9, but ten years in the NBA shows he made the right decision. Legendary Boston Celtic Danny Ainge spent three years as a Toronto Blue Jay before declaring for the 1981 NBA draft.
What’s less well known – certainly outside of the racing world that RPM Mag covers – is two NBA stars have made their name in dragsters. Since retiring, you can catch former Cleveland Cavalier Larry Nance around IHRA meets. After calling time on hooping in 1994, he won his first race in 1996 in a Chevy Monte Carlo. While he doesn’t drive anymore, his team still race the 67 Camaro dragster he’s been the proud owner of for over two decades. Tom Hammonds started racing while he was still playing. In 1996, midway through a 13 year NBA career, Hammonds was racing in the NHRA Pro Stock category. This wasn’t a new thing to the then Denver Nugget, as Hammonds explains “After racing in middle school, high school, and college with no money to do anything and scraping things together, I was thankful to have my Georgia Tech education paid for, but I had to put racing on hold until I had the money to do so.” His NBA salary allowed him to hit the NMCA track in the early 90s in a 69 Camaro and work his way up to Pro Stock.
A western Florida native, Hammonds played professionally for the Washington Bullets, Charlotte Hornets and Denver Nuggets before finishing his career with a four year stint at the Minnesota Timberwolves. In all four of his seasons there, while he helped them to four successive playoffs, the T-Wolves couldn’t find that extra gear, and were eliminated in the first round each time. Their current roster could perhaps use his high-octane attitude, with Jimmy Butler notoriously calling them out as ‘soft’. Their chances of making the playoffs for the second year in a row have received a boost with the signing of Rudy Gobert, however the odds at Coral rank them middle of the pack in a crowded Western Conference field. Having taken up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in 2012, Hammonds has gone on to take gold in the ultra-heavyweight category in the Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship. Even Jimmy Butler might baulk at calling him out.
Hammonds is still racing. He cuts an odd figure at 6’9 and odder still in a full steel 1969 Camaro, a unique machine in 2022’s NMCA world. Now 55 and still carrying the drag bug hard, he admits, “”I can’t get away. It’s just like The Godfather; they keep pulling me back.” He likens racing to being on an NBA roster, explaining “Just the whole racing community, when you’re involved in it like we are for so many years, you can pick up the phone and call and talk to each other. And that’s what makes a big deal for me. That’s something I missed. I mean, that’s the camaraderie that I missed, that I missed when I played basketball, that I do get when I drag race.” Hammonds has swapped his hoops from metal to rubber, but his dreams are as big as ever.
