Dre Murray believes that the common saying about life in difficult neighborhoods that young men have the potential options to be an athlete, rapper, or drug dealer, was very true in his neighborhood.

“There’s a lot of people that take a different route, but for the most part, [for] everyone I saw around me, it was those three things.”

He was into sports at an early age, and became a very good basketball player. His family purchased a basketball hoop for their home, and “from there I didn’t really leave the backyard a whole lot. I just practiced all the time, every single day. I wanted to be in the NBA.”

Towards the end of high school, Murray was offered and accepted a basketball scholarship to Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Oklahoma. “I had some offers to go play elsewhere, but my grandmother, before she died, told me that’s the school that she wanted me to go to.”

“It winded up being one of the best things that has ever happened to me, being in that environment.”