Former Blazers Center Retires to Become Country Music Singer

For the first seven years of his NBA career after being drafted out of the University of Illinois, Meyers Leonard was a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. Six years after leaving the team, he has now left basketball altogether, and begun a second career as a country musician.

Having not played in the NBA nor any league since a short stretch to close out the 2022-23 season with the Milwaukee Bucks, Leonard has called it quits on a career that had already looked over for some time. Earlier this season, he announced his retirement in a song he posted to his social channels, and has since released more music, all while trying his absolute best to sound like Kenny Chesney.

As for whether it is any good – you be the judge.

Leonard’s NBA Ups And Downs

In his seven seasons with the Blazers, Leonard had some good moments, but never fully got going. His time in the NBA dovetailed nicely with the advent of the three-point shooting five man, and he was one of the better ones, hitting 39.0% from his career from the long line – however, slow defensive feet, an aversion to much in the way of physical contact, inconsistency and an unwillingness to shoot unless extremely wide open kept Leonard as a backup for the majority of his career.

There were nevertheless some high points, and a lot of money made. For his career averages of 5.6 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, Leonard made as-near-as-is $60 million in career earnings, buoyed by the giant $41 million contract the Blazers gave him in their unbelievably free-spending summer of 2016.

Leonard’s career peak came in the 2019 Western Conference Finals. Although his Blazers would lose Game Four of that series in overtime to the Golden State Warriors, Leonard posted 30 points and 12 rebounds to make the game close, the best single-game performance at any point in his inconsistent career.

One more relatively good year was to follow. Afterwards, however, it began to unravel.

From Career Self-Immolation To Music

Mere weeks after that Western Finals series ended, Leonard was traded to the Miami Heat that July as a part of the four-team deal that sent Hassan Whiteside to Portland, and started a career-best 49 regular season games that season with the Heat, along with two more in the NBA Finals. Yet after the 2019-20 campaign ended, Leonard would only ever play another 12 NBA games, due to a combination of injury and scandal – one of his own making.

Leonard missed all but three games of the 2020-21 season through shoulder surgery, and in March of 2021, while recovering from it, he sank his own battleship. On a gaming livestream, Leonard used an anti-Semitic slur on stream, leading to a week’s suspension by the NBA and his ostracizing by the Heat. Salary-dumped onto the Oklahoma City Thunder a week later, Leonard was cut one more week after that, and aside from the brief stint with the Bucks, that was it for his playing career.

Now, four years after the scandal of his own creation and two years after his stint with the Bucks, Leonard has his new vehicle – country music. He has a hat, a guitar, a YouTube channel and a long list of clichés to write songs about – the entire checklist required of the modern bro country artist.

At the time of writing, Leonard has six songs on his YouTube channel, and whatever one may feel about their quality, the production values are there. Leonard, clearly, is serious about this. Yee – and I cannot stress this enough – haw.