At the 2012 NBA Draft Combine, no prospective professional player was measured to possess wider hands than Royce White. At 11.5-inches, the figure dwarfs that of perennial All-Stars Anthony Davis (9.5) and Damian Lillard (9.75), both of whom were selected before White’s name was announced as the No. 16 overall selection in the first round by the Houston Rockets.
Nine years later, White is still a pro basketball player. He’s co-captain of the Big3’s Power, leading the 3-on-3 team in rebounds, assists and blocks during the 2021 season. It’s not the NBA — the league from which he asserts he was “blackballed” years ago over his push for mental health accommodations — but it’s still competitive basketball against league veterans like himself.
Come Friday, though, White becomes a two-sport pro athlete as he steps into the cage for his MMA debut against fellow heavyweight Daiqwon Buckley, a former fullback at Temple University also making his pro debut. And, a few days out from the fight, White was curious to see how the equipment would fit his hands.
“I pray to God, when I get to the weigh-ins on Thursday, that we get to try out some gloves and figure that out,” White told The Post over the phone. Gloves issued by Legacy Fighting Alliance go up to size 3XL, which CEO Ed Soares told The Post he is confident will work out for White’s debut with the promotion.
At 6-foot-8 and weighing in on Thursday at 253.8 pounds — and what White estimates is seven or eight percent body fat — his huge fists wrapped in MMA gloves make for an imposing image. Whether he has the skills to match his outsized physical attributes remains to be seen. How he performs at Friday’s LFA 120 (9 p.m. ET, UFC Fight Pass) will offer the first look at how this elite athlete with NBA experience and three years of MMA training can fare in his new sport.
White’s interest in combat sports is no passing fancy. He is a lifelong boxing fan who idolizes Muhammad Ali and was enraptured by the heavyweight boxing scene of two decades ago — the Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield era. The advent of YouTube roughly 15 years ago helped him find MMA.
Rather than return home from basketball practice and watch more hoops, he parked in front of his desktop computer and queued up bouts from the now-defunct Pride Fighting Championship or Kimbo Slice’s famed backyard brawls. It captivated the teenaged White.
“Coming from the sports world, the team sports world, there’s a purity to [combat sports],” said the 30-year-old White. “There’s a gravity to the courage it takes to get into the ring. And then the chess match of two individuals and not being able to make any excuses, there are no teammates to blame it on.”
But being a fan was all White says he could be at the time. Other than a brief period on the junior high school wrestling team — in the short time before the largely concurrent basketball season began — martial arts training wasn’t in the cards. Even though he had “the itch to get involved” at an early age, year-round basketball is the norm for top prospects aspiring to reach the NBA.
White contends that time wasn’t necessarily the issue, though. As he explains, the problem was how martial arts training might be perceived while the 2009 Minnesota Mr. Basketball was under the microscope of the college and pro basketball scouting world.
“At the time, anything that the industry heard that you did that was divergent from the ‘eat, sleep and breathe your sport’ could hurt you and the prospect of being a professional,” White said. “… At the time, they thought people who trained mixed martial arts were crazy. That was the stigma around martial artists, especially cage fighters.”
Any aspirations to hit the gym and hit pads on the regular went by the wayside. Following a tumultuous two years that saw him leave the Minnesota program and enroll at Iowa State, White was squarely in the sights of NBA scouts during the 2011-12 season in Ames. He posted per-game averages of 13.4 points, 9.3 rebounds and five assists for the Cyclones, displaying an all-around game infused with a blend of toughness and strength.
He opted to forgo his final two years of eligibility and enter the draft, ultimately being selected in the middle of the first round by Houston.
Aside from the preseason, White would never play a minute for the Rockets.
Diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder in his teens, he sought permission from the franchise to make use of a private bus to travel to some games in order to cut down on the number of flights. Flying triggers White’s anxiety, although he told The Post he flew to every away game in college and was willing to take longer flights in the NBA when driving wasn’t as feasible.
“What I said was, ‘if we’re in Minnesota and we play in Chicago the next night, just let me drive,’” White said as an example. “Why not? But the system was so used to the status quo that the mere request that I should be able to drive because I do have an anxiety around flying was seen as offensive. It’s like, ‘Well, this guy’s a prima donna.’ It’s like ‘What?’ I’m asking to take the longer, six-hour drive instead of flying the private charter plane, and I’m the prima donna? You guys are ridiculous.”
White’s insistence on mental health accommodations by the Rockets and their D-League (now called G League) affiliate Rio Grande Valley Vipers delayed his first pro basketball action. He eventually agreed to report to the Vipers, appearing in 16 games and posting modest numbers (11.3 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.3 assists in 25.6 minutes), although he missed the league’s postseason amid disagreements.
A trade to the Philadelphia 76ers that summer ended his time with the franchise. He would eventually make minute-long appearances in three games for the Sacramento Kings, but he has not played for the NBA or G League since 2014. White went on to stardom in the National Basketball League of Canada, but he has not played 5-on-5 professional basketball since his contract with Auxilium Torino in Italy was voided in 2018.
Within six months, basketball wouldn’t be his only athletic focus.
Still a fight fan, White recalls how watching former UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones compete helped to inspire him to walk into the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy in Brooklyn Center, Minn., in early 2019. Owner Greg Nelson, who coached former Minnesota NCAA champion wrestler and WWE star Brock Lesnar on his way to the UFC heavyweight crown while White was still in high school, agreed to take him on and mold the basketball player into a fighter.
White heaps praise on Nelson’s coaching and mentorship. He entrusted Nelson to decide if his aspirations to compete as a mixed martial artist should come to fruition.
“I was gonna rely on him to tell if I was ready to compete professionally,” White said. “I was gonna train regardless, and I had the plan to compete, but I was gonna leave it with him if I was ready to compete or not.”
White worked at his own pace, learning the fundamentals of MMA striking and grappling. There’s a lot to pick up, from hand fighting and working against the fence to defending takedowns and utilizing the whizzer in the right situations.
Striking comes most naturally to White, something he credits to decades of basketball and all the little things that come with running around for about 30 minutes on the court, such as cutting angles and hand-eye coordination.
“Basketball is a rhythm sport. It’s a tempo sport,” White said. “Football is more brutish, explosion, fast-twitch, collision, and then and then you stop and you rest. And basketball’s like this perpetual dance. There’s some physicality to it … but there’s a perpetual dance to it. So, I like being on the feet. I just like having another body in front of me and us in the dance of it.”
Training to fight has helped alleviate White’s anxiety, which he nonetheless swears has been “over exaggerated” from the beginning of his professional hoops career. He says he’s found very few things to be as helpful in that regard than stepping into the gym.
“I think it’s because I love it,” White said. “… Usually with anxiety, when you find something that you love that brings you that natural sense of peace and calm or purpose and meaning, then the anxiety relieves itself.”
Even this week, ahead of his long-delayed MMA debut — he said five previously scheduled and unreported attempts fell through when opponents pulled out — he feels anxious. That could extend to Buckley, who serves as White’s first public test of his MMA journey and weighed in exactly 10 pounds heavier on Thursday. Soares said the fight came together a few weeks ago, but reports of the booking surfaced just a few days before fight night.
“He should be anxious,” the confident White said. “He definitely should be anxious. I think all fighters are probably anxious, but he definitely should be anxious.”
White knows little about Buckley, who went 1-1 as an amateur but has not competed in four-and-a-half years. He knows the Dunmore, Pa., native looks strong and that “brothers are explosive.” Frankly, though, he’s not very interested in Buckley, instead focusing on himself and what he will do once the cage door closes at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel in Prior Lake, Minn.
That’s not to say he doesn’t respect what can happen when the basketball player meets the football player, given their size.
“I’m at heavyweight, right? People get clipped,” White acknowledged. “[It’s] my first time in there after I played basketball my whole life. I’m not saying that I don’t have to worry about [Buckley] because I think you should never underestimate an opponent, even at 1-1 or whatever the records are, 0-0. That’s foolishness.”
Regardless of the result, Soares said he would welcome back White, who signed only a one-fight agreement with LFA, for more bouts.
Early on, White signed with Paradigm Sports, which manages the likes of MMA stars Conor McGregor, Israel Adesanya and Cris Cyborg as well as recently retired boxing legend Manny Pacquiao. He says his management assured him there was no rush to get into the cage and compete too soon.
Naturally, a competitor like White had been “champing at the bit” to fight within a year of training. And, of course, he has his sights on major promotions like UFC when the time is right.
But he’s keeping things in perspective at the moment. He is focused squarely on Friday’s first fight and, after that, returning to the gym to “continue to try to make up for lost time.” He would like to be active in 2022 to log cage time, assuming the situation with COVID-19 and other factors allows for it.
And while his friends in the basketball world and his network of peers from his work in raising awareness for mental health won’t have the opportunity to watch him in person this week, due to the short-notice nature of the booking and announcement of the bout, he looks forward to a time when he can “draw some unique crowds” during a potential UFC run someday.
“Hopefully, we progress the right way and get a chance to touch the UFC and have some fights in [Las] Vegas,” White said, allowing himself to dream. “… The sky’s the limit. I’m excited to be a part of it.”
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