Horace Grant didn’t grow up with options. He grew up with whatever was available. And sometimes, that meant what ran across the yard.
Speaking on All The Smoke, Grant gave a raw look into his childhood in rural Georgia, where poverty shaped everything, including what ended up on the dinner table.
Horace Grant: “We were so damn poor, we had to move to the ghetto to be rich. That’s how s**t was. Anything came across our front yard, it was dinner. From squirrel, raccoon, even possum, rabbit.”
Matt Barnes: “Hold on. You just gave us four monsters right there. Rank those in taste.”
Horace Grant: “Raccoon is number one.”
Matt Barnes: “Raccoons taste good?”
Horace Grant: “Yeah. Then rabbit. Then possum.”
Matt Barnes: “Squirrel ain’t s**t, huh?”
Horace Grant: “Squirrel too bony. We even had snake, of course alligator.”
Matt Barnes: “Gator ain’t bad though. I had gator in New Orleans one time. I was pleasantly surprised.”
Horace Grant: “Yes, sir. You know we like the hot sauce. You know what I’m talking about… At the age of about 10, my parents split up and we moved to the hood. And the crazy shit about that, my dad moved to the hood, a house down from us.”
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He grew up in Hancock County, in a small home without basic comforts, where survival meant adapting. Hunting and fishing weren’t hobbies. They were necessary. If you didn’t catch it or find it, you didn’t eat.
And Grant remembers all of it clearly. When Matt Barnes asked him to rank those animals by taste, Grant didn’t hesitate. Raccoon was at the top. Then the rabbit and the possum. Squirrel didn’t make much of an impression.
Grant’s story isn’t only about food. It’s about the environment.
At around 10 years old, his parents split, and his family moved again. Even then, things didn’t stabilize. He mentioned that his father ended up living just a house away, a detail that says a lot without needing explanation.
Life stayed complicated. But it also built something.
Grant and his twin brother, Harvey, developed a reputation early. He was known as ‘Pea Picker’ in his community, not as an insult, but as a sign of respect. It meant he worked and showed up. It meant he did whatever was needed to help his family.
That mentality carried into the NBA. Grant played 17 seasons in the league, from 1987 to 2004, building a career defined by toughness, defense, and doing whatever the team needed. He won four championships, three with the Chicago Bulls alongside Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen during the first three-peat, and another with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2001.
Over his career, Grant earned $67.9 million in salary, a massive number considering where he started. His net worth today is estimated to be $35 million, built from his playing career, endorsements, and post-retirement work.
That gap, from hunting for dinner to earning tens of millions, tells the real story. Grant doesn’t tell these stories for sympathy. He tells them to show the foundation.
Because everything that came later, the championships, the money, the success, it all started in a yard where anything that moved could end up on the table.
