During his recent interview at the “All the Smoke” podcast, Hall of Famer Ralph Sampson admitted to having a crush on the late great singer and cultural icon Whitney Houston.
And so while he was still at the peak of his NBA career, one of Sampson’s buddies set him up to meet Houston by attending one of her concerts when it coincided with a game in the city she was performing in.
But Ralph said he blew his chance by not showing up.
“So I messed up. And you know, I didn’t date, I didn’t have a high school girlfriend. Nothing like that from that standpoint. But a guy named Ed Exton he was a friend of mine, Billy Exton’s son. And I was in New York. I’m playing the Knicks. You got to go to New York. You gotta fu—g play. He wants to take me the night before to a Whitney Houston concert. I didn’t go. Next couple of days, she sent me all this stuff, paraphernalia, into the house. I had it like the stand-up thing and I would put it in the front window like somebody’s home,”narrated Sampson.
The incident likely happened shortly after Ralph joined the Rockets
It’s hard to tell when this happened because Sampson played one game per year at Madison Square Garden from 1983 to 1991. But it’s worth noting that Ralph married his ex-wife Aleizi Dial in 1986 before the two got divorced in 1999, so this must have happened very early in Ralph’s career.
Sampson was the Houston Rockets’ number one overall pick in the 1983 NBA Draft. He won Rookie of the Year honors in 1984 and was the All-Star Game MVP in 1985. Meanwhile, Houston’s self-titled 1985 album remains the best-selling debut album by a solo artist in the history of the music industry.
Whitney was linked to Michael Jackson’s brother Jermaine and comedian Eddie Murphy before she met ex-husband Bobby Brown in 1989 at the Soul Train Music Awards.
They started dating after that and married three years later.
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Houston once dated an NFL star
Interestingly, Whitney had a history of dating a professional superstar athlete, in NFL quarterback Randall Cunningham during the late 80s. Knowing how popular Sampson was as the next big thing in the NBA during his early days, it’s possible Whitney fancied Ralph, too.
But as he admitted to Barnes and Jackson, he blew his chance.
“I met her later on, but I was like, ‘Okay, great.’ But that is probably a mess up at that point. Go back and look at pictures of her. I mean, she’s beautiful. Okay, great, but she evolved,” he added.
Unfortunately, neither of them found luck in love. As mentioned above, Ralph and his wife divorced after 13 years and aside from their four children, he also had four other kids from four different mothers. Meanwhile, Houston and Brown also divorced in 2007. She accidentally drowned, with contributing factors of heart disease and cocaine use, according to the coroner’s report.
Maybe if Ralph had met her after that concert he mentioned, the domino effect would have changed a lot of things for both of them.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Oct 19, 2025, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.