Kris Humphries is 40, but the competitive fire of a pro athlete never goes out. He tries to play four days a week, even when he’s on the road. If all goes well, his shots will fall. He’ll talk some trash. The love of the game will last another day.

His basketball days are done. That half-court in the basement? His friends love it—but the former Gopher hoops star and 2004 first-round NBA draft pick’s new passion is pickleball, the explosively popular sport encroaching onto YMCA basketball courts coast to coast. And he’s become quite good.

It started innocently enough: In 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic was disrupting and dulling daily life, and Humphries needed something to fill the hours. Pickleball was suggested by an unlikely source, “the guy who was remodeling my house,” Humphries says. He played casually for a year or two. That didn’t last.

“Just seeing how good people were, and I’m a competitive person, it’s kind of hard for me to half-do something,” Humphries says. The goal now: be better than all his friends.

Is he?

“Of course,” Humphries laughs, with a caveat: That doesn’t include friends who play pickleball professionally.

Ryan Sherry, a nationally ranked pro, is one such friend. Sherry says Humphries could make the jump in two years. “He’s a student of the game,” Sherry adds, who is “addicted” to pickleball. Sherry used to field a stream of calls from Humphries on everything from how he played that day to questions on paddle technique. Now, Sherry observes, there are “less questions and more him telling me that he doesn’t think I can keep up with him.”

Pickleball, Humphries, says fills the “competitiveness void,” which can’t be filled with visits to a personal trainer or a gym workout. “With pickleball, there are wins, losses,” he says. “A lot of high-level players, they’re very competitive. It gets tense and fun and you get that feeling.” Or, more accurately, feelings. “Competition, winning, talking crap,” Humphries explains. “All those things.”

Pickleball is active. but lacks the constant jumping and hard landings of basketball that made Humphries content to retire at 32 before his body broke down. The reasons why he plays pickleball now are also why the sport has taken off.

“There are different elements to it,” Humphries says. “You can drive the ball hard. There’s a lot of touch and some strategy with it. The barrier to entry to playing tennis—the ability to time a serve and get ground strokes down—is a lot harder. [With] pickleball, almost anyone, if they’re at the same level, can go and play and have fun.”

Humphries estimates he’s a low 5 player, just shy of top caliber (5.5 and above). Being an in-shape 6-foot-9 former professional athlete—Humphries was a dominant schoolboy swimmer in Hopkins, Minnesota, who even beat Michael Phelps at one point—certainly helps. But Humphries is OK with his amateur status. “At this point, what am I, 40 years old?” he says. “I don’t know if I could really make that major jump.”

Participating in the occasional event with friends makes for a fun couple of nights, but tournaments are weekend killers and Humphries hates sitting around. While he may be frozen in the public’s mind as a brawny rebounder or as the groom in an abbreviated marriage that sustained America’s gossip complex 15 years ago, he has kept busy since his last NBA game in 2017. (Humphries was briefly married to reality television fixture Kim Kardashian.)

In Minnesota, which Humphries calls home, he, his parents, and cousin own Dave’s Hot Chicken. Four are open with another 18 to 20 in the works. Humphries handles the property, his forte. He started buying real estate in 2012 and has a substantial portfolio of commercial and residential properties.

“You always hear about people going broke after basketball,” he says. “I think having cash flow and an asset is important. You have money coming in each month from buildings, it creates that stream. I just didn’t want to live off dividends from stocks.”

Business and pickleball capture Humphries’ interest right now, but they are best kept separate. Investing in pickleball facilities, he says, “just seems like more of a headache.” But Humphries would pursue a less ambitious deal, like buying a next-door neighbor’s house and putting in a pickleball court.

“If the price was right,” he says, all business, “I’d definitely do that.”

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