Rob Gronkowski Intentionally Missed A Free Throw In High School So His Team’s Score Would Be 69

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The Patriots’ quest to win Super Bowl LI comes with plenty of built-in storylines. The most obvious is, of course, Tom Brady’s revenge on Roger Goodell for his four-game “DeflateGate” suspension, and that angle is somehow more prominent than the fact that Brady can become the first QB to ever win five Super Bowls. And then there’s the fact that Brady is playing in his seventh Super Bowl, which means that Brady has started 14 percent of all Super Bowls! It’s a wonder that people even remember the Falcons are in this game.

There’s also the “How does he do it?!?!” factor with Brady, and his amazing ability to do more with seemingly less. This season, he has taken the Pats to the Super Bowl without his primary weapon, Rob Gronkowski, who succumbed to the Madden Curse and missed most of the season with a back injury. We obviously want Gronk back and healthy for next season and beyond, because without him, we may never get amazing stories of his youthful athletic dominance, like this incredible Gronk high school basketball tale.

“We couldn’t get in our gym one day because desks and chairs were set up for kids to take midterms, so our sister school, Williamsville East, said we could go to their gym to practice if we wanted,” [Williamsville North High School basketball coach Chuck] Swierski said. “So we’re doing one of our normal drills and a pass goes to Rob from the top of the key and he goes up for a two-handed dunk and comes down with the rim in his hand.”

The gym went nuts.

“We stopped practice and just took pictures,” Swierski said. “He [Rob] just made a silly kind of ‘haha’ laugh and said, ‘That’s cool.’” (Via WPRI)

We already knew that Gronk was a talented athlete in high school, so it isn’t surprising that he was also dunking all over kids. But now comes the much better story. Or should I say, the much Gronkier story.

Swierski continued, “So we’re playing a home game and we have 68 points – now it’s not a blowout, but it’s not a particularly close game either. So he [Gronkowski] gets fouled and goes to the free throw line. He hits the first one to get us to 69 and the place goes nuts because he’s playing into it. On his next free throw, he purposely chucks the ball off the backboard and misses so the score would stay at 69 and then runs back on defense pointing at the scoreboard.” (Via WPRI)

Should Gronk ever grow up and stop loving 69 jokes, that would be the saddest day in history. But judging by his shoutout to his mom after his 69th touchdown, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Gronk is still that same boy who loves working out, playing sports, and chicks.

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