John Thomas Salley is a former National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball star, television and motion picture actor, and a major figure in the emerging U.S. cannabis industry. Salley was born on May 16, 1960, to Quille Salley and Mazie Salley in Brooklyn, New York. Salley attended Canarsie High School in Brooklyn, New York, where he played for the high school basketball team and graduated in 1982.
After graduating high school, Salley attended Georgia Tech University in Atlanta, Georgia. He joined the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets men’s basketball team and helped them win the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Championship against the North Carolina Tar Heels in 1985. He would become Georgia Tech’s all-time leader in blocked shots and have his jersey number 22 retired by the team.
Salley entered the 1986 NBA Draft and was selected by the Detroit (Michigan) Pistons. He was the team’s 11th overall pick in the first round of the draft. During his time with the Pistons, Salley became a two-time NBA Champion with the team in 1989 and 1990. He would also become the Pistons all-time leader in blocked shots.
Salley was traded to the Miami (Florida) Heat after the 1991-1992 NBA season. He remained with the team until the 1995 NBA expansion draft, in which the Toronto Raptors selected him during their inaugural season. Salley became a free agent during the middle of the 1995-1996 NBA season, signing with the Chicago (Illinois) Bulls and helping it have a record-breaking 72-10 regular season. Salley won his third NBA championship with the team during that season. He played overseas for the Greek Basket League team, the Panathinaikos, for about one month.
During the 1999-2000 NBA Season, Salley joined the Los Angeles (California) Lakers, where he won his fourth championship that season. With that win, Salley became the first player in NBA history to win an NBA championship in three different decades: the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. He retired from the NBA following the 1999-2000 NBA season at the age of 37.
Salley also had an acting career which included the films: Bad Boys (1995), Eddie (1996), Bad Boys II (2003), Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), Black Dynamite (2009), Nappily Ever After (2018), Sneakerella (2022), and Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024). He also appeared on television shows, including Malcolm and Eddie, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Basketball Wives. Salley has also been a vegan activist, and he has appeared in PETA’s testimonial videos. He is also an entrepreneur in the cannabis industry, where he launched his cannabis brand, Deuces 22, with his daughter, Tyla, in 2019. He took ownership of the cannabis testing company, GreenSpace Labs, and serves as an advisory board member with the cannabis social networking platform, BudTrader.
John Salley married Natasha Duffy in 1993, and the couple had two children. Salley also has a daughter from a previous relationship. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and a 33rd Scottish Rite Freemason.
