Background
Kelly was born in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. He enrolled at Texas Southern University in 1979, and played basketball for the team for four seasons.
Kelly was born in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. He enrolled at Texas Southern University in 1979, and played basketball for the team for four seasons.
He played college basketball for the Texas Southern University Tigers from 1979–1983. A counselor gave him his nickname "Machine Gun Kelly" in his freshman year due to his prolific scoring. In his college career he scored 3,066 points — the sixth most in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I history — and averaged 27.9 points per game.
Kelly was selected in the fourth round of the 1983 National Basketball Association Draft by the Atlanta Hawks.
He was cut from the team before the season in favor of Doc Rivers, Randy Wittman and center John Pinone, who were all selected before him. He subsequently played briefly in California"s Summer Pro League and Italy"s Lega Basket Serie A. In 1984 he started a career in Houston"s Department of Public Works and Engineering.
In addition, he achieved a career total of 1,085 rebounds, averaging 9.9 per game, making him the first player to score over 3,000 points and grab 1,000 rebounds in National Collegiate Athletic Association history. He was named Southwestern Athletic Conference Player of the Year two times and received the John McLendon Award, which honors the best player at a historically black college, in 1982 and 1983.