Kohler’s Joe Wolf played with Michael Jordan at North Carolina and was 13th in the NBA Draft. He was voted the state’s all-time greatest high school basketball player.

KOHLER - Back in the early 1980s, Kohler High School's WIAA Class C basketball team tore up the boards with their championships and propelled the skills of Joe Wolf into the NBA.

Kohler basketball would win the WIAA State Champion class C gold ball in 1980, 1982 and 1983.

Wolf, who began his basketball career in fifth grade playing organized games with friends, would blossom into a McDonald's All-American and is the Kohler Blue Bomber's all-time leading scorer.

In 2005, he was named Wisconsin's all-time greatest high school basketball player in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel poll.

Wolf's success would follow him in college with the University of North Carolina, where he would reach the NCAA tournament all four years under coach Dean Smith and be teammates during his freshman year in 1983-84 with NBA great Michael Jordan.

Things were just warming up for Wolf. The NBA then came knocking on his door.

According to a Press clipping from the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, Press sports writer Denny Moyer wrote that Wolf was the 13th pick in the NBA in 1987.

"Joe Wolf, who just about everybody in the county has played against at the Y on one occasion or another, is now in the NBA," Moyer wrote.

He added: "Think on that for a minute. The 13th pick in the entire nation has come from Kohler, Wis."

The only person who would even come close to that achievement would be Sam Dekker, who was selected by the Houston Rockets as the 18th pick overall in 2015.

With the NBA, Wolf would spend three years with the Clippers, two years with the Denver Nuggets, some time with the Boston Celtics, a year with Portland, two with Charlotte, a year with Orlando and a season with the Milwaukee Bucks. A return to Denver would last a year and he would close out his playing career in Charlotte. He would also give European basketball a try for a time with Baloncesto León in Spain.

During his time in the NBA, Wolf would rack up 2,485 total points (averaging 4.2 per game for his career) along with 1,933 rebounds (averaging 3.3 per game for his career).

A dislocated elbow in 1999 would end his NBA playing days.

Wolf's love affair with basketball was not quite over, as coaching was on the horizon, according to a Press sports article by Tom Dombeck.

Wolf went back to where it all began in Sheboygan County to warm up his basketball coaching skills. He spent three yeas as an assistant coach at Kohler High School under his brother, Jeff Wolf.

He spent until 2020 in a variety of coaching positions at the collegiate and professional level, including duties as an assistant coach with the Milwaukee Bucks.

Today, Wolf is part of the new staff of C.B. McGrath as an assistant coach at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

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This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Kohler's Joe Wolf played with Michael Jordan, was 13th in NBA Draft