Logue - Hoop Dreams Down Under

CONTENTS

I was the first Australian to make it onto the biggest stage in basketball, but I didnt take Australian basketball to the NBA. It was the other way around. Australian basketball took me to the NBA. And it has led many there since.

But we all got there on the shoulders of giants. Before me, there were guys like Carl Rodwell, Barry Barnes, Lindsay Gaze, Adrian Hurley, Eddie Palubinskas and my old man Richard Longley who played the game in Australia on bitumen courts and under uninsulated asbestos roofs while the attention of the sporting public was largely elsewhere.

They were not the glamour days I was able to enjoy. But those men loved the game, they played hard and they coached enough local talent to create a league that was worth watching. And in the process they brought the essence of Australias sporting culture to a game that had room for blokes like me to compete against some of the great athletes of the world.

I am incredibly proud of the basketball tradition in Australia. I love the game, I love the way sport gives a line of sight into the character of the players and the supporters, and I love the way our players and teams have represented something of our national character on the court at a global level.

Mateship is about more than friendship. It is also about sacrifice. It is about what you are willing to give of yourself for others. And you can see that spirit in the way Ben Simmons, one of the great talents of the game, makes his teammates better, the way Matthew Dellavedova throws himself at the pine, the way Aron Baynes fights for space in the lane, and the way Joe Ingles makes his role his calling.

The NBA is one of the great sporting testing grounds on the planet. I cant overstate the level of competition that the NBA embodies and demands. It is no less true in the WNBA, where homegrown stars like Michele Timms, Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor have excelled to put Australian womens basketball on the map.

The young athletes in the NBA and WNBA, often from struggling backgrounds, are fighting for a future, for a chance to earn enough to set up their families for generations, for fame, for an invitation into the dreams of their childhoods and the imaginations of their communities.

I arrived in that world with the benefit of coaching and preparation from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) one of the worlds great national sporting institutions but there was nothing to prepare me for the dog-eat-dog world that I was to find myself in.

I was competitive, but I was no junkyard dog. And the NBA is no suburban coming-of-age story. It is an inner-city street fight and as much as it looks glamorous from the outside, it is a dark alley at times.

I was the first Australian to play in the NBA and I got a few black eyes along the way. And sometimes I can still taste the dirt in my mouth. It took me some time to figure that out. To realise that to do anything more than survive, you have to find your spirit mongrel.

Watching this crop of young men and women discover their own version of that story is something that transcends the skills and the pre-game laser shows. It is what makes sport of any kind worth watching. The inner contest and the battle of wills.

I love the fact that in some way I can represent our Australian basketballers, because they are an amazing group of people. All the stories are different. From Thon Maker as a South Sudanese refugee to the Michele Timmses of the world who just scraped their way in, a bit like Matthew Dellavedova. Then youve got the uber talents of Benny Simmons, Andrew Bogut and Lauren Jackson.

Weve had a bit of everything and Im proud of them all. These Australians have walked in there and walked out the other end with all their fingers and toes, experiencing something that only people who have also gone through it can truly comprehend.

I for one never aimed to get to the NBA. The extent of my goals as a young player was to be a great centre like Australian big men Ray Borner and Larry Sengstock. I think that says something about the exposure basketballers in this country had to the NBA back then. You only get to choose from what you know. And what I knew about basketball was about representing my country. I measured success by being on state and national teams. And there were other guys around at the time who were more likely to make the NBA than me. Guys like Andrew Vlahov and Mark Bradtke and, a little bit earlier, Andrew Gaze guys who would have made careers in the American league if the NBA knew then what it knows now about Australian players.

I just had a package that the NBA scouts and college coaches could recognise: a seven-foot-two-inch frame, good hands and some decent skills courtesy of the AIS. So the NBA found me.

It is a different story for the new generation of Australian basketballers. The American league is not just open to Australian players, it is looking for them. And our players are measuring success differently than I did.

That I was able to play in three NBA championship teams alongside Michael Jordan played a part in that, no doubt. Then Andrew Bogut took it another step. And todays Aussie boys and girls watching Ben Simmons, Dante Exum and Liz Cambage will be inspired to follow in their footsteps.

Im proud to have been the first one down the alley, and I couldnt be prouder of those who are coming after me. Now it is their chance to show the Australian character to the world and find their spirit mongrel along the way.

The 2005 NBA draft has commenced and Madison Square Garden, in the heart of New York City, is the epicentre of world basketball.

Among a mixture of coaches, scouts, general managers and fans stands a man decked out in green and gold. This proud Aussie is in the Big Apple to support his man Andrew Bogut the Melbourne-born centre set to be selected No. 1 in the draft by the Milwaukee Bucks. As Boguts name is read out, the man stands, cheers and waves his Australian flag.

His passionate approach isnt well received by the pro-American crowd, especially one outspoken fan who calls out: Sit down!

This frustrated patron is ignored, so he yells again: Sit down this is America.

These taunts do nothing to deter the enthusiastic Australian fan, who cheekily replies: Yeah, and were here to take over.

Boguts selection as the No. 1 in the NBA draft was significant for two reasons. Being chosen as the first pick is prestigious in NBA circles because its determined from a pool of the best rising basketballers in American college and in leagues across the world. Like in Boguts case at Milwaukee, the No. 1 pick is signed by a franchise that failed to make the playoffs. This process, determined by a lottery, gives the weaker teams a chance to sign promising talent. Bogut had not only been tapped as someone to watch in the NBA, he was also the first Australian man to achieve this high honour.

Boguts memorable No. 1 draft moment for Aussie mens hoops came four years after Australian Lauren Jackson had been chosen as the No. 1 draft pick in the womens league, the WNBA, and just three years after a WNBA game when 11,000 American fans chanted Jacksons name. It was four years after the retirement of Luc Longley Australias first NBA player following his stellar decade-long career, including three championships alongside the Michael Jordan at the Chicago Bulls.

You might have thought the legacies of these star Aussies would be enough to firmly place Australia on Americas basketball map, but the fact that in 2005 some American fans were doubting Boguts right to be there highlights that Aussie hoops still had some way to go to earn the US publics respect.