#also now that everyone is fully voiced i can train my vocal...identification?! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hooptrition · 3 years

Text

Patty Mills brings it back home

“Who would've thought?” The text message on her phone finished with four words that sent Rebecca Kelley wandering off down a memory trail that dated back to the year 2000.

As assistant coach for the Canberra Under 14 boys team in that year, she had been part of the team's season that culminated with a trip to Townsville in far north Queensland for the Australian Club Championships. And it was her mum Di, having been that team's manager, who was now texting the question that had to be asked, as the baby of that long forgotten team, Patty Mills, prepared to return home with the NBA Championship trophy.

In all the wonderful hoopla that accompanied Patty's return to Canberra, including the awarding of the Keys to the City, the story behind the story and the lessons it may hold still lies in wait, to hopefully be applied to and appreciated by following generations of youngsters and their parents.

Kelley, now a deputy director in Canberra's governmental machine and a mum to her own growing family, remembers a tiny youngster who was already moving to a different beat.

“He was the first kid I'd ever seen wearing headphones as he wandered around and naturally I had to ask him just what he was listening to. He gave me a listen and I have to say that the rap I heard from Eminem really wasn't my thing and in fact wasn't really something that most kids in Canberra were even aware existed at that time,” she explained.

Despite being the youngest and smallest and not having much of playing role at that national tournament, Patty was the central team motivator and energy creator for the group, revealing for the first time possibly the origins of his world famous towel waving antics years later in San Antonio for the Spurs.

“On the team bus he'd be standing up, singing and carrying on and more often than not would have the whole team standing up rapping and dancing along. Here was the baby of the team who wasn't playing much and yet he had a unique rapport with all the kids, on the bench he was constantly animated and vocal and at training he was going the whole time.

“You wouldn't have thought back then he was a kid going places. He was good but he wasn't outstanding, but who knew what was ahead?”

Kelley's last honest reflection is part of a larger question that has produced an incalculable amount of literature and theorising about just what is talent, whether it's mostly down to nature or nurture and what exactly are the things we should be looking for that might indicate a tiny 11 year-old might one day scale the basketball world?

By the next year Patty had started to blossom on the court and at an Under 14 tournament hosted by key regional rivals the Illawarra Hawks, he began a rivalry with Hawks star forward Daniel Jackson that would track all the way to the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and Australian Junior teams.

Brad Luhrs who has a been a seemingly constant figure over the past fifteen years in Canberra junior basketball was Patty's coach at that event for the first time.

“You could tell he was a clear standout at that level then,” Luhrs said, “as was Jackson for Illawarra, though he was way taller and bigger.”

“Patty was quick and he had great ball handling skills but if you'd asked me then, I would have thought the other kids would eventually catch up or that he'd slow down.”

Within a couple of years Patty was the point guard general for Canberra's Under 16 State team and had begun to draw the interest of national talent identification coaches who were part of the now disbanded Intensive Training Centre (ITC) across the country.

Naturally Patty had also attracted the attention of other sports, and as well as setting and still holding almost every junior record at Woden Little Athletics club, he dabbled in Australian Rules football alongside his basketball.

Jason Denley was Patty's coach for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) team that contested the Under 16 National Championships in 2003, Patty still being 14 at the time due to his very unGladwellian August birthdate.

“He was small, incredibly fast and utterly fearless and for a kid with such athletic talent and I was most surprised by his lack of ego,” Denley said. “He never complained to referees and somehow he seemed to be someone that his teammates and opponents both admired for the endless energy and passion he brought to every play.”

ESPN's Sports columnist Bill Simmons has long held a view that every successful franchise needs a team “Chemist” to keep everyone happy and connected and along those exact lines Patty was continuing to expand his role as the supreme on and off court motivator.

“There was a group in our large boys and girls ITC training sessions that Patty used to be one of the leaders of, and in the warm up stretching they would launch into singing that they had obviously choreographed some time before,” Luhrs remembered.

“Amazingly James Taylor's 'How sweet it is to be loved by you' is the one that sticks in my head and to hear 14 and 15 year old boys harmonising and chiming in at coordinated spots at the top of their voices might have been something other coaches wouldn't have tolerated. Somehow though that sort of comfortability as a group and self-confidence was their calling card and at the end of the day how can you not want that?”

An invitation to his first Australian Junior Camp followed soon after 2003's Under 16 Nationals and as that camp stretched across an age range from 14 to 17 Patty was once more the smallest and youngest fish in a pond that was becoming increasingly concentrated.

At the camp Patty was one of the two standouts guard prospects along with Victoria's Scott Pendlebury, who would famously eventually choose Australian rules football over basketball thus clearing the way for Patty to start on scholarship at the AIS.

Brian Goorjian was at that time the new Australian Boomers Head Coach following on from the team's disastrous qualifying loss to New Zealand that had scuttled 2002's World Championship plans and he was front and centre at that camp to see what the next generation had in store for the program.

“Within the first half hour of Goorjian arriving on the floor there was one kid that he used exclusively to demonstrate every defensive and offensive drill,” Denley recalled.

“Paaaatty get out here, delivered in a rolling Californian twang, was pretty much the chorus for the camp and despite being so young, Patty was clearly already some sort of leader by the dint of his sheer energy and joy for each task and endless clapping and hollering for anyone and anything he or the group came across.”

Interestingly, at the same time Goorjian was possibly signalling that even at that early stage Patty was going to be part of his national team plans (Patty would eventually find his way to the Beijing in 2008), an entirely different version of Aron Baynes to that which played a part in this year's Spurs triumph alongside Patty was lumbering through drills at the camp.

Shortly after that camp Patty moved in to the AIS on a full time basis but still maintained his role as the spiritual leader of the ACT junior teams he continued to play for at Junior National championships.

“My overriding memory is of his infectious energy, the talk and support that just never waned,” Luhrs recalled from his later time as ACT Under 18s Head Coach. “And this was with him as the star of the team and it was obvious that this wasn't just something he discovered when he was sitting on the bench. It was part of him.”

At the AIS Patty bought all his familiar calling cards into play as then Men's Assistant Coach Paul Gorris confirmed.

“You'd watch him play and he was super quick and talented but when you think back then about the idea of the NBA you never could have imagined it,” he said.

“I was lucky enough to also be coaching the ACT Under 20 team back then and the thing that sticks with me is just how humble he was around the group. He was our big ticket item, with everything run around him and all his team-mates knew that, yet he was always mindful of involving them. He was playing with his mates he'd been with since they were 11 or 12 and they were quite happy to defer to him as needed, but somehow he was able to keep things so that it was never about him.”

The all singing and dancing Patty was still very much in evidence in those team and Gorris' favourite memory of those teams inevitably gravitates back to the off-court feel of the group Patty inspired.

“Back the there was an unwritten rule that I'd drive the 12-seater van to the stadium for each game and everyone would sing along to whatever sort of weird music the team had selected to prepare with. Naturally it was Patty and his cousin, Luke Currie-Richardson, (now not surprisingly a dancer with the world famous Bangarra Indigenous company) who would be leading the chorus up the front of the van. Coming into Ballarat stadium with the whole bus rocking along in full voice is something I never grow tired of remembering.”

For an outsider looking in, the overriding question would have be to just how did this diminutive energiser bunny with super quicks, a solid skill package, a streaky shooting stroke (the recent improvement in which is story all of its own a certain Mr Engelland may be able to explain more fully) and seemingly unquenchable faith in the power of positive encouragement make it in arguably the world's single most challenging athletic league?

Rebecca Kelley recalled running into Patty on occasions around the AIS years after her involvement with the Under 14s.

“He was always one of those people you have touch points with and although my involvement with his basketball career was like a grain of sand on the beach, he's always remembered me and is always quick with the 'G'day Rebecca!' and a chat. I guess it's part of his personality, he's a nice guy and he's not just going to be a great athlete, he's going to be a leader in his own way like the Cathy Freeman of this generation.”

Gorris has been in regular touch with Patty since he first left for St Mary's College in 2007 and commented how much he hasn't changed despite the time away and the constant spotlight.

“He's matured and grown up a little bit from worldly experience but deep down it's still, the same Pat, still very much about the family, still very much about everyone else.” he said.

In the back end of 2011 during the NBA lockout Patty played nine games for the Melbourne Tigers before a forgettable stint in China and his rescue by the Spurs early in 2012. He was four or five in line on San Antonio's guard depth rotation then yet something about him and his approach to that situation or challenge separated him. To watch Greg Popovich's (San Antonio's Head Coach) grizzly visage turn sunny side up every time Patty and his side line support antics were mentioned in interviews during ensuing years is in itself truly amazing.

Is it possible that the natural talent of selflessness and never-ending positive energy is actually way more powerful and valuable than any analyst can put a finger on? Are the tendencies Patty displayed way back in 2000 as a 12 year-old in Townsville the sort of things talent identifiers should be more heavily factoring in?

Are team “Chemists” as Simmons like to call them, a species all to themselves that someone should be tracking or nurturing?

Fittingly Daniel Jackson, Patty's regional rival from those heady junior days has now migrated to Canberra as one of the centre-pieces of the city's semi-professional team, and trying to size up exactly how Patty has been able to do what he's done thus far, is maybe best left to him.

“I've known him since he was 12 and never heard anyone say anything but what a great guy he is...not that he's a nice enough guy or a good guy, but a great guy.” he offered, “and when that's the case there's no doubt it's easier to succeed as everyone in your team is in your corner and pulling for you to be good.”

0 notes