Vintage Patty Mills Footage Shows He Could Have Easily Been An AFL Star

Before working his butt off to become one of the best backup point guards in basketball, Patty Mills was an auspicious junior AFL prospect who draft expert Kevin Sheehan says could have made it at the highest level of the game. 

Former Sydney Swans coach Paul Roos recalled how former Swans skipper Stuart Maxfield had approached Australia’s first ever Indigenous basketball player to win an NBA title in order recruit him to their development program. “He might have won the medal at the (junior) championships for NSW so he was quite a talented footballer,” Roos told Fox Footy’s On The Couch program this week. “At that stage when Stuart Maxfield spoke to him I think he had just accepted an Australian Institute of Sport basketball scholarship in Canberra.”  
In a fascinating sliding doors moment, Mills would eventually chose basketball over Aussie Rules, deciding to accept an AIS scholarship for basketball after it was declined by current Collingwood captain and perennial Brownlow Medal threat, Scott Pendlebury
Something we can now assume – one championship apiece and counting – was the right decision for both of them. 

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