With all the talk of Jarryd Hayne heading across to the US and making it big in the NFL, there’s been suspiciously little talk of the inverse – one of America’s bigger sporting stars making the jump across here to try their hand at our national ball games.
Oh, sure. There’s plenty of hurdles in the way like “Australian Rules is a native, niche sport,” or “the American market is about 100 times bigger and has global appeal,” or “you can make more money in a year over there than in an entire career here.” SURE, if you want to look at it simplistic terms like *that*, then that’s fine.
But we all know that professional athletes are not even remotely concerned about money or fame and are merely chasing the high of personal achievement and athletic competition. Nothing more. Nothing less.
So with that wild theory out of the way it’s crazy to think someone hasn’t jumped ship over here yet. CRAZY, I tells you.
The lack of footskills isn’t an issue, if this footage of San Antonio Spurs legend Tim Duncan dribbling one home off a Patty Mills feed like he’s Peter Daicos is anything to go by.
Shot, m8.
While we’re vaguely on the subject, here’s a fun little fact about Patty Mills – When he was a youngster, he was a very talented AFL player who, at one point, was being scouted very closely by then-Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy.
But Mills decided to go down a different path with his career, and chose to pursue basketball instead.
He even managed to scrape into the highly sought-after AIS basketball program after one of the students dropped out after three weeks to return to Victoria and pursue football full-time.
That student’s name? Scott Pendlebury.
The more you know.
Photo: Stephen Dunn via Getty Images.
