My Life, My Fight Page 11

  Monday, 3 June 2013

  Just finished my workout for the Thunder and tried to take a video of their mean-as facilities but got told by Russell Westbrook that I wasn’t allowed. He might’ve been lying, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. That’s how you know an organization is hard out, when they won’t even let people take photos inside or with their players. I really liked their vibe, though. The bigs coach, Mark Bryant, talked me through the tape of our workout and pointed out things I could improve on. Will be working on those from now on.

  They were so hospitable, kinda like Pacific people. Every little thing was taken care of, and I felt like I was visiting an aunt who wouldn’t stop fussing over me. It’s the closest thing to a Kiwi vibe I’ve felt so far so would be awesome to be drafted there. Doesn’t hurt that they made the NBA finals two years ago either.

  Tuesday, 4 June 2013

  Flew east and am now in Philadelphia with the 76ers. Usually there’ll be a group of five or six players working out together for each organization, but I seem to be the only one here, which is weird. My aunty from Wellington sent me a pounamu necklace that I now wear everywhere to represent New Zealand.

  I gotta say, the Philadelphia visit has been weird. It was as professional as all the other organizations, but even I could tell there’s something happening with the staff here. The head coach and general manager both left at the end of last season, so the new coach and GM are still getting on the same page as everyone else. On top of that, they share their facilities with a medical school so there were random medical students in the weight room and playing ping-pong while we worked out. Don’t get me wrong, that’s totally chill and I’m not high maintenance like that. But I know I would benefit the most being in a team that’s already established and stable.

  Friday, 7 June 2013

  Worked out with the Utah Jazz today in the Mormon capital of America, and maybe the world. I know there are a lot of Pacific Islanders who live in Utah because many of them are Mormon, so I’m sure I’ll see some distant Tongan relatives soon enough. Starting to get a collection of T-shirts from each team and just realized I won’t be allowed to wear any of them once I’m signed to an organization. Seems like a waste of good clothes.

  Monday, 10 June 2013

  Okay, I lied. The Cleveland Cavaliers have the best facilities in the NBA. Sadly, they were also too flash to let me record, which I’m starting to think is the sign of a good, tight-knit organization. Most of the gear was pretty much the same as in Texas and Oklahoma, except the whole place looked like a giant log cabin. For a bushman like me, that rich mahogany will win me over every time.

  Tuesday, 11 June 2013

  Working out with the Timberwolves in Minnesota. They had food and water waiting on my bed at the hotel when I arrived so they get bonus points for that. I was excited because I’d seen Cody Zeller on the list of players working out that day. I hadn’t worked out with anyone who was a predicted top-10 pick, let alone a top-10 center, so I was keen to go up against him. He’d wasted me and everyone else in basically every physical test at the combine and I wanted redemption.

  Yesterday I saw him and asked if he was working out and he said, “Yeah,” so I prepared myself. Mate, I’m super competitive and this guy had outperformed me at everything a month earlier. Of course I was psyching myself up. Then we start working out this morning and I look over and he’s just standing on the sideline, watching. I was pissed off, man. Maybe his team heard that I was known to be physical during workouts and didn’t want him to get injured. A lot of people have been talking about how I’m doing really well in workouts. The worst thing for Cody, a top-five prospect, would be for me, a shaky top-15 prospect, to beat him in a scrimmage. They probably didn’t want to risk his stock dropping. I dunno, whatever his reasons, I didn’t care. I was just annoyed that I had no other center to work out with.

  Thursday, 13 June 2013

  Chicago had the most inspiring facilities just because of Michael Jordan and knowing that was his home. The Bulls’ practice gym was filled with massive banners of all their past championships and inspirational moments. I’m a sucker for inspirational banners.

  Friday, 14 June 2013

  I’m so sweaty. Trying to cool down in Phoenix, Arizona, where it’s 40 degrees Celsius. Mate, that’s just too hot. Don’t know how anyone plays an outdoor sport here—it’s an actual desert. The Suns are cool and a lot like the Celtics (there’s some crossover with the staff). They even did the three-minute run test at the end of our workout too. Again, don’t know what I got this time, and don’t really care, but I was out of it by the end. I like their coach, though; he seems really onto it.

  Feel like Phoenix is definitely a possibility with the fifth pick. They’re looking for a big guy and they liked my workout so maybe they could go for me. But have just heard I’m heading back to OKC tonight for a second visit. It’s all supposed to be top secret so they’re flying me to a random place and then to Oklahoma City, so that the Phoenix guys don’t see where I’m going. Might as well just call me Mr. Bond from now on.

  Saturday, 15 June 2013

  Back in OKC for a second secret workout and this time it’s literally just me. I trained with Mark Bryant again and tried to show him that I’d been working on the things he told me during my first Thunder workout. I think he was quite impressed that I’d remembered. They then made me sit down with a psychologist and answer a bunch of weird questions that I don’t really think had anything to do with basketball. How many golf balls would fit inside a bus? Uhhhhhhh. Maybe they wanted to make sure I wasn’t a psychopath or something. They could’ve just asked.

  The first workout had been a test of my physical abilities and work on the court, but the second workout felt like they were testing me out as a person to see if I’d fit with the group. If that’s what all teams do, I guess my only hope is the Thunder. Something tells me they’re unique like that, wanting to triple-check every decision. That fits with their vibe.

  Someone on Facebook asked me which team I wanted to be drafted to and I replied the San Antonio Spurs. At least half of all basketball players in New Zealand would be Spurs fans. Mohi’s a massive Spurs fan so I take his word that they’re the best. Why? Because their style of play is the closest in the NBA to New Zealand’s style. We never have teenagers who can do all these fancy moves and then posterize someone. We just run a motion and look for the open cutter or open shot. So to see someone like their coach Gregg Popovich, who is just so cool, leading the Spurs to championships was amazing to watch in New Zealand.

  The Spurs haven’t asked me to work out for them, which cuts me real deep. I just want a chance to give Pop a hug, that’s all.

  Tuesday, 18 to Sunday, 23 June 2013

  I worked out with the Atlanta Hawks, Portland Trail Blazers, and Sacramento Kings in the final week before the draft. They were all great organizations, but the workouts felt a bit like afterthoughts, as if they figured they may as well see me train just in case. All three of them are supposedly not even looking for a center, at least not with their first picks. But it was good to get in more gym time, and I got to spend more time folding my legs into airplane seats.

  I’ve done so many workouts it’s ridiculous. I think my situation is unique in that my ranking at the beginning of the draft process is very different from my ranking now. Before the combine there were some interested teams, but I definitely wasn’t considered to be a high draft pick. Then I surprised everyone at the combine and suddenly a lot more teams with high picks were interested in having me work out for them.

  Most of the guys who are the “stars” and predicted to go somewhere in the top 10 only work out for a few teams, usually the ones with the highest picks, who are looking to fill their position. If you’re ranked that high already, you almost don’t want people to see you play more because the only way to go is down. After the combine I was ranked near the top 10, but it was all new so I just said yes to every single workout, partly because I didn’t trust th
e ranking system and partly because I wanted to see as many of the teams as possible. To me, only working out for a couple of teams and turning down the rest would’ve been like going to Disneyland and going on just two rides. I’m way too cheap to waste a free trip like that.

  A lot of organizations would ask which players had impressed me of those I’d worked out with. I always said either Mike Muscala or Rudy Gobert, mainly because I worked out with them the most and they seemed to work as hard as I did. I shouted Rudy lunch at Atlanta airport (I think it was Atlanta) and we had a nice chat about the whole experience. I also had lunch with Dewayne Dedmon after a team workout and he was cool as. It’s hard to develop proper friendships with guys you only see on the court while you’re competing, but I can’t imagine not liking any of those guys from my draft class. They’re all good dudes.

  Tuesday, 25 June 2013

  On the red-eye from LA to New York. By the time we land the draft will be tomorrow night. This past month has been the most fun I’ve ever had playing basketball, and nothing can take away from that. I get to see Sid and Mohi in New York too, which will be mean.

  No matter what happens tomorrow, it’ll be fine. Even if nobody, not a single team, wants me, it’ll be fine. I’ll still have the amazing experience of getting to visit and work out for 11 of the best basketball teams in the world. I’ll still have the knowledge that I can go up against NBA players and hold my own. I’ll still have the tools and moves that some of the NBA’s best coaches have shown me over the past couple of months. And I’ll still have all the free gear.

  I’ll head back to New Zealand, have a break, maybe do a bit of study, then go to Europe to play in the league over there. Eventually, I’ll return to America and try to crack the NBA again. I’ve got patience; they won’t be getting rid of me that easily.

  But I’m confident that I showed those teams everything I had to offer and that one of them will take a gamble on me. My life up until now has relied on people investing in me, whether with money or time or both, with the faith that I will continue to get better. It has worked so far and with the right team it will keep working. But I’ll find all that out tomorrow. For now, I think I’ve earned a nap.

  11.

  A NEW HOME IN MIDDLE AMERICA

  I forgot how much I missed my hori brothers until I saw them looking very out of place in the middle of Manhattan. It was the first time I had seen my siblings outside New Zealand and it felt like we were on some sort of adventure.

  I was predicted to go in the top 15 of the draft, so I was assigned to the green room floor and given a table to fill. Of course, I had to have Kenny and my agent Mats there, but the NBA was willing to pay for three family members to travel to Brooklyn for the big night. I knew straight away that I wanted Sid, Mohi, and Viv there with me.

  I wanted to make it a surprise for Mohi so I messaged him saying that I wasn’t going to the NBA anymore and to forget about the draft. Since I was 15 years old, Mohi had been asking if he could come to the draft with me when I went. There was no if I went, it was always “when you go to the draft.” He was the biggest NBA fan and the biggest Steven Adams fan, so of course he had to come. However, my surprise backfired quickly when I looked at my phone an hour later and saw a bunch of missed calls and messages from him asking what was going on. When I told him it was just a joke and he was coming to the draft, all expenses paid, he was still a bit annoyed. “You had me freaking out, you punk.”

  I didn’t even bother trying to surprise Sid, I just told him straight up and he was as chill as always. The big phone call was to Viv, who had been my mum when my actual mum wasn’t there. She was always the proudest of me and Val, as if we were her own children, and I knew she’d lose her mind if she got to come to the draft. I told her to keep it a secret because no one was supposed to know, so naturally she told the whole extended family and probably the checkout workers at the supermarket too.

  I had my three people and I was ready to show them all the hype that I’d been experiencing on my own. But then Viv called to say that she couldn’t come anymore because she couldn’t get a U.S. travel visa at such short notice. She was devastated. I asked Mats if he could do anything, but it was too late. The draft was in a few days and flights had to be booked that day.

  I tried not to dwell on our missing mate and instead did my best to show Sid and Mohi a good time in New York City. I took them to a restaurant that I had been to before that had a 48-ounce (1.4-kg) steak challenge. I’d already clocked it and had my photo on the wall as proof, but I wanted to see Mohi try because I wasn’t sure he could. He nailed it easy and was even wearing an OKC Thunder T-shirt. When I posted a photo of him at dinner on my Facebook page there were a lot of comments speculating whether the T-shirt meant I already knew where I was going. The answer is no.

  Mohi had drawn up his own mock draft and predicted that I would be picked by OKC. Then when we were shopping earlier that day he found some NBA T-shirts in a bargain bin, so he bought a Thunder one and wore it to dinner because all his regular clothes smelt like cow shit. It was a complete coincidence but pretty cool when I look back on it now.

  I made sure to always wear my T-shirt from the combine testing just to be safe, even though it was getting quite gross. After dinner we went bowling and hung out, enjoying having no responsibilities. It was one of the best nights I had all year.

  On draft day it felt like the whole of New York was talking about it. It was like when the All Blacks were in the Rugby World Cup final in New Zealand and you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing people discuss the game. Because I’m so tall, a lot of random people guessed that I was in town for the draft and wished me luck.

  As we were putting on our suits for the ceremony, I suddenly missed Viv again. She would have been fussing over us and telling us to scrub our toes again. Instead it was just us boys in the hotel room trying to figure out how to tie our ties.

  At Barclays Center we walked onto the green room floor, the first New Zealanders to ever do so, and sat down to wait for a feed that never came. People kept thinking Mohi was my dad, which was correct in a sense but also a massive burn on him since he’s not that much older than me. As players started getting drafted, we just sat there and fidgeted. Mohi was in heaven and soaking up the atmosphere. Sid and I were too nervous and hungry to do anything but wait impatiently for the next pick.

  It took an hour to get to the twelfth pick—the second-longest hour of my life after the hour of suicide tests at Pitt—then five minutes for Oklahoma City to decide and a split second for me to go from being unemployed to being a millionaire NBA player.

  Adrenaline carried me through the next three hours and then stripped me of my memory; I now can’t recall anything I said to the dozens of reporters I spoke to that night. When we eventually got back to our hotel rooms, Mohi, Sid, and I just sat there grinning at each other. We didn’t know what to say because we were living a reality that was so far from what we grew up in we almost couldn’t comprehend it. I know Mohi was buzzing out that I’d be on the same team as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. I was buzzing out that I was actually going to be in the NBA at all.

  That night I saw Andre Roberson, who had also been drafted by OKC in the first round. We hadn’t seen each other in workouts because he was a small forward and I was a big, but he seemed chill. “It’s just Dre,” he said when he introduced himself. I didn’t have a cool nickname so I said nothing. The next day on the plane, his family met mine and I knew if the two of us could stick around we’d be good mates in no time.

  Oklahoma City had been the closest I got to feeling like I was back at home during the draft workouts so I felt happy to be heading back there. We showed up with just our suitcases and the Thunder took care of everything else. They organized a realtor to take Kenny and me house hunting, although we couldn’t think about buying yet. Oklahoma is so affordable that we could easily afford to rent homes in a nice gated community. The realtor asked me if I was looking for anything in particular
. I nearly laughed out loud. The fact that someone was asking me what I preferred in a home was hilarious. I’d barely had my own room and now I’d have a whole house. I told her some high doorways would be nice, and a big backyard.

  One of the early downsides to living in Oklahoma City that I noticed was the lack of washing lines. Every place we looked at had big backyards but no clothesline for hanging washing. When I asked the agent about it, she said it’s because the winters would freeze the clothes and, besides, no one has time to hang out washing when they can just put it in a clothes dryer. I couldn’t help thinking: that’s next-level laziness. I didn’t trust dryers anyway after one shrunk my training clothes in Dallas and I had to meet Dirk Nowitzki in what felt like a crop top. Luckily, the team at the training facilities said they would wash all our training gear every day for us.

  We found a nice place the first day and I left Kenny in charge of sorting furniture. He headed down to a massive homeware store and went crazy. The Thunder had given me an allowance for that stuff—otherwise I probably still wouldn’t have any furniture to this day. The one thing I did make sure to get was a custom-made bed. Up to that point in my life I had never slept on a bed that was long enough for me, and if I was going to spend my money on anything, it was going to be that. When it arrived a few weeks later, it was massive. I slept like a baby.