My Life, My Fight Read online

  Although I was the tallest on the court, I did shoot some three-pointers, which I’m sure everyone hated.

  I didn’t enjoy that camp. It wasn’t that I didn’t like playing basketball, I was just so far behind on basketball knowledge and that was the first time it became obvious. My drill partner for most of the trainings was a tall guy named Chris McIntyre, who was mean to me the whole weekend. We were complete opposites in every way. He was smart and did everything exactly how it was supposed to be done. I was grubby and had long hair that didn’t look anywhere near as good as my long hair looks now.

  I spent most of the camp just trying to swat every single shot. I didn’t know what was happening on offense so instead I made it my mission to not let anyone score against me. I hung around the bottom of the key (the free-throw lane beneath the basket) and goal tended. It worked out well enough because I made sure every block was exaggerated. At one point, a power forward named Victor must have thought my useless offense meant I didn’t know how to use my height, because he tried to drive around me. The ball ended up at the far end of the court next to us and he didn’t try it again.

  That’s how basketball is when you’re a kid. Being tall means you only have to be half as good to get by. But after getting bumped around by Gabby, Lisa, and Sid on our driveway basketball court for years, I knew that pretty soon just being tall wouldn’t be enough.

  As we drove back to Rotorua and to my regular life of video games and not much else, I thought about how hard the camp had been. I wasn’t invited there because they expected me to be the best, and yet it pissed me off that I was maybe the worst. My natural competitiveness started firing up and I was suddenly determined to not be so out of my depth if I was ever asked back to another trial. I knew there was no way I’d make the team, whatever team that was, and felt a little embarrassed about it.

  I didn’t find out until much later that the camp wasn’t actually a trial. It was the New Zealand under 17 team having their training camp before they went to the Australian state champs. There wasn’t even a chance that I could have made the team because it had been selected months earlier, which just goes to show how much I was paying attention to what was happening around me in those days.

  But while I was settling back into my life of relaxing and eating, the people around me were sorting out my future.

  Warren called Viv around March 2008 to follow up on his question about my basketball future. Was I really interested in pursuing it? Viv honestly didn’t know, but in her mind me playing basketball was still better than me playing Xbox. She told Warren if he was willing to look after me in Wellington and get me into basketball, he should come and fetch me. I don’t even remember being asked if I wanted to move to Wellington, so maybe I didn’t have a choice in the matter. But I think if they had asked me, I would have said yes because I was starting to get bored at home.

  Being bored for a day when you’re 14 is fine. But being bored with life, like I was at 14, sucks. Sitting at home by myself all day made it easy for bad thoughts to seep in, and I’d find myself thinking about Dad constantly and how I was all alone now.

  All I remember is being told that Warren was coming to pick me up to take me to Wellington and then two days later he was there. That’s how things worked in my family. There were never big meetings where we all discussed the options and decided together. Things just happened, and usually quickly. I wouldn’t be where I am today if two of my siblings hadn’t decided over one phone call that I should move to a different city, away from most of my family, and start a new life there.

  When it came time to pack my bags I realized that I didn’t own anything. I had one pair of basketball shoes, two pairs of shorts, a handful of T-shirts, and a few pairs of underwear. I didn’t like reading so I had no books. We couldn’t afford the gadgets or toys other kids had so I didn’t have to pack any of that stuff. And while I loved gaming, the Xbox belonged to everyone so I wasn’t about to try walking off with it. Warren had told me to pack up my life and it turned out my life could fit inside a sports bag.

  Sid ended up coming with us on the trip to Wellington. At the time I thought he was just bored and wanted a change of scenery, but I’ve since learned that he came because he knew I’d need a familiar face in Wellington. Sid might have been rough with me as a kid and wasn’t the best at expressing his love, but dropping everything to move cities to make sure I wasn’t messed with? That’s a real brother right there.

  When we arrived, Warren took me straight to the Winter Show Buildings in Newtown to meet someone. I recognized the place from the training camp a few months earlier, which was reassuring. From the outside it looked like a giant garden shed, and inside it wasn’t much better. There were two full-sized basketball courts with a few small bleachers along the baseline of each one, but mostly it looked like two training courts and nothing more. Since then there have been some really good basketball arenas built around Wellington, but at that time a lot of regional tournaments were held at the Show Buildings, even though one of the hoops was clearly lower than the others.

  As we walked across the courts with their random dead spots and cracks, it felt unfamiliar. To me, it was just another gym with just another group of kids training and just another coach yelling out drills. That coach was an African American guy with a thick accent who wore a hoodie, with the hood up, and sweatpants. He was sitting on one of the player benches and occasionally yelling out shooting drills to the kids who were training. He was yelling loudly so everyone could hear him, but he wasn’t mad or stressed. And he didn’t stand up unless he had to show someone a particular move. Even before I properly met him, I knew this guy had swag.

  Warren walked me over and the coach looked me up and down. I could tell he was trying to figure out at first glance if I was worth coaching. “Kenny, this is my brother Steven,” said Warren. “Steven, this is Kenny McFadden.” I didn’t say anything, but then I didn’t say much at all in those days. Kenny looked at me and put up his hand for a high-five. I hesitated for a second while I gawked at his raised hand. The ring finger was crooked. And not just a little bit crooked but completely bent sideways at the second knuckle. After a second, I slapped his hand and our introduction was complete.

  Warren and Kenny continued to chat while I zoned out and watched the older guys work through their shooting drills. I snapped back into the conversation when Kenny started talking about training. He sounded like he was keen to train me, but only if I was willing to put in as much work as he was. I’d never said no to someone with a plan before and I wasn’t about to start, so I said yes. If he was going to help me I was going to work hard and do whatever was needed. Kenny looked at me, nodded, and said, “That’s good.”

  I went back to watching better players than me work on their skills. I watched them and couldn’t wait to be as good as them, while next to me my brother and new coach planned out my new life.

  The problem with doing whatever anyone tells you to do is that once people stop telling you to do things, you do nothing. When we got to Warren’s place in Wainuiomata, on the outskirts of Wellington, my bed was the couch. I didn’t mind, though, because I could, and still can, sleep anywhere.

  Warren had planned for me to enroll at Wainuiomata High School because it was near his house and I could walk there on my own. But because I had barely been to school in two years, I didn’t have any academic record so I couldn’t be enrolled. While Warren was trying to sort out how and where I could go to school, I lapsed back into doing nothing. I just stayed home and watched TV—exactly what I was doing in Rotorua, except now I didn’t have anyone to hang out with. The excitement I felt about moving cities and starting something new ended pretty quickly when I found myself going through the same routines I’d had back home. I thought maybe that’s just what my life would be: do nothing, move to another place, do nothing there, move to another place, and on until I died. Even as a 14-year-old I didn’t like the thought of just “hanging out” until I died.

&nbs
p; While Warren had agreed that I would train with Kenny, I wasn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t. It would take 40 minutes to drive from Warren’s house to the courts for the 6:30 a.m. training every morning. Even if Warren could make that drive before going to work, I had no way of getting home at 8 a.m. when training finished. Kenny lived on the other side of town so him coming to collect me wasn’t an option either. My new life and career plan was put on hold while Warren and Kenny tried to figure out a solution. I’d traveled hundreds of kilometers to get into basketball, but it was the last 30 kilometers that were the real problem.

  While I was waiting for things to happen, and starting to wonder if they ever would, an old friend of Warren’s named Blossom told him I could train with her school team if I had nothing better to do. The team trained in the morning too, but she said she could drive me there and take me home afterwards. I assumed that meant she lived in Wainuiomata so I agreed to go along and train with her Scots College team until my situation with Kenny was sorted out.

  At the first training, I learned quickly that the Scots College players weren’t nearly as good as the ones I’d seen training with Kenny. But even though they weren’t that great, they were all there at 6:30 a.m. working their arses off and trying to improve. I knew that these guys were like me, on the basketball court at least. I’d soon learn that their lives as private school students were about as far from mine as humanly possible, but on that basketball court we were all the same.

  The boys respected Blossom. It’s hard not to respect a ripped former bodybuilder with dreads and a half-shaved head, even if she is only 5 feet tall.

  During that first training I was paired up with a guy called Pat. He was their big man, only he wasn’t that big. He was stocky, though, and could throw his weight around. With my height advantage and his strength advantage we were a pretty good match-up.

  After the training, Blossom dropped me home. It wasn’t until the next week that I learned she didn’t live in Wainuiomata at all. Once she had dropped me off, she drove the full 40 minutes back to Scots College, where she lived just a few minutes away.

  She was about to become a crucial person in helping me to go from a boy who was happy wasting his days in front of an Xbox to a professional sportsman.

  5.

  NEW KID IN TOWN

  People often don’t believe that I started playing basketball properly as a teenager. Sports writers and experts always go on about how you can tell if a kid will become a professional athlete by the time they’re nine, or something crazy like that. By the time you get to be 14, the kids who are really good are easy to spot and those who aren’t start dropping off. I didn’t know any of this back then because I never read any books about sport (or any books full stop), so I went in thinking it was completely normal for me to start my basketball career at 14 years of age.

  Life in Wellington quickly turned into life with Blossom. There wasn’t a big move, like my move to Wellington. She simply offered to put me up the night before morning training and drop me home the next night. This happened a few times and seemed to work, so then I stayed a few nights a week and started training with Kenny when there were no Scots College trainings. I still wasn’t going to school, but I was getting up early and working out, so I felt I was at least making progress in one area of my life. Pretty soon I was staying almost every night with Blossom and within a month I was living at her place full-time. After spending my whole life as part of a big family group it was weird to suddenly be living with just one or two other people. It was like being an only child for a while.

  Kenny lived close by so he started picking me up at 5:45 a.m. every morning for training. And when I say every morning I really do mean every single morning. Training with the Scots College boys was good because I got to be around players who were mostly at the same level as me. That meant we all improved together. But training with Kenny in the mornings was a whole different thing. He’d open up the Show Buildings at 6 a.m. every day and whoever was there would train with him.

  You could have been literally anyone in Wellington and if you turned up at the Show Buildings at 6 a.m. you’d get a free training session with one of the best coaches in the country. That’s what Kenny had been offering for years before I showed up. No one ever paid for those sessions, which seems incredible to me now.

  Whenever it was particularly gross weather or cold, there would be fewer players, and there were a lot of mornings where it would be just Kenny and me. If there were tournaments coming up for school or rep teams, suddenly the place would fill up with everyone trying to get in some last-minute workouts. But no matter how many players showed up, I was always there and doing anything and everything Kenny told me to.

  Our workouts were always simple. Ball handling, post moves, defense, and shooting. Youth basketball in New Zealand has a tendency to pigeonhole players in one position from a young age. If you’re short, just work on your ball handling and shooting; if you’re tall, just worry about rebounding and post moves. Kenny never believed in that. No matter who showed up to train, we all did the same drills. I’d be doing dribbling drills alongside some tiny girl point guard and then later she’d be at the next hoop working on the same post moves as me. Kenny only cared about taking care of the fundamentals. If players wanted to practice their dunk moves they could do that after training in their own time.

  I noticed that whenever new faces showed up at morning trainings, they’d usually be really good at one or two drills and then really bad at another couple. And it would take them a while to even out their skillset (some never managed to) because it’s hard to make yourself do the drills that you’re bad at when you could just do the ones you’re the best at. This wasn’t a problem for me because I was fairly useless at everything when I met Kenny, so he had a blank canvas to work with. I suppose the thing that I had as my advantage was knowing how much I needed to work on and then actually being willing to do the work. I trusted that Kenny knew what he was doing so I followed him blindly. That’s not something every athlete is lucky enough to have. A coach who you can truly trust will do right by you.

  We started off right back at the beginning. Dribbling on the spot, dribbling left-handed, walking and dribbling, layups. Maybe if I was a more self-conscious person I wouldn’t have wanted to train with Kenny and have people see me—a massive lanky guy who looked like he should be amazing at basketball—struggling with a dribbling drill that kids learn when they are seven. But the one thing that kept me going back was the progress I was making.

  Starting from scratch meant the only way for me to go was up. And I gotta say, I moved pretty quickly. But even as I was progressing and moving on to more complex drills and workouts, Kenny kept me doing the fundamentals all the way through. I could dunk, but it was months before Kenny let me dunk during a drill. First, I had to be able to get the ball in the hoop every other way.

  Four weeks after I moved in to Blossom’s place, she told me that she had managed to get me a spot at Scots College. Moving to Wellington hadn’t scared me. Waking up at 5:30 a.m. every morning to train was all good. But being told that I’d be going to Scots freaked me out.

  Scots is a fancy, private, all boys Presbyterian school in Wellington. I’d seen the basketball guys come out of the changing room after trainings in their hard-out school uniforms with maroon blazers and ties. They looked like little businessmen on their way to the office to file some reports. The school buildings were even more intimidating. From what I’d seen while driving through to the gym, it was like some sort of brick castle. It didn’t look like any school I’d seen. Although I hadn’t seen much of Scots, I’d seen enough to know that I definitely didn’t belong there. And that was confirmed when I turned up for my first day of school in almost two years.

  Everyone stared at me. Everyone has always stared at me because of my height, but this time I knew it wasn’t just about that. All the students were staring at me because they were scared. I looked like a murderer
. I’d only just gotten into the habit of showering regularly thanks to Blossom getting on my back about it, but we hadn’t progressed to grooming yet. So what the students—some as young as 11 years old—were seeing was a giant brown person with long, greasy hair and a dirty, wispy mustache. I didn’t have a uniform yet because they were still trying to find one big enough for me. Instead I was wearing what I wore every day: basketball shorts, a probably unwashed T-shirt, and my orange basketball shoes that had nearly fallen apart. At least they were better than what I was walking around in when I first got to Wellington—old basketball shoes with the front half of the sole completely worn off so that I was pretty much walking in socks. When it rained I’d put my feet into plastic bread bags to try to stop my socks from getting wet. I could see why the other students didn’t want to come near me. But luckily for everyone, I wanted to be there even less than they wanted me to be there.

  I was taken to the full school assembly that day and introduced to everyone. I could see the teachers were even more put off than the kids. I found out later that some of them didn’t think I’d last at the school beyond the end of the year. I would like to say that I never would have considered it, but, honestly, if they had said that to my face on that first day I probably would have agreed and left then and there. My first taste of discipline and structure at a school like Scots was when they said I couldn’t wear the uniform and attend classes until I had “sorted out” my hair and the bum fluff on my upper lip. So Blossom took me to get my first ever professional haircut and I took a razor to my face, and suddenly I didn’t look so borderline homeless anymore. They managed to find me a school uniform by the end of the first week and I went back for my first day of classes, more scared and resentful than I’d ever been.