Basketball On The Internet.

*FLASHBACKS, my weekly "lucky dip" where I just reach into my drawers of old Australian basketball stuff and transcribe whatever I find for you.

Have something a little different for you this time around.

Back on October 27, 2001, I had the chance for a sit down hour-long interview with Luc Longley, our three-time NBA championship starter with Chicago Bulls. I was really looking forward to it but was dismayed because most of what we covered never got to see the light of day, sadly.

I kept the tape and even though some of what we discuss is fairly dated now, well, this is called the "Flashback" section, right? And we did cover some very diverse ground which led me to realise just what a wonderful ambassador Luc is and has been for Australia and Australian basketball.

If I said I know him well, it wouldn’t be the truth.

I met him a couple of times and always was most impressed at his lack of affectation or American accent. There’s no BS with Longley, Australia’s most successful NBA millionaire.

I first encountered him and his longtime friend and Perth offsider Andrew Vlahov back in about 1987 after covering a 36ers-Wildcats NBL game in Perth.

A group of us were just wandering through Perth Airport with Gary Fox, who was the Sixers’ coach at the time, when Longley and Vlahov – two big, hulking young men – passed us, having just arrived home from the AIS and Canberra.

“That was Luc Longley and Andrew Vlahov,” Fox told me of the two tyros who one year later, along with Mark Bradtke, would cause something of a sensation when they were slotted into Australia’s Seoul Olympic team.

At the time, we all knew a lot more about Longley’s father Rick who I had first seen in action in 1970 at the Australian Championships in Adelaide, leading the Western Australian state team.

At 6-10, Rick Longley was the dominant player at the championship though WA never figured in any title calculations, South Australia beating Ken Cole’s Victorian team 77-70 in a gripping Apollo Stadium final.

Ah. Those were the days.

I met Rick again a few years later after an Australian Club Championship in Adelaide when he had been here with a Perth side. He had suffered an eye injury late in the carnival and was hospitalised, left back in Adelaide while his team headed home. I did a picture/story about Rick and his misfortune in The News newspaper.

Amazing how all of that history can flash through your mind in the few seconds you pass someone’s kid in an airport.

“Someone’s kid” of course, became the nation’s best known NBA basketballer before Andrew Bogut was taken at No.1 in the draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, and I, like many other Aussie hoop fans, followed his exploits first at Minnesota and then on at Chicago after his highly successful college stint at New Mexico.

Here’s a guy who didn’t just know Michael Jordan at a distance, but up close and personal. So too of Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, Ron Harper. Luc would be the starting centre for the most famous NBA team of its era, and arguably the greatest team of all time. He would win three NBA “world championship” rings and spend 10 years in The Show.

I first met him - long after many of my contemporaries were on a first-name basis with him - in June, 1999 when I was flown to Sydney with a number of other journalists for interviews to publicise a forthcoming Boomers-Canada series.

While intellectually you understand the guy is 218cm or 7-2, he still catches you by surprise that first time for the way he literally fills up a room, not to mention a doorway. I found him candid, funny and highly refreshing in a world of spoilt, selfish, self-centred elite sportsmen and women. The story from our subsequent interview appeared in The Advertiser on June 17, 1999.

I saw him again during the Sydney Olympics, attending his press conferences and watching him labor through Australia’s matches, often played out of position and rarely utilised to his full ability. It was a frustrating time.

He and Vlahov were now co-owners of the Perth Wildcats NBL franchise and he would head back to the US for one final, injury-riddled NBA season with the New York Knicks.

When I caught up with Luc again on October 27, 2001, he had come to Adelaide to help launch the new SixersZone and LightningZone junior development programs already thriving in Perth and Victoria.

He was in town with the man who actually devised the Zone, Phil Brockbank, and was acting as the program’s public face. Hey, who better?

When we sat down in a lounge at the Hyatt for our mid-morning interview, Luc sounded hoarse and was suffering from some throat bug. But it didn’t make him any less helpful, friendly or co-operative, despite occasional discomfort.

In fact, we talked for an hour, way longer than either of us had anticipated, and we only wrapped because it was getting toward the time the Zone was officially going to be launched at Adelaide Arena, (then still the Clipsal Powerhouse).

When I started to review the tape of our interview, I realised we had covered so much territory, it would be tough to condense it into a standard newspaper feature. At the time, we also were experiencing the dreaded “space freeze” that occasional afflicts sports sections of most major newspapers. The Advertiser’s sister paper, The Sunday Mail, could accommodate a lengthy feature, but only for its country editions. It too had space restrictions and could not afford a whole page when there would be important bowls and clay pigeon shooting results to run later in the day.

Don’t get me wrong. The Advertiser is extraordinarily supportive of basketball compared to other states. And the Sunday Mail was too, back then. But there are times when they cannot come to the party with space. In this instance, it was a blow because I felt the information I had gathered would make a solid feature.

Instead, I wrote a piece accompanied by pics of Luc with kids at the Zone launch, basically about the new development program. I kept the interview until now. I know it’s pretty dated, but I hope you enjoy it anyway in its unabridged form.

         

NAGY: What’s your hands-on involvement with Perth (Wildcats) at the moment?

LONGLEY: My involvement with Perth is still pretty young. I’ve been a part-owner for a long time, as with my involvement with the Zone.

There are things that have grown up while I’ve been overseas that I’ve been dealing with remotely for a while. Now I’m back in Perth, the idea is just to sort of slowly graft or work my way into both organisations, see where I fit and how I can best be utilised without monopolising my whole time. ‘Cause I’m here to get together my family.

NAGY: What about the Zone? How does that fit into the picture?

LONGLEY: What the Zone is, is basically in Perth – I can only really speak with any knowledge as far as Perth goes and I suspect Adelaide as well – but we needed to get the players and the community back together. We needed to get back out into the junior levels. Basketball has been struggling a little bit in Perth at a top end but also we don’t want that to reflect on the junior development.

The Zone is a way, as far as I’m concerned, of helping to nurture all the talent that’s already in Perth and get it through the ranks where maybe some more of them could end up playing for the Wildcats. Or even to a state league level.

NAGY: Did you get recruited into this or was it your idea?

LONGLEY: It’s Phil’s (Phil Brockbank) brainchild but I guess you could say I was one of the initial people involved. Before we were selling franchises, we were trying to nurture junior development in Perth and that’s where it started, it branched out from there.

NAGY: What other plans do you have in your retirement now?

LONGLEY: I’ve lots of plans.

NAGY: Movies? Going to do a couple of movies?

LONGLEY: Yeah, and maybe a rap album. (Laughter) It sounds a little bit corny but the first thing I want to do is just get settled and get my family settled. I’ve been gone for 15 years from Perth. My family’s been on the hop for the last five so that’s my priority to just get settled.

Getting involved with basketball, with the Wildcats and with the Zone is going to be sort of a secondary interest for me. After that, there’s a few things but I’m waiting for them to take shape on their own. I think sometimes that’s the best way to do it.

NAGY: I read where Kelly was keen to come and live in Australia?

LONGLEY: Ah, you got her name right. They reported her in the West Australian as Rebecca. (Laughter) You haven’t been reading the West Australian.

NAGY: No, I haven’t been reading the West Australian. Dave Hughes is a good bloke so I’m surprised.

LONGLEY: No, he didn’t write it. He was on holidays so someone else wrote it.

NAGY: Which is probably why they got it wrong.

LONGLEY: Yeah. No, Kelly’s been ready for a long time actually.

NAGY: What part of the States is she from?

LONGLEY: I met her when I was in college at New Mexico. She’s from Albuquerque really.

NAGY: I don’t know much about Albuquerque. Is that a smaller … was that the appeal?

LONGLEY: Yeah.

NAGY: Because often if you marry overseas, you settle overseas. If you look at some of the American guys in the NBL; those that marry here, tend to stay in Australia.

LONGLEY: Well we’ve always spent at least two and sometimes as many as four or five months each year in Perth. And I think Kelly and I had only known each other a month when we first came out to Australia. She recognises that it’s a superior place to raise a family and to live, especially now in the political climate.

Economically, obviously it can be challenging at times but our priorities have always been finding a place to live a lifestyle that we want to live and Australia – and Perth in particular – are great for that.

A master-stroke on my part – I brought her sister down here for our wedding and she’s been living here ever since.

NAGY: What’s her name?

LONGLEY: Colleen. And she’s sort of Kelly’s main family.

NAGY: That is a master-stroke then.

LONGLEY: I’m not going anywhere now. I don’t plan to anyway.

NAGY: I read somewhere you were in New York on September 11.

LONGLEY: I was actually on my way down to Manhattan to watch some pick-up games, looking for players for the Wildcats. I stopped at the Knicks’ gym on the way. I was due at 11 and it was about 8.30 or 9 and I went in to the gym to get a work-out. I was actually in the next gym with a couple of the other guys and they had the screens on when it started happening.

I wasn’t actually in Manhattan. I was up at the gym which is half an hour north. Obviously I didn’t go in that day but I was due.

NAGY: What was it like to be there at that moment? It was hard enough watching it here on TV from half a world away.

LONGLEY: It was um, I guess, it was as close as I’ve ever felt to a feeling of being at war because the whole country went into sort of emergency status.

Kelly was in New Mexico on some family business so she was stranded for a week. I had my girls at home with a friend of ours. It was … it was… it was scary.

Where we live was in a direct flight path between Washington and New York. We’re right in the middle of it. We weren’t even scheduled to be back here (in Australia) till mid-November. Our house was still on the market and so was Kelly’s car.

We just sort of pulled the rip-cord and said: “There’s nothing worth staying for.” Fact we couldn’t even get out of New York on a commercial flight. We ended up flying private just to get out of there.

NAGY: Did you charter a flight out of Perth to Adelaide like the Wildcats? (Laughter).

LONGLEY: No. The only time I’ve ever chartered a plane myself was to get out of New York. We did the quick exit. We’ve still got a dog there. (Laughter)

NAGY: Where are they?

LONGLEY: (Laughter). We brought one dog with us and one dog had to stay. Guarding the front door. (Laughter)

NAGY: Causing grief for people trying to show the house. (Laughter)

LONGLEY: No. She has a good home. She wouldn’t have got through quarantine unfortunately so she had to stay. But it was, it was scary.

It was spooky because everything shut down. You know shops that would be open weren’t open. The chemist wasn’t open. You know it was like everyone just pulled their head in. There was no traffic on the roads. People were just bracing for the next disaster.

I think it was probably even more scary for Kelly with her family in New York and she was stuck in New Mexico. She was talking about renting a car and driving back and stuff so that was no fun at all.

NAGY: No, I don’t imagine it was. Let’s talk about your ankle. From what I can gather, you can’t play anymore. That’s it.

LONGLEY: It really has been … I mean the Olympics was probably … I was taking enough pills and doing it hard enough at the Olympics so I knew the writing was on the wall.

Even the season before, I wanted to get through the Olympics and then when I got to New York and started to try and train through their camp and stuff, it became very clear.

At the beginning of the season, it wasn’t until my stomach started giving me troubles from the medication that I went off it and realised the extent that it was affecting me.

Already for the last couple of years, I haven’t been able to move the same and once I started going to see specialists, they just sort of said: “You should have stopped (playing) two years ago - it’s a no-brainer.” It’s sort of an arthritic, bony condition.

NAGY: Why didn’t you? I know you’re an elite sportsman and you want to keep playing as long as you can keep playing. But at the end of that Bulls’ period where it must have been like the highest of the high – three championships and playing on arguably the greatest (NBA) team of all time – what’s the motivation to keep going? Especially given a chronic injury.

LONGLEY: Obviously it’s partly financial.

NAGY: Yeah, that’s a given.

LONGLEY: You’re at the peak of your commercial value. I mean I hate to say that but that’s the truth really. And also there’s a pride. When you are – that was when I was playing my best basketball - I felt like I still had a lot of good basketball left in me.

I did my ankle … my ankle had been rotten for a couple of years already. It was rotten when I was at the Bulls. It was, you know, like the old frog in the hot water story. You know; you put the frog in boiling hot water it dies but if you put it in cold water and then turn the heat up slowly, it can survive past the temperature where it should.

Same thing. Did you know that (story)?

NAGY: No, I haven’t heard that.

LONGLEY: (Laughter). I can’t remember the figures but I think a frog’s supposed to die at 98 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever in the water.

If you put it in cold water and turn it up, it can get to 120 before it dies because it acclimatises. And that’s what I was doing with my ankle.

NAGY: Is that a story Phil Jackson told you?

LONGLEY: Ah, it may have been. (Laughter). It may have been. The frog in the water story. It sounds like a Phil story.

NAGY: The last time I spoke to you, I asked you about your friendships in the NBA. You were saying how they miss out on the Australian environment because it’s very much a business first, but you did say that post-career, the person you’d probably like to get to know better would be Phil Jackson. Is that on the cards?

LONGLEY: He’ll be around.

NAGY: Did you have much of a relationship with him at the end of the Bulls? Like do you guys keep in contact?

LONGLEY: Yeah, yeah. We keep in … we’re good friends. I think moreso since he’s not coaching me because that player-coach relationship is based on different things to a friendship.

No, we’re definitely good friends, along with a lot of the players, all of the players really. But those are friendships I’ve taken from basketball. It’s nice to have gotten that out of the NBA. I think that’s one of the reasons I played basketball as a junior was the social interaction, the concept of a team of people pulling in the same direction, the extension almost of sort of the family that you create around teams. That’s what I enjoyed about basketball. That’s why I like being involved in junior basketball – it’s that again.

And that’s what I think we try to create at the Zone, to go back to the Zone again.

NAGY: Oh and you did that very nicely.

LONGLEY: Yes. Thank you.

We try to recreate that environment that I think was so intriguing to me about sports in general, but basketball in particular.

In the NBA, the Bulls was the only environment I found that in. And I think college it was good like that but it does become a mercenary, it becomes a professional situation. I think one of Phil’s coaching strengths was that he managed to recreate that environment that we all started playing in.

NAGY: Do you reckon that might start to happen a bit more now they’ve reinstated zone defences and it’s not just restricted to that two-man game where you pass into the low-post and everyone stands outside the 3-point line? Like it seems to be trying to get back to a bit more basketball. Do you think that might bring back the team feeling too?

LONGLEY: I hope so. I hope so. I think that will help. The factor working against it is the player turnover. Because it’s commercial, because it’s professional, if the team’s not winning, it’s trading – coaches, players, it doesn’t matter. So a lot of times, for instance, in the two years I was at Phoenix, I think there was only three guys, four guys that stayed on the team for two years.

NAGY: You can’t get any continuity…

LONGLEY: Exactly. Exactly. And I think that was one of the good things about the Bulls is we were together for five years.

I think if you put that same group together for one or two years at the end of our run, we wouldn’t have been able to do what we did. It was we’d had time to build. But that takes a lot of balls – hang on, what’s a better word? – that takes a lot of courage for an organisation, especially in the NBA to approach it that way.

They have to plant a seed, invest in it and watch it grow.

And again! … (laughter) Another thing that’s good about being involved with junior basketball seeing the kids come through the Zone is you can plant a seed and you can watch it grow. That’s what I’m looking forward to seeing is watching kids hopefully come through the programs and go all the way through to being Wildcats and national league players.

NAGY: What about coaching? I know you’ve said no in the past, but what about coaching a team at junior level?

LONGLEY: I think I would enjoy coaching juniors. I think with my position in basketball, I could probably be of more benefit to kids if I can address all the kids.

Rather than concentrate on 20, 15 or 10 kids, it’s better for me to be able to go out and go to clubs and work with clubs and give kids a message and help inspire kids on a broader base.

The Zone is a vehicle for that. It gives me access to a lot of those kids, rather than being locked into one club or one demographic or one market.

I’m in Adelaide today and hopefully I can get to a couple of kids today in Adelaide and that’s, I think, would be more rewarding to me. I mean, I do think I would enjoy actually coaching a team of kids.

I don’t know if they’re mutually exclusive or not. Maybe they will be. Maybe they won’t be.

NAGY: What about your daughters? Have either of them shown any kind of inclination?

LONGLEY: It’s interesting. They’re both pretty coordinated and surprisingly athletic considering their genes. (Laughter) My eldest Clare is seven. She hasn’t shown any interest at all. She was coming to Knicks games. Actually we used to joke when she was born the only thing she’d watch on TV or notice on TV when she was young, when she was an infant, was basketball.

We believed that’s ’cause she’d been to so many games in the womb, you know they hear things and there was a familiar sound to it. So she always gravitates to basketball. She did when she was a kid with TV and she does now.

But the first time she ever said: “Dad, I want to make my room a basketball bedroom” was when we got back here and she started coming into the Wildcats’ office and just seeing and being more involved.

So, no, they haven’t really got into it yet. But they’re five and seven.

NAGY: They’ve got plenty of time.

LONGLEY: Yeah.

NAGY: I want to ask you a few things about the Boomers and your time with them, what your best memories are with the Boomers and whether you feel we ever saw you at your best with them.

LONGLEY: Unfortunately, I don’t think we saw … I don’t think I was ever at my best with the Boomers. Ironically enough, it was ankle surgery for the Atlanta Olympics on this ankle that’s now retiring me that I thought was going to allow me to be at my best with the Boomers.

The timing was wrong, from a Boomers’ point of view, and that’s a shame. I think one of the things that the national program has to do like any club is it has to have continuity and I think, while playing in the NBA, it’s very hard to come back for a month or two and be at your best in a team structure.

I think teams have to have that. We did a couple of European tours and I mean it wasn’t bad but I certainly think we could have got a better result (in Sydney). I think everyone thinks they could have contributed more.

The answer’s no.

NAGY: I thought it would be, really.

LONGLEY: But, on the other hand, to be honest, I wouldn’t trade the Bulls years for a good showing with the Boomers because that’s the pinnacle of the sport.

I feel like I represented my country well in the green-and-gold jersey but I think I represented my country better on the world stage in a red-and-black jersey. I think that has probably as much or more value to Australian basketball than anything I could have done with the Boomers.

NAGY: With your ankle now, does that exclude you from activities such as a hit of social tennis or ..

LONGLEY: No. Basically I can do whatever I can do within the boundaries of what my ankle can do.

NAGY: But it can’t stand the stresses of a basketball game.

LONGLEY: Right. Landing and planting, sort of running flat out and jumping off it is what’s tearing it up.

I can probably play social tennis. I think surfing’s not going to be a problem … if I could surf. (Laughter) It’s mostly paddling is what I do and it’s no problem paddling with my bad ankle.

NAGY: My wife’s teaching surfing now and she’s really pleased she’s gotten to the stage where she can stand up on the board.

LONGLEY: I went on a bit of a trip this year, I’ve always been a body surfer, and I went on a trip down to Mexico for nearly a month. Just four-wheel driving along the beach with my buddies and finally got to actually surf properly on a big long board.

But over the first week, it was mostly paddling.

NAGY: She’s on some dirty great big board.

LONGLEY: Yeah, it makes it a bit easier doesn’t it?

NAGY: She was thrilled when she got to her knees and each stage.

LONGLEY: The only reason I ever got up was because I bypassed the knee stage. If I got onto the knees, I could never get up ’cause it was too wobbly.

I just had to jump straight up. Fortunately my left ankle’s my lead foot so I don’t have to get into it too much. But I mean, I’m not a big surfer. It’s just something I do for fun.

NAGY: What did you think of the situation in New Zealand? (A reference to the 2001 Oceania Series where the Tall Blacks eliminated the Boomers.) I know there was a great outcry about us losing that series but you were in the States at the time, right?

LONGLEY: Yeah.

NAGY: Did that even create a ripple? Did anybody even know Australia was playing New Zealand? Or even care?

LONGLEY: No.

NAGY: The reason I ask is because at the time, Andrew came out and said something along the lines of how badly this was going to harm our reputation internationally.

LONGLEY: Andrew Gaze?

NAGY: Yeah. When I thought about what he said, it made me wonder if it was going to harm Lithuania that they weren’t going to be at the world championship? Or Italy? Or France?

I was just wondering whether we are really taken that seriously anyway?

LONGLEY: Well I think we’re beginning to be taken seriously as a basketball country and I think you do develop momentum and a reputation. But it’s nothing that can’t be overcome.

You’re only as good as your last game – you know, that sort of thing. And right now we’re only as good as our last game. But as soon as we get back on the stage and win again, then we’ll be right back there.

I don’t think it’s hurt us forever. I think it’s a shame that Phil (Smyth) was forced to take so much of the blame. I think there were other selectors involved or players involved; there were a lot of other people other than Phil responsible for that loss. From where I stand, it seems to me, whether admirably or not, he’s done a good job of taking it all himself. And I don’t know if that’s fair.

NAGY: A lot of people put pressure on Phil to stand for the job and I know initially he wasn’t keen to do it straight after Barry (Barnes). He thought it needed someone else like an Alan Black, just to follow with continuity.

I think he put his hand up prematurely and with this being the result…

LONGLEY: It’s a shame.

NAGY: Yeah.

LONGLEY: I still think he’s got a great basketball mind and it would be a shame if he was down on the whole scene. It would be Australia’s loss.

NAGY: He’s done a fairly impressive job with two (NBL) championships and three trips to at least the semi-finals in three years.

LONGLEY: Well he helped teach me how to play basketball, that’s for sure.

He was a coach at the Institute when I was a 15-year-old no-hoper.

NAGY: Just a big gangly kid, eh?

LONGLEY: That’s right. He used to do my individuals with me and ah, I wouldn’t say “mentor” but he was certainly … he was in there every day … he taught more by example.

He was in there every day, working twice as hard as we were. And he was already the Olympic captain. For guys like me and Andrew Vlahov, that was just a demonstration of what it took. So he’s certainly one of the people who taught me not just how to play basketball but how to practise it and how much it takes.

To see him going in every day and practising the fundamentals we thought we were way past … to see him going and doing that was pretty instrumental in teaching me how to become a basketballer.

NAGY: Did you come to basketball as a kid because your dad played or someone said: “You’re tall – you should be doing this”. Or did you find it by yourself?

LONGLEY: My dad played so I was around basketball. Mum and dad met at a basketball stadium. So I probably associated with basketball.

I played rugby when I was a kid because all my mates did.

NAGY: Rugby?

LONGLEY: Yeah, rugby league.

NAGY: In Perth?

LONGLEY: Yeah.

NAGY: Is it big there?

LONGLEY: Nup. But it just happened to be the little area I was in was a rugby area. I played that till I was about 10 or 12 or something. But basketball was just a natural progression.

NAGY: I was asking because I’ve seen situations where a tall boy or girl was directed to basketball because of their size but there’s no genuine love or passion for the sport.

It’s a case of: “You’re tall. This will be good for you.”

LONGLEY: There’s a lot of situations in the NBA like that. I think there’s been periods when, it’s like any love affair, it can run hot or cold.

Sometimes you’re cold on it, sometimes you’re hot on it.

NAGY: Here’s a chance for you to bring in the Zone! “Developing a love for the game.”

LONGLEY: Oh right. (Laughter).

NAGY: With the Zone, I read it caters for 11 to 18-year-olds. That’s the age group you’re looking at.

LONGLEY: Yeah. And that’s what we provide is a forum for the kids who are passionate about it but are not getting pushed to the top-end elite, like I did.

There are channels to get to the Institute and so on. But we’re not casual basketballers. The people we get in the programs tend to be that middle-ground – that hungry 60 per cent in the middle. The hungry basketballer is always going to be the talented basketballer so that’s one of the reasons it’s fun to work with these kids that we get.

And kids that are happy work a lot harder.

One of the things that we’ve found that’s been really good for kids in that regard – in terms of making it fun – and the things that often don’t get done at a club level is the motor development and biomechanics type of stuff. The medicine balls, the speed bags – those sorts of things that kids don’t really get exposed to normally that can help them develop speed and quickness. But they also help make the whole process fun.

NAGY: That’s so important. Where I’m now involved, with under-10s and under-12, we try to teach them to enjoy themselves and develop a love for the game first. Everything else sort of follows.

You go out to an under-10 game and you play some team and the coach is at the kids …

LONGLEY: (Shaking head) Right.

NAGY: Fun just gets left out a lot.

LONGLEY: It does. And we make no apologies about building that into this program. That enthuses them for the next exercise.

It’s sort of like you wear them down with a couple of hard ones, then you spike them again with some fun.

NAGY: I read in the Zone literature your aim is to make kids the best that they can be. Sort of the athletics-type personal-best philosophy where you’re competing with yourself to improve yourself.

LONGLEY: When I was a junior, in order to do that, Andrew (Vlahov) and I, coming from Perth, had to play in the adult competitions with our fathers.

At sort of 14 and 15 we were playing in the social leagues, not the SBL or anything, and getting beaten up by the crusty old dudes. That was the only way we could get the kind of competition we needed to improve.

NAGY: I think I told you last time we met about how one of my older brothers was one of your dad’s main rivals at Australian Championships. Rick would be playing for Western Australia and my brother Geza would be playing for South Australia. We’re going back to the late 60s and early 70s when my brother’s six foot four was still considered pretty big. 

But at six-ten, Rick was a monster.

LONGLEY: Pretty raw though, I understand.

NAGY: He spent some time at Melbourne Tigers refining his game.

LONGLEY: Yeah. He went to Melbourne. That’s where I was born, while he was in Melbourne. I was actually born in Melbourne.

NAGY: Never mind. (Laughter) I think it was the 1970 Australian Championship here at Apollo Stadium and Rick just dominated.

Western Australia was crap, but he just dominated.

LONGLEY: Yeah?

NAGY: I reckon they finished about sixth out of six …

LONGLEY: Really?

NAGY: Yeah, but he was getting about 30 a game and nobody could do anything about him.

LONGLEY: He’s still fairly athletic for a guy of his age. I mean he’s still in good shape and runs well.

NAGY: Where is he now? Is he in Perth?

LONGLEY: Yeah, in Perth.

NAGY: Does he have any involvement in the sport?

LONGLEY: No. His life has become his architecture pretty much. He was on the board of the Wildcats for a while but he’s really too busy to be involved unfortunately.

He’s sort of grown through that.

NAGY: I know you’re coming from the outside in but can you see the problems of the NBL or what do you see as the problems?

LONGLEY: I don’t see any of them as being unable to be overcome with a macro-marketing sort of, with basketball being managed from one direction.

I think they’re overcome-able. Unfortunately there’s a lot of resistance to that. I’m hoping SMG will do the marketing side of it and possibly help unify the management side of it.

NAGY: Did you harbour some genuine interest back when it might have seemed possible to finish your career – had it not been cut short – playing for the Wildcats? That was always the story. The old: “Wait till we get Luc back”.

LONGLEY: Yeah, it was genuine. Andrew (Vlahov) and I grew up playing together.

We were the first under-18s when we were 16 to win … Western Australia won its first national championship at anything. So we came through the juniors together winning. We got on Australian teams and at that point, got the best results Australia had ever had.

Got on the Olympic team together and at that point got fourth at Seoul, which was the best result we’d ever had. We came through all these stages together. We went through (US) college, not together but parallel. And the idea was to get to the NBA together obviously.

So it was always our goal between us to finish our careers winning something for Perth in Perth – to go to the Wildcats and finish that way.

That was well before we decided to buy it. That was long ago. That’s always been the goal. And that’s one of the unfortunate things of … or … that’s part of the price I pay for being 10 years in the NBA.

I had to sacrifice that.

NAGY: Hey if it’s any compensation, Perth is the most successful club in the NBL in terms of results. They’ve won four championships and they’re the only club with four. So at least you’re still involved with a fairly successful program.

LONGLEY: I was a water-boy for the Wildcats when my dad was playing.

You know I used to sweep the courts and give them towels and the whole lot. So the Wildcats, I mean I feel like I’ve been involved with them for as long as I can remember. I think dad might have been the first starting centre for the Wildcats in ’84.

I’ve always been part of it and now I’m just on the pointy-end if you like – the responsibility end. And that’s my way. If I can’t play, I might as well contribute some way.

NAGY: What about Andrew (Vlahov)? He was the captain at Stanford. Were you surprised he didn’t get into the NBA?

LONGLEY: That’s a no-win question for me.

NAGY: (At this point and at Luc’s request, I turned off the tape to hear his candid but not-for-publication response. Bummer, eh? Sorry folks.)

LONGLEY: When you’re in the NBA, you tend to think that it’s such an elite level – I was always surprised when I came back and played with the Australian team. There’s not that big a gap between national team players and NBA players.

There is a gap, but it’s not an unbreachable one. And there are guys like Sam Mackinnon, I think, in different circumstances is an NBA player, no doubt.

There’s a couple of other guys in that squad. I mean, Mark Bradtke – he had a crack but he was a victim of the salary structure. They had to play all the guys that were making multiples of millions to justify the salaries. In actual fact, I think Mark’s a better player than a lot of the guys they were running. But it does get a bit that way, especially on teams that are losing.

NAGY: So you get left in the situation Mark found himself in where you make the decision; either you take the money and you sit there or you say: “Stuff it. I wanna go and play.”

LONGLEY: I think that’s an admirable decision. I think Shane (Heal) made the same decision and I think Andrew Gaze made the same decision.

Those three guys had a chance to sit around and rot on NBA benches for more money but enjoyed playing. It’s a testament to their love of the game above the commercial aspect of it. Personally, I admired that. Some people criticise that but I wasn’t one of them. Maybe I should have had more of that in me and stopped playing after the Bulls and foregone my six millions dollars a year salary and come back and played for the Wildcats.

If I’d have had that same mentality maybe. But, I don’t.

(Laughter.)

NAGY: And who can blame you?

(More laughter.)

Now that you’re no longer in that moment with the Bulls and you have a chance to reflect, what do you feel when you look back on it? Do you just think I was lucky to be there …

LONGLEY: It wasn’t luck.

NAGY: It was gifted skills, of course.

(Laughter.)

But what are your feelings when you look back on it? Does it always bring a smile?

LONGLEY: Always. There’s nothing about it … the only thing that doesn’t bring a smile to the face is that it’s not still going on.

I was happy with the way it ended. I thought it should have ended when it did.

NAGY: You did?

LONGLEY: Yep. Yeah I think. Obviously when it ended we didn’t know we were going to have a 50-game season next year and that may have worked in our favour. Because we could have recovered those tired bodies and some relationships that were running their course.

Teams aren’t made to stay together so the coaches shouldn’t stay in one place together because it gets old in team situations. We were heading in that direction.

Dennis (Rodman) was starting to spin out of orbit a little bit and Michael was having a hard time recovering on back-to-back games.

We were fortunate, not lucky, fortunate to beat Utah in that last (championship) series. It took a super-human effort from Michael and some incredible finesse on my part … (Laughter)

NAGY: …Which should not be under-estimated.

LONGLEY: That’s right. (Laughs) I was actually fairly handcuffed having to guard Karl Malone in that series and he just kept – that’s what he does well – drawing fouls. And so the Utah series were always very frustrating for me because they’d never play Greg Ostertag against me who I felt very comfortable against. (Laughs.)

I’d always end up matching up on Karl and that was more difficult. But … I’m getting off the beaten track. What was the question I started with?

NAGY: The memories the Bulls period brings up for you.

LONGLEY: Um, I …

NAGY: Because I remember reading somewhere – it might have been in your book – where you said at one stage you were sitting on the bench and you were sharing a joke with Michael Jordan on one side of you and Scottie Pippen on the other. 

LONGLEY: Right, right.

NAGY: During one of the championship series …

LONGLEY: Yeah, right. It had moments of, it had moments, I had moments of clarity (laughter) during that period where I recognised how special it was.

NAGY: Yeah.

LONGLEY: But when you’re running with the Bulls, when you’re doing it, I think it’s counter-productive to bask in it too much.

It’s only now in hindsight that I look back at it and I think I probably … yeah … a lot of pride.

I think it was lucky. I was at Minnesota and talking about coming back here because I wanted to play, like Shane and Andrew and Mark.

I was talking about that at Minnesota. Then I got to the Bulls and got into an environment where you were taught and nurtured and kept together. My love for the game was rekindled. So, the Bulls was great on many levels.

We won. Unbelievable people to play with, but it also saved my love for the game, if you like. Because I was being drawn down by the mercenary nature of it.

You would have read that in the book too.

So there were lots of things the Bulls are for me for sure. But certainly, that whole experience gave me my basketball sort of, credibility if you like.

I think that was my defining basketball experience and I guess it’s gotta be, doesn’t it really?

NAGY: Even before you said – and I thought it was a great comment that you probably did more for Australian basketball in red-and-black than in green-and-gold – even when you were playing for Minnesota, I know there’d be people, myself among them, who would be tuning in to see what you were doing.

LONGLEY: Right.

NAGY: There was one game there where I think you had 20 points or something so naturally we got that game (on TV) over here.

LONGLEY: Right.

NAGY: There was certainly a sense of support, that Luc – you don’t even know Luc – but he’s Australian and he’s over there … he’s ours …

LONGLEY: Right, right. I had a sense of that. And I felt great about it.

I’m probably getting too complicated here but one of the things I had to get over; in college and that, I wanted to come back to Australia. That’s what I wanted to do. I got to the NBA and I was living in America but I was mentally in Australia all the time. This is where I spent all my summers.

So what I had to do, in order to get better, for a while was to chop Australia off in my mind – not completely but just learn to live in America, in the now and immerse myself in that culture. Immerse myself in the basketball culture, immerse myself in the NBA and become what I didn’t want to be, which was a professional basketball player.

Kevin McHale actually was one who helped me get there when I was in Minnesota. I spent a summer with Kevin up at his ranch in Minnesota, on a basketball court everyday just working with Kevin.

Decided to stop being an Australian in America wondering whether I wanted to go home and decided to be an NBA professional.

So for a while there, I sort of didn’t do a lot back here. I didn’t do a lot of media, I just kinda had to focus where I was, in order to be successful. It’s nice to have emerged out the other end and still feel the same way I do about Australia and about coming home and all that sort of thing.

I hope I didn’t tread on any toes while I was doing that, but that’s what I had to do.

I don’t know what got me onto that line of thought…

NAGY: Hey, keep talking. It’s interesting.

LONGLEY: Am I foaming at the mouth?

NAGY: Actually, no.

LONGLEY: But I think while I did that, at the same time I was actually building the desire to come home more and more.

And even when I came home, I’d basically go down to my farm, get on the sand dunes and fish and surf – ’cause the farm’s on the beach – and sort of grow a beard and detoxify from the NBA. And then I’d go back over and immerse myself in it again.

I haven’t really been in Australia, really been in Australia for 15 years.

NAGY: It’s changed. You’re going to hate it.

LONGLEY: (Laughter.) I doubt that. I doubt that. I don’t doubt that it’s changed. But I doubt that I’ll hate it.

NAGY: No.

LONGLEY: I feel it’s almost like a time warp or a rebirth, whatever you want to call it. I was here when I was 15 and now I’m 32 with a family and now I’m here again. It’s a pretty cool experience for me. It’s really cool.

NAGY: I think as we discussed earlier, the fact Kelly likes it is important. It makes everything else a whole lot easier.

LONGLEY: Yeah.

NAGY: What about New York now? Let’s talk about your going there because the reputation New York has is for a terrifying media and fans that can easily turn on you.

LONGLEY: I got on well with the media. I got on well with the fans. I got on well with (coach) Jeff Van Gundy. I think I had enough basketball credibility by then.

I tend to be good with people and I think the New York teams in the past have been very anti-social, anti-media. The fact I was just prepared to be there and smile and … I made the most of a situation that was grim.

With retirement on the horizon, it was grim. But we made the most of being in New York. I enjoyed being a Knick, you know.

NAGY: Did they call you an “Osss-ie”?

LONGLEY: Yeah “Osss-ie”, yeah. It was funny because there were two hecklers who always … there was Spike Lee and these other two old Jewish guys and I’d always get the kangaroo jokes and the ‘flip a shrimp on the barby’ jokes from that corner when I was on the other team.

NAGY: Did you ever say “please say ‘prawn’ for God’s sake!”

LONGLEY: I have done that before, yeah. Then as being a Knick and the times I did play early in the season, from that same corner, there was a whole different vibe.

It was pretty cool. I shot a public awareness campaign with Spike Lee for Black History Month this year. I got involved with it all. It was a positive experience.

NAGY: But you never considered a movie career, post-basketball?

LONGLEY: I have a movie career mate! I was in Space Jam.

NAGY: Who were you in Space Jam?

LONGLEY: I was me. (Laughter.) No, I’m only there two or three times.

NAGY: Yeah. And you were in Jordan To The Max.

LONGLEY: Yeah, there I am both times, piggy-backing on Michael. I know how to do that. I’ve done that for sure.

NAGY: A lot of times when they’d be showing highlight clips of Michael Jordan dunking the ball or something, it would be you handing him the ball or setting the screen…

LONGLEY: Setting the screen, yeah. That’s how I got in Space Jam. I think I was setting a screen or rebounding and outletting to him or something like that.

NAGY: There you go.

LONGLEY: Hey, you gotta know where your bread’s buttered. (Laughter.)

But then, to take your question seriously, no that’s not me.

NAGY: I wasn’t really serious. Though I did see Wilt Chamberlain in a Conan the Barbarian movie as a villain.

LONGLEY: Oh yeah.

NAGY: You’ve got Shaq and …

LONGLEY: Yeah, Kareem (Abdul Jabbar) was in Airport (Flying High) …

NAGY: And he was very good too.

LONGLEY: I’ve thought about joining a circus but I guess there’s a guy there already who’s about 7-4. (Laughter.)

NAGY: Okay. You mentioned something earlier along the lines of “if I hadn’t played basketball”. If you hadn’t played basketball, what do you think you would have done?

LONGLEY: Laughs.

NAGY: Seriously now.

LONGLEY: Yeah ... um. No, no. Seriously I have absolutely no idea.

Basketball became such a focus for me, that it derailed me from a lot of other things, which is not a good thing to advertise to children, I guess.

My natural interest is the ocean. I always said I wanted to be a marine biologist but clearly, academically I didn’t follow that through. I think that was as a result of basketball dominating my life early.

I don’t know what I would have been.

NAGY: A marine biologist; that’s what George Costanza in Seinfeld once claimed to be.

LONGLEY: Yeah. You know, if I hadn’t played basketball, I probably would have been a ruck in the AFL. That’s something else.

NAGY: There you go.

LONGLEY: I would have done something.

I feel like the same skill set that applies to becoming good at basketball - although I obviously have advantages in basketball – that would have turned its direction on something.

NAGY: What did you study at New Mexico?

LONGLEY: Native fauna? (Laughter.) This has got to be off-the-record I guess.

NAGY: (At this point, I again turned off the tape recorder. So his studies at New Mexico must just remain a mystery, I’m afraid. They led us though to how Andrew Vlahov had gotten to Stanford University and how Longley had “duped” New Mexico when they showed interest.)

LONGLEY: When Andrew (Vlahov) phoned me up, someone had dug a hole and next to it was the pile of sand that they had dug out of there. But it had been left for a while and been grown over with grass.

So Andrew stood in the hole and I stood on the hump and we took a snapshot and sent it to the University of New Mexico; a picture of his really tall mate because I wasn’t much bigger than him at that stage.

Six months later when they finally came down and they were recruiting me, I was as big as that though so we never had to tell them I was standing on a hump and he’d been standing in a hole.

The only other school that recruited me was Hawaii and I knew that if I’d gone to Hawaii I would have been more involved, just not a basketball player.

Mexico had a better basketball program, a more charismatic coach and a bigger arena so at that stage, that was my decision.

At that stage, as I said, I grew from being Andrew’s sort of size to seven foot. And, New Mexico, I knew I was going to go there and get the ball. That’s where I really developed I think, in my four years at New Mexico.

NAGY: You know what? I reckon I’ve got enough.

LONGLEY: We’ve covered a lot of ground.

NAGY: Yeah, very interesting ground.

 

As I wrote earlier, we left it there, Longley and Phil Brockbank needing to get to the Powerhouse for the official Zone launch and me needing to “sell” the interview to my editors before also getting to the launch.

I got a rise out of Luc at the launch when I mentioned I’d accidentally erased the (interview) tape. He likes a laugh. After my interview, he had gone to the Powerhouse where they were at pains to make life easy for him. But Luc would have none of it, chatting with the staff and making them feel ten-feet tall when he remembered their names from previous times he’d been in town.

I still wouldn’t claim to know Luc well. But I know him well enough to be amazed at just how many quality ambassadors basketball has in people such as him.

Our sport does attract some great talents and wonderful role models.