SPORTING PASSIONS KIERAN DONAGHY: Kerry's two-time All-Star winner tells GAVIN CUMMISKEYabout the hours he spent courtside and how he had the opportunity to play basketball in the US
FOOTBALL HAS taken over in the last few years when it comes to my sporting passion, but when I was younger basketball was the focus.
Going to watch the [Tralee] Tigers as a kid was how I got hooked. I remember Ricardo Leonard – a mammoth of a man, 6ft 8ins and 250 pounds (113.4kg) of pure muscle. We’d never seen anything like it before. He scored 50 points in his first game. He had to sign so many autographs he got his college to send baseball cards of himself with signatures already on them to hand out to the kids but, sure, that backfired as everyone wanted him to sign the baseball cards properly.
I remember later he hit the game-winning shot to beat the London Leopards in the English Cup final, playing for the Chester Jets.
My mother, in fairness to her, I don’t know how she did it, brought me down to every session on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights. She’d drive down, whether she was going to work or finishing her night duty. She would drop me off for two hours.
I would be shooting around on the sideline and watching them training and getting given out to by the coach for bouncing the ball while he was trying to talk, but that’s when my real love of basketball took over.
There are not enough fellas in basketball to have “cliques” or groups. It is one group. When we won the National Cup the year before last we did it without our American and our Bosman. Really it was five Irish men taking on two Americans. For that group of 12 guys it meant so much to win it. I said after the game it was indescribable how happy you could feel about something.
People ask me is it different when you are playing in front of 300 or 80,000 but, really, it doesn’t matter; you still have to put in the same work to win it.
There were so many basketball coaches who have influenced my career, going back to Joey Boylan from St Vincent’s when I was captain of the Ireland team for two years. Bill Doran, who came over from America, and Paddy Kissane. All these guys moulded me when I was young, Dave Falvey is another. Charles O’Sullivan at St Brendan’s pushed me back to the Tigers to go play Superleague because he felt I had the talent.
But Rus Bradburd, ultimately, had the greatest influence. Without him in my life as a coach and a friend I don’t know where I would be today. He was a big mentor in a tough year of my life. He really set a standard for me where he said, “Okay, if you work hard on the court and do all the training this is what you are going to get out of it”. We won the Superleague that season.
His book about that time – Paddy on the Hardwood – has gone paperback in America. The New York Tribune said it was the best sports book of the year and they are making a movie out of it.
I can’t see anybody out there better to play me than myself, you know. If it takes a few months of acting lessons that’s what I’ll do. I don’t want to see an American trying to pull off my accent.
Seriously, his story was very true and he spoke from the heart and that’s why people warmed to the book so much. It is a good insight into basketballers in Ireland.
He’s a great person; he goes out coaching kids in Mexico for a dollar a week. It was a time of my life, starting college and out every night for the craic in Horan’s, when he got me back focusing on sport. I can’t speak highly enough of his influence on my career in basketball.
He sent me over to Chicago on a colleges trial, paid for my flights and got a place for me to stay. The college wanted me to come back and be a red shirt for a year, stay on for four years and give me a course and all that, but I was involved with the Kerry under-21s.
I’d love to have gone for a year just to see what it was like and to see how good I could become playing every day. Living like a pro.
In hindsight, staying home was the best thing I ever did as I would have missed out on my childhood dream of winning an All-Ireland with Kerry.
I was a very skilful footballer until about 10, then I don’t know what happened to me. I suppose I played more basketball and stopped practising.
Now, a lot of my football game is basketball. Trying to set up lads for scores. My aim on this Kerry team is just to win as much ball as I can and give it off to the good forwards around me.
I wouldn’t consider myself a good forward who can win ball, take it down and kick it over the bar.
I’m well capable of taking a score but I’ll look for someone else first. That comes from basketball. I’ll drive for the net if there is no other option.
I used to watch Michael Jordan videos. Then I’d spend hours out in my garden thinking I was Michael Jordan. All over the world every kid that watched him used to go out and do the same.
Jordan would do anything to win, that’s why I liked him more than Kobe Bryant and the other guys. If that meant stopping another fella he’d do that. If it took scoring 50 points he’d do that.
What I loved about him was he never took a night off in the NBA. Every night he carried the attitude: “If I was going to play the Milwaukee Bucks in Milwaukee, people were coming to see me play that might never see me again.”
If you saw him you would always go away saying, “Jeez, I saw Michael Jordan playing in Milwaukee last night and he was amazing.”
That’s the way every sports person should carry themselves; as if it was their last game. Never take a night off. I always try to have that kind of mentality.
Sometimes it doesn’t go for you but if you out-work a fella and get a score, suddenly, you feel good about yourself, rather than, on a bad day, going into your shell.
If you fight, something good will happen. It might only happen once but it could spark you off for the rest of the game or the next game. I don’t like fellas who pull up, you have got to keep going.
Things in life don’t come easy. You have to work for them.
