02/08/2014 NBA Champions Trophy with Patty Mills and Aron Baynes

Hi all,

This morning at basketball Dad heard that there would be a Trophy on display in the city. It was a big shiny trophy that a team from San Antonio Texas had just won against a team that had won it the previous two years. It was the first time that the trophy had visited Australia, so Dad was excited to go and see it.

He rushed home from basketball and changed me into a Portland Trailblazers outfit to go and add a touch of class to the occasion, and he also put on a Blazers outfit so we could look good in a photo.

Mum, Dad and I jumped into the car and raced into the city to go and join a big crowd that had gathered in King George Square. There was a really really tall man there, and another man that was about the same height as Dad. The crowd we listening to these two men talk. The really really tall man was talking about how he had grown up in Cairns and worked really hard to make it to the NBA. The other shorter man was funny, his name is Patty and he was very funny. He was joking with a man in the crowd who was wearing a Miami jersey, as that is the team that San Antonio beat to win the shiny, pretty Larry O'Brien trophy, or as Patty called it "The Lazza".

He was talking about how amazing it was playing in the finals against Miami. Last year those same two teams played each other and Miami won. Patty was saying that he didn't play much last season, and so this year he was determined to get into better shape and play more games. Well, not only did he get on the court more in the finals this year, he went nuts in the final game... He scored 17 points, with 11 points coming in about 3 minutes to blow the game open. He really was amazing. Dad says that Patty is his favourite non-Blazer player, and he says all the time that he wishes that the Blazers had never let him go.

Patty also was talking about how the day before the finals, his coach, Popp, who is a very stern and gruff man, who likes to answer questions with the media with one word answers, got the San Antonio Spurs team to come into the video room. They were going to be playing the first game of the Finals the next day, so they went in to watch video on the Miami Heat. The whole team went in and Popp said, "today is June 3rd, Mabo Day". Then Patty said that the whole team sat down and heard the story of Eddie Mabo and his fight for recognition that his people owned the land. Then Popp said "So in the scheme of it, playing the Finals is just Basketball. Go out and do what we do".

Dad knew about this as he follows Patty on some bird thing called Twitter, and he saw that on the 4th June, which was the 3rd of June in the US, that all of the players were wishing Patty "Happy Mabo Day" and asking if it was a holiday in Australia. Patty was saying that it isn't yet but hopefully one day soon.

The NBA's slogan is "where amazing happens", and the fact that a Texan named Popp sat his team down and talked about such an amazing man and knew the information about him, truly is amazing.

They really have done some amazing things in the NBA and basketball, Dad says that it is the best run sport in the world, with their zero tolerance to racism, sexism, homophobia, understanding of other cultures, and respect to everybody is really something that more sports and people should aim to copy.

How did a Texan man named Popp know more about an Australian icon than most Australian's do? 

While the Blazers are the number one team in my Dad's heart, and mine too, he says "you have to have give credit to those Spurs and the class that they have shown". I might even convince dad to buy a jersey from a team other than Portland, maybe, maybe not.

Love Kaiya Kelly Puggles (with help from Dad).
 




 

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