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Dylan Belchure, welcome to my podcast. Great to be here, mate. This is the first time we've met in real life, but
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I'm I'm so excited. I feel like I know you. I said the same to you. I feel like
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I know you too. Yeah, it's crazy. But uh yeah, great to meet you um in person. Um
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and excited to be on the show. Yeah. And your hair is still you're 49 now. You
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turn 50 later this year. Your hair is still fabulous. Oh, trying to trying to keep it trying to while I've still got
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it. It's going It feels like it's going a little bit backwards here, but while
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I've got it, let's uh let's enjoy it. Yeah. Cuz the hair was all always part
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of your thing. You were sort of like um New Zealand's David Beckham, I guess. I
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had a uh it was funny story. I had a um friend that was a hairdresser and uh you
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know she always used to cut my hair and always used to be like, "Oh, do you want
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to try this?" I go, "Yeah, why not?" Yeah. Like so I was always open to
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experimenting in hairstyles and and colors and all sorts. Yeah. The um the the the hair band, the very feminine
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hair band that was controversial, right? Oh, it was very controversial when you went to places like Perth and Townsville
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and played. They they used to enjoy saying what they thought of you up in those places. But um yeah, it was very
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controversial. Very practical though for for keeping hair out of your eyes. I can
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tell you that. Good. Why like basketball was your was your thing. Why didn't you
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just like, you know, get a sensible haircut? Well, it's funny cuz it's my my
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game wasn't didn't stand out enough on its own. So, you needed something else
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to stand out for selectors. So, when you were going to be on a court, you want to
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be able to be noticed. And my game wasn't good enough to be noticed. So, you needed something else. So, why not
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have a have a hairstyle that no one else has got? Yeah. Hey, so quick bio. Um Dylan Boucher uh holds the record for
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the most New Zealand NBL titles won at nine. Um foundation member of the Breakers. Three NBL titles in a row
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between 2011 and 2013. That's a dynasty, right? That's what you call a dynasty.
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Over 100 tests for the Tour Blacks. Mhm. Um in that um unforgettable 2002 World Champs where New Zealand finished
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fourth. Um Yeah. Yeah. You reflect on your career. It's it's crazy, right? The
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achievements. Yeah, I mean you when you read them all out at once they you know there's a lot of achievements there. I
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did play for a long time so it was it was easy to get those achievements but um well it wasn't easy to get those
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achievements but I was really fortunate enough to play for some really good teams um had some amazing teammates um
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amazing coaches administrators that that helped us you know um have success. But
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certainly uh was an enjoy enjoyable part of my life for sure. Um having those successes and um you know a lot of lot
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of hard work went in behind it. But um nevertheless it was uh when you're cutting down those nets um there's
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nothing better. Yeah. It feels like um I don't know like a golden era of New Zealand basketball
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that you were involved with. Would that would that be fair to say or is that is that just a couple of old men sitting
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back reflecting? Well, of course I'm going to say it was a golden era but um
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no in all seriousness I think it was a golden era. We had a had a group of guys that stayed together for a long time.
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Um, and you know, I think a lot of the young guys coming through now saw that group playing and and and you know, they
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wanted to be like them and they wanted to be able to they want to play basketball at the highest level and you
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know, I think that group was again special group and you look at most of them that have been involved in those
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teams going forward, they're either in coaching roles now, high level coaching
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roles or administration roles um or doing things at a high level. So, it's a
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pretty special group. M and you've made a transition really successfully into um
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into the admin side of basketball. You've been the CEO of um Basketball New Zealand and at the time we're recording
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this, you've just landed a new job which you haven't started yet as president of
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the Breakers. Yeah. Yeah. Damn, that's that's a hell of a title. What does it
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mean exactly? So, it's president of basketball operations. So, for me, it's
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basically, you know, taking taking care of everything on the basketball side of uh of the B&Z Breakers. And for us, for
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me that's like recruiting the team uh with the coaches, recruiting the coaches, making sure that your high
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performance side of the business is is per is functioning and then making sure that your development is leading into
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your performance um side of things. So, it's exciting. That's the that's the
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area I love uh the most when I think about um you know, when I'm finished playing, what are the areas I love?
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Those are the areas I love is being able to be involved with the high performance
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team. um but maybe not so much in a in a capacity of like coaching or training or
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anything like that, but in the recruiting and those sorts of things and and working with the coaches to to
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figure out who you going to put on the roster uh to be to be successful at the end of the day. So, does it scratch a
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niche for you? Is there still a niche there like in terms of it puts you close enough to the court and close close
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enough to the players? Yeah, there's 100% still a niche there. And it's funny
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when I finished playing there was a couple of routes you could you can usually go down. One is coaching and one
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is the administration side of things. And to be honest, to be bluntly honest, my heart is in coaching. I really wanted
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to be a coach. Um, and cuz you you dabbled, eh, you were assistant coach with the Tall Blacks. Correct. Yeah. As
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assistant coach for three years with the Tall Blacks and kind of thought, is that
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my avenue? But the reality, as we kind of spoke off air, there's there's one
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job uh as the head coach of the Breakers that pays enough to be a full-time coach
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in this country. And it's so if you want to get coaching jobs, you have to go
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outside of New Zealand. I had four children at the time and I was I still have four children but had four young
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children at the time and I was like I'm not about to chase jobs around the world
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coaching um and and quite a few of my teammates didn't have had success doing
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it. Um so I went down the administration route but um to your point I think I still scratch that itch that I have um
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in this role of president of basketball operations. I still get to scratch that itch on a daily basis which is uh which
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is far more enjoyable for me. Um would I like to be coaching one day? Absolutely.
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Am I going to be coaching one day? Don't know. Probably not. Um but I still get
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to scratch that itch every day. Yeah. When was the last time you you got amongst it? Like when when do you handle
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a ball? So socially last night. You probably saw me walking a bit gingerely today, but socially not very well these
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days. But I still I still I still enjoy the competitiveness of basketball and I still enjoy the camaraderie of being
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with your mates and competing out there on the floor. So that stuff still is enjoyable to me. Um and then for um
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since I've um started this uh role at the at the Benz Breakers, we are uh fully immersed in recruiting players and
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so forth now. So right now I'm getting that itch scratched fully. Um and we've
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just we've just completed our New Zealand players uh or our local players on our roster and now we'll be trying to
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recruit three imports to be able to complement those players. Hey, by the way, something I've noticed um you're
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going to be great at this president role. I've noticed um every time you say
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the breakers, you do say BNZ first. Absolutely. Well trained, huh? Yeah. Fantastic. Do Have you got like a pool
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room at home or a shrine or anything? I don't. Um I've got a couple of boxes of
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all my singlets and, you know, memorabilia over the years. And I've always said one day when I have a pool
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room, I'll get them out and I'll frame them up and I'll I'll do that. I've got
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a couple of frame jerseys at home, but they literally just sit in the corner of a garage. We've recently renovated and
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they just a couple have gone up on the wall. A couple of the championship photos have gone up on the wall in the
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garage, but um no, I don't. I'm actually I actually don't like people when I when
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people come over I like them to come over because of me. I don't want them to
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have to look at a wall and see, you know, photos of me holding a championship trophy or something up, you
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know? I just want to be me. Um, so they're in the garage, but I one day I would like to have a pool room that has
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a, you know, has a you a few pictures and and and singlets like that are from Olympics or World Cups and things like
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that. Unreal. Yeah, that'd be a hell of a man cave cuz Yeah. What else is there?
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you you do you get rings like actual rings when you win a a championship? So, we have got rings. There has been rings
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in the past. They're generally not as um glamorous as the NBA ones cuz those are
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man those are amazing. Um and um but we we have got I've got a few rings. Um
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main the main piece of memorabilia that you keep is the a piece of the net. So, you cut down the net and you generally
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cut a bit off for yourself and put it in your pocket or whatever and that's your
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kind of that's your memory of that championship knowing that you cut that piece of net down. Yeah. So, sounds
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sounds very probably pathetic to the the average punter, but everyone wants to cut a net down when you play basketball.
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That's the ultimate. When you finish the season, you get to cut the net down at
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the end of the end of the season. Where do you get the the the implement from? So, they they're always ready. When
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you're ready, they've got a ladder and they've got a pair of scissors. So, when
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you win and there's there's key things, usually it's a ladder, a pair of
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scissors, um champagne. Uh these days it's goggles so you don't get the champagne in your eyes. We learned the
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hard way in the in the old days. But those are kind of the key things when you when you're and cigars is probably
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the other one. Um, and again, you have one puff of a cigar and you just want to throw it out anyway cuz it's I don't
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know where that tradition came from. I actually think it was Michael Jordan who was the first one to smoke a cigar in
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the changing room. So, that seemed to be a tradition, which is not one I'm a big
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fan of to be honest. I feel like Jordan could have potentially been smoking cigars pregame as well. Oh, he probably
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was 100%. Are you um are you like a a Jordan fanatic? I'm a Jordan fan. I grew
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up on Jordan. Um and um you know the debate's always Jordan or LeBron James.
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Um for me it's for me LeBron James is the single greatest you know like talent
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most talented basketball player. He's 40 something years old and he's still
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performing at an NBA level which is phenomenal. Um Michael Jordan for me will always be the GOAT just purely
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because that's what I grew up on. That's the reason I picked up a basketball
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because I watched his come fly with me VHS um videos and you know that was what made me want to pick up a basketball and
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start playing. Did you um yeah when you were playing there's so much um knowledge and info about Jordan now like
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the last dance documentary on Netflix was phenomenal when you were playing and you know when or before you were playing
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and you you were a fan of Jordan. Did you know what an [ __ ] he was or No. No. It's because you don't you never saw
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that till later. It's probably not till he retired you found that stuff out. And
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again things weren't as accessible back then as what they are now, right? You
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can't get away with being an [ __ ] now like cuz you'll get found out because
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there's cameras everywhere. Whereas in those days it was like the cameras would
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be on the games but they wouldn't capture anything off court and so I think that's the that's the uniqueness
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about Jordan is he still has the stigma about him because of people all they want to remember is the good stuff about
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him. Yeah. How would teammates describe you like what what were you like? Um cuz I
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mean yeah like like giving Jordan a like a a bit of a pass like he was just super
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competitive and it must have been frustrating for him having teammates that couldn't necessarily like rise to
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his level. Um, but yeah, it did sound like it was very difficult to be a teammate with. Absolutely. Absolutely.
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Uh, what would my teammates say about me? I think they think I'm a good teammate. I think, um, you know, for me,
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I needed my teammates to be successful. Um, I wasn't like Jordan. I couldn't
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just do things on my own. I didn't have that skill and I didn't have that
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ability. So, on my I guess my whole MO on a basketball court was to get the right people the ball at the right times
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and be able to make the right reads. And so, for me, I made a living of trying to
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make everyone around me better players. and um you know in some of the success that we had, you might not see my name
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up in lights or in the in the paper the next day, but I know that the role I played was crucial in in us being able
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to be successful. So I think my teammates, especially those ones that I pass the ball a lot, would probably say
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I'm a good teammate. Um but I'm a competitor, too. Like don't get me
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wrong, like I back myself to be able to guard anybody on the court and shut them
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down. That was what that was again what part of my MO was. I wanted to be the known as the guy who could put me on the
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best best player on the court and I'll shut them down. I might not shut him down every time, but I'm going to make
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his life pretty difficult and he's going to be more worried about me than he is
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about worrying about the game. So, for me, that was that was kind of how I wanted to. And then that would take the
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pressure off my teammates. They would have to just worry about their person they were marking wouldn't have to be
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helping me and things like that. So, I would hope they say I was a good teammate. Um I have really strong
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relationships still with with guys that I've played with over the years. So, I
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think um that's probably a testament to, you know, what they thought of you on
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the court. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. you you in like a WhatsApp group or a Facebook group? Yeah, we've got a few of them.
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Yeah, a few little groups. Yeah, absolutely. If you ask about players that I never played with, they'd
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probably think I was an [ __ ] Um, but that's that's the highest honor, right?
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Yeah, it is 100%. Like if I I always used to say to players, if you're being
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booed in an opposition's gym, you've done something to annoy them, which
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probably means you've done something well that stopped their team being successful. So, don't be afraid of the
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booze. Encourage them, you know, like actually embrace them. So, yeah, it's a
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it's almost the ultimate compliment as a player. Yeah. Well, there's this photo
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here which is iconic. Um, yeah. What's the story behind that photo? Funnily enough, so um, Mark, that's Mark
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Worththington play. There was a test match against Australia. Um, funnily enough, it was um, it was actually a bit
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premeditated that one to be honest. So, we actually went to a Berslo Cup match before this game and uh, first time I
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met Mark, he was first time playing for the Boomers and he said, "Oh, I'm really
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excited to face the Hucker." He said, "Okay." Yeah. Then I said, "All right,
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well the next I think we were playing the next day and I was like, "Tomorrow I
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got something special for you in the hucker." So that was a photo taken at the end of the hucker where we were face
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to face. So back in those days, we used to advance doing the hucker. And we would often be, especially Australia,
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they'd line up on the halfway line. And the rule was with FEA is you can't cross
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the halfway line. So Australia would line up right on the halfway line, whereas most teams line up on the their
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own free throw line, so a long way away. They line up on the halfway line. So we
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would start on our free throw line and advance to the to the halfway line. and we I happened to line up perfectly in
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front of Mark Worthington and and I knew that he was excited to see the hucker for the first time. And so yeah, so that
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was the photo captured right at the end of the hucker. Um but again, we've uh we
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became good friends after that. Uh we competed, don't get me wrong, we competed hard against each other on the
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court. We went at it and you know those those matches against Australia were brutal, but but we could have a beer
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after the game and have a laugh about you know what went on in the game and there was nothing no there was no ill
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intent in any of the behavior. It was just good, hard, um, aggressive basketball being played. That's such a
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cool backstory. So, there's no bad blood there or No bad blood at all. No, but
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just giving him an experience. Absolutely. And to an average fan, they probably thought there was massive bad
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blood. And when you'd watch us play, you'd probably think we didn't like each
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other, but then they didn't know behind closed doors, we're having a beer after
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the game, you know, laughing about it and, you know, now we, you know, we still, you know, we still, if we see
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each other, we'd cross the street to say good day to each other. Were you surprised or chuffed at the time with um
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how that photo sort of blew up and how it sort of, you know, developed a legend all on its own? Well, again, like I said
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to you before, my game my game never really put me in the headlines. It's normally the other things that put me in
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the headlines. That was another classic example where I think people just saw a picture and read more into it than what
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there was. So again, I never used to correct anyone on it. I just run with it because for me it's like if people are
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again engaged in basketball, that's a good thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. We'll get
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into that. I'm keen to like drill into the um yeah the break overseas which must have been really tough. So you had
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a year in Perth and then a year in Brisbane. Um but yeah, as you've mentioned, you're a family man. So you
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went over there and did that without your family. So you're playing for a team that you don't love as much as the
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team you really want to be in and you're away from your family and there's a
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whole dynamic. We'll get into that. But first of all, I want to go all the way
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back. Yeah. So um yeah, Bell Tanaki. Yep. Uh which is a place that nobody knows. But what are you what are your
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earliest memories of basketball? So for me I was at Bel Primary School. Um I was
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must have been uh cuz I went to form two or or year eight in those days. Uh I think I was no it must have been
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younger. It must have been like standard four which is what's that year four year
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year four year no year six sorry year six sorry. Um and my older brothers were playing for the school intermediate team
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and they were shorter players one day. So I jumped on the court and and played. We had a hoop at home so I was used to
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shooting hoops with my brothers. got two older brothers. Um, and and the backyard
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battles were brutal. We played on gravel and you'd often go inside crying because
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your brother had knocked you over and you'd grazed your knee on the and on the
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on the gravel and we were and the the hoop was on a garage hard on a garage. So when you did a layup, you hit the
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garage and it wasn't it wasn't these days like a nice versatile garage door.
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It was like a brick, you know, like it wasn't the garage door. was the side of
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the garage which was made out of block bricks with a ledge sticking out with a window and it was it was brutal. So if
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you went in and and your brother was chasing you, bumped you into the wall, you got nailed, you know, but you might
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have made the shot and I truly believe that's the aggressive style we used to
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play in the backyard is why I played the way I played cuz I wasn't afraid of
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being physical. Again, most New Zealand kids grow up playing rugby and so forth and you know like so tackling and stuff
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is just part of what we do. It's part of our DNA. So being being physical on the
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basketball court that that's been happening since I was like 5 years old. Uh but yeah, I got to step on the court
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with my older brother's team and and got to play a little bit and fell in love
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with it and again just started playing for the school team and there just fell in love slowly over and the other sport
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slowly died away. I played every sport growing up. um was right into BMX racing when I was growing up and um basketball
00:16:56
kind of yeah was just a sport that slowly took over and I really wanted to do it and play it well. Yes. So your um
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your older brothers, one was uh two is two years older than you and one's four
00:17:06
years older than you. I don't have any actual feedback on this but um I've done
00:17:09
over like 200 of these podcasts and a lot of them with like real successful New Zealanders and and I reckon like
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having um older siblings, brothers in particular, is a great predictor of success. Like it toughens you up, right?
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Oh man. Toughest opponents you'll ever have and they show no mercy. No mercy.
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No mercy. And still don't, you know, like it's if you still speak to my older
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brother, he'll probably tell you he can beat me in basketball, you know, like
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it's again, it's that um when you're the youngest, you you you're going to take
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your beatdowns, you know, and you've got a choice. You can either run inside to
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mom and tell them or you can stand up for yourself. And most times than not, I'd run inside and tell them tell on
00:17:41
them with mom. Um but then over time, I slowly was like, you know, because mom would just go, "Oh, let's just stay
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inside then." And I didn't want to stay inside. So, I'd go back out into the
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cauldron again and I'd go back out there knowing I was going to get beat down.
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But that again toughens you up and it just makes you be able to be strong as a as a person and as a player. Well,
00:18:02
there's that 10,000 hour theory. Are you familiar with that from Malcolm Glad?
00:18:05
Yeah. Like you you you were cutting your teeth with some very very um you know, intimidating opponents. Yeah,
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absolutely. And and to be fair, I've um there's not many games I've gone on the
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court fearing my opponents in a in a in a physical fearing. There's some big
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dudes we've played against too that you're kind of like you're a little bit
00:18:22
like, damn, you're huge. But um but I've never feared anyone and I've never again
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been scared of physicality on a court and um and I think that truly is the upbringing. Did you Did you Side note,
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did your house have broken windows all the time? We had we had broken everything. There was everything got
00:18:38
broken again cuz we played everything and we were racing motorbikes and BMX bikes around the house and like it was
00:18:44
Yeah. It was crazy. Yeah. I've got um a younger brother and we were playing cricket on the the
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driveway all the time. Windows were different back then. They were like really really thin. Really thin. Yeah.
00:18:53
Yeah. If you hit it with a tennis ball was going to break. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the BMX thing. You've mentioned that a
00:18:57
couple of times. Um Yeah. This is a fun fact that I discovered. So you you bet Kos Spencer in a BMX race. Oh, we we
00:19:04
raced against each other. I don't even know who won to be honest, but um you
00:19:08
know like I and again I didn't know I only remember the name and he had an older brother as well that raced against
00:19:13
my brother and so the name Yeah, Fabian. Yeah. So um we knew the knew the name and so when he became a rugby player I
00:19:18
was like oh I'm pretty sure I used to race BMX against that guy and I remember
00:19:22
him because he was a huge kid. Like he was way bigger than me as a kid and if we stood next to each other now I'm sure
00:19:28
I'm way bigger than him. But yeah, we when he was a kid, he was a big strong
00:19:32
rider and I was like a little skinny like scrawny rider that was pretty good at tactics and stuff, whereas he was a
00:19:39
you know, he was a power rider. So when if you got caught on a straight with him, you were never going to win. He was
00:19:43
going to be too powerful for you. So yeah, I remember um I remember I don't remember exactly racing against him, but
00:19:49
I remember you know the name and and having races against him. And he was a good rider, too. Since it was unlikely
00:19:55
that anyone was there with a handicam, we're going to we're going to say it
00:19:57
now. You won. Let's just say that then. You bet. And that's when that's when his
00:20:01
BMX dream was crushed and he turned to rugby. Turn to rugby. So all black fans can thank me for that. So So back then
00:20:06
in the bell block days and like what was your um awareness or relationship with the NBA? Like did you did you get the
00:20:13
occasional VHS tape from a friend in the States or did you have any access to American sport? Not much. um dad somehow
00:20:20
would always have connections all over the place and we'd get sent um VHS tapes
00:20:26
but they were always so we even they were NTSC I don't know if you remember back in the day so there was power which
00:20:31
was New Zealand and NTSC which was American so your average VHS player in New Zealand couldn't play these tapes so
00:20:37
we had to buy a dual player to be able to actually play these tapes that we get from the US and so dad would dad's
00:20:43
friends would send him these VHS tapes and uh and Sports Illustrated magazines over and so That's where we started
00:20:50
watching these games and and started watching there was no internet back in those days. So, we were fortunate enough
00:20:55
to be able to get these videotapes and watch them and we'd we'd watch and I can
00:20:59
remember clearly going outside my brothers and we'd try and practice the moves that Michael Jordan was doing, you
00:21:03
know, and we'd go we'd spend hours out there and who can do it better and, you
00:21:06
know, like it would go on like that for for hours and hours. So that's how that's kind of how we, you know, started
00:21:12
falling in love with the game cuz again, if you practice the 10,000 hours that you're talking, if you practice enough,
00:21:16
you start being able to actually emulate these moves and you're going, "Oh, I can
00:21:19
actually do it now." And then the more you do it, the better you get at it and
00:21:23
then you can make it on a consistent basis and then you add it to the rest of your game and you know, so that's that's
00:21:27
kind of what we used to do. Yeah. God, we were raised on a diet of delayed gratification. Eh, we used to we
00:21:34
remember we used to have to go to the encyclopedias if we wanted to know anything. Brutal. Yeah. We had funk and
00:21:39
Wagner ones which you mom used to buy like one each week at the supermarket until we had the whole set. That's it.
00:21:44
Yeah. That was all the that was the access to all the information you had. Absolutely. Whatever was in those books
00:21:49
and your um your you you you were a four square kid. So your parents um had like
00:21:53
a super man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What was it? I would have thought that would have
00:21:58
been my dream as a kid to have parents that had a dairy. Absolutely. So we had uh so we had the local uh Foursquare was
00:22:04
kind of like a super red I guess you'd call it these days. um on the main strip. Then eventually they bought a
00:22:09
bigger supermarket that was that was down down the road a little bit. But I've got scars from um from opening a
00:22:15
box with a Stanley knife when I was a kid. We used to we used to have to work in the shop after school. So because
00:22:20
we'd either we mom and dad were both working in the shop, so it was down the
00:22:24
road from the school was a was a 2-minute walk to the dairy or to the superet. So we would go in there and
00:22:28
we'd work for pocket money after. Um my parents were both very big on you have
00:22:32
to work, you have to be able to work to be able to earn money. And I think they've instilled in me and my brothers
00:22:37
that, you know, we're all we're all hard workers. We all don't mind working hours
00:22:41
and and putting those hours in. I truly believe that's because we've done it
00:22:44
from a young age and we don't think anything of working and working, you know, past 5:00 or anything. That was
00:22:49
just normal. Um, and so again, we'd go and work in the supermarket, earn our
00:22:53
pocket money, and then when mom would take us home to cook dinner and and have dinner, and dad would stay till closing,
00:22:58
and then dad would come home when the shop closed. And like I say, the best time was actually this time of the year
00:23:03
was Easter because um when Easter eggs got broken, they would get credited by the uh by the company that gave them to
00:23:11
you, but leave the Easter egg there. So, we would purposely break Easter eggs so
00:23:15
they would get credited knowing that we were going to be out the back eating these Easter eggs. And we were pretty
00:23:20
mischievous back in the day. and and and um our parents would let us we had a we
00:23:24
were allowed um whatever we wanted from the supermarket but we had to write it in the credit book because they had to
00:23:30
you know know that that's gone off the shelf so they could see what you'd had
00:23:34
right so we would go and get whatever after school and we'd write it in the book and then we'd get home and mom
00:23:39
would grill us told you you're not allowed that many lollies or you're not
00:23:42
allowed this you're not allowed that you know so we're very fortunate again to be
00:23:45
able to have access to a supermarket as kids but um again I think you know the the lessons you learned were were pretty
00:23:53
important. You know, you worked hard, you got pocket money, and then you were able to get stuff from the shop. So,
00:23:57
yeah, it's foundational stuff, right? Absolutely. And did you we did you have
00:24:00
like a house on the back of it or was your house No, originally they did, but we ended up we were we lived about
00:24:05
probably about a uh about a 7 minute ride up the road in in a car and we used to often bike to and from home. Um we
00:24:12
kind of lived rurally. Um, so we lived up kind of where people farm and stuff and a nice big house there and um, yeah,
00:24:18
had a really good uh, really good childhood cuz we had land and stuff and and a big area um, and a big house as
00:24:23
well. Um, so yeah, it was kind of started with the house behind the shop and then moved to a bigger house after
00:24:29
that. Were you tall then? Were you good for stocking the the top shelves? No. So
00:24:33
I was I wasn't I was kind of always been tallish but I kind of had probably my
00:24:37
growth burden around that 16 17 years old kind of that 67 form time um or year 12 13. So that was kind of where I grew
00:24:44
over that sort of summer break and I came back to school and everyone was like oh you've grown heaps taller and my
00:24:49
brothers are only 6' and 6'2 so you know my dad's about 6'3 6'4 um so my brothers
00:24:55
are not short but they're a lot shorter than what I am and I'm 6'5 so I kind of
00:24:59
got the height in the family I think. Yeah. And you guys moved to Oakland when you were 14. Your parents had a motel
00:25:04
business in South Oakland. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Um Yeah. That must have
00:25:08
sucked balls. So you're 14. Your brother's 16 and 18. Um Yeah. It's a
00:25:13
time of your life where you've, you know, you've got your school connections
00:25:16
and you've got your roots firmly planted and no kid wants to go to a new school
00:25:19
at that age. Not to Oakland when you're from out of Oakuckland, right? Everyone
00:25:22
looks at Oakland goes, "Oh, who would want to live in Oakuckland?" Um and you
00:25:25
know for us you know moved into Papa Toy and massive culture shock you know coming from a small little you know
00:25:32
country kind of town in New Plymouth and you move into South Oakland into Papa Toy and you know like for me it was I
00:25:39
always tell the story me and my um older brother we had mullets. You know it was
00:25:43
back as when it was cool to have a mullet. It was back cool again now I guess. But but no one in Oakuckland had
00:25:48
mullets. They were already into the fades. So, we got to school and there's these two country bumpkins walking into
00:25:53
school with these mullets. And I can remember coming home our first day of school and I said to mom, "Oh, can we
00:25:57
just go to the hairdresser? I want to have a haircut." Cuz I just didn't want
00:26:00
to look different. It was bad enough, hard enough, trying to fit in um with new friends and and things like that.
00:26:05
But you didn't want to look different. Um so, yeah, we got haircuts and came
00:26:09
back to school the next day. But the best thing about, you know, about when you move into a new school, sport is the
00:26:15
one thing that can build your friendships. And for us, we love sport. So we joined the sports teams and we
00:26:20
would play sport at lunchtime and eventually you've got a group of friends because you're engaged in sport and
00:26:25
those that was probably the the best way to get friendships. Yeah. What were you
00:26:28
playing back then? I was playing everything probably back then. Uh I was playing rugby. I was playing um
00:26:34
basketball. I was still playing a bit of tennis um back then. Uh what else did I
00:26:39
played for the school? Maybe touch. Played touch for the school. Um but we'd
00:26:42
played league every lunchtime at school and you know I enjoyed again the physicality. So we'd go and play league
00:26:47
and I had a made a few mates doing that. Made a few enemies as well in those days. But um but we loved it, you know.
00:26:54
We just love just being kids and and having some fun. So when did you when did you settle on basketball as your as
00:27:00
your one sport to be honest? Um when by the time I moved to Oakland um again um I was I was a decent rugby player in
00:27:07
Tatanaki and um you know played for the province and stuff but when I moved to Oakland um again I was aggressive rugby
00:27:14
player. I was so skinny back then when I when we were playing in Oakuckland, everyone was so much bigger and I can
00:27:18
remember flying into tackles and coming off second best a lot and I was like man
00:27:22
I don't know if I want to keep doing this you know like no whereas you know I
00:27:26
used to be able to tackle people and and you know get them down whereas now I was
00:27:29
getting bumped off and you know it was like I don't know if this is as fun as
00:27:32
it used to be. So I think that's and that combined with you know we again we
00:27:36
had a hoop up at our at our motel and and I would just spend hours out there practicing and I was starting to get
00:27:41
quite good at it. Um, and I was kind of like loving the fact that I was putting hours into basketball and seeing
00:27:46
improvement. And I think it's like anything if you didn't see improvement
00:27:49
in things. You eventually will go and really focus on that cuz I really knew that if I was putting in hours, I was
00:27:56
getting better and better. And then, you know, I'd go to school and practice the
00:27:59
things I'd worked on and I was, you know, becoming one of the better players
00:28:01
at school and I was like, "Oh, I actually quite enjoy this." And I just
00:28:05
love the basketball encompasses all of the skills and that's probably what I
00:28:08
what I end up falling in love with basketball for. So, I've just got a mental picture of um
00:28:13
me having a nice relaxing night at a motel in South Oakland. There's some annoying kid outside bounce bounce. I
00:28:20
was that kid 100%. Like you'd imagine just the ding on the on the back. Just
00:28:25
relentless for hours on end. Absolutely. Yeah, that was me. Yeah. Wow. So, poor people that stayed at that motel.
00:28:32
Did Did you guys work at the motel as well? Yep. Yep. We had to work cleaning like cleaning units or Yeah. Not so much
00:28:38
cleaning. We had cleaners, but we would do odd jobs around the place. And then when mom and dad would go out, we'd we'd
00:28:43
run the motel. So, I can remember being, you know, school holidays and mom and dad went away somewhere. And I was in
00:28:48
year 13 and I ran the motel for a week on my own, you know, 17 years old. So, um, again, it was one of those old ones
00:28:55
where as someone would open the front door, the doorbell would ring and our house was right next to the reception.
00:29:00
So, we'd we'd hear the bell in the house and we'd come through and go, "How can
00:29:03
we help you?" So you'd just be sitting in the house waiting as someone to
00:29:06
arrive and then as someone would walk in the buzzer would go and you'd go out and
00:29:09
serve them. And so that was you had to be there 24/7 basically cuz although you would lock it up at night, people might
00:29:15
come at 10:00 at night needing a room. And my dad was always if someone needs a room, you sell them a room. You know, it
00:29:20
wasn't like, oh, we're closed. Sorry. Cuz it's 10:00, it's 10:01, you've
00:29:24
missed the deadline. It's like, no, no, we've got a spare room. Bought them in a
00:29:27
room. Happy days. So yeah, and we'd have we'd even have a shuttle that would go
00:29:31
out and pick people up from the airport and stuff. So we used to drive the shuttle out to the airport, pick people
00:29:35
up and bring them back and take them back out to their flights. So yeah, we we all all myself and my two brothers
00:29:41
all worked at the motel. Jeez, it sounds like your dad was um like really good at
00:29:45
running small business. Eh, like that's Yeah, that's how you do it. 100%. I
00:29:48
mean, he um that motel was I think the occupancy was like, you know, 90 something% all time. So he he was always
00:29:55
again he got into sports groups and sports groups would stay there and you'd
00:29:58
get into exchange groups and they would stay there and then you'd have your tourists and then you'd have so again
00:30:03
that shuttle service to the airport doesn't happen these days but if you know you've stayed at a mot a motel that
00:30:09
will pick you up at the airport which was 20 minutes away and drop you back there that's a pretty good deal right in
00:30:14
nowadays terms. So and again that was just my dad's um he loves people and he
00:30:18
loves being around people so in in that people service industry he he really thrived. What are they doing now? They
00:30:24
retired. Fully retired now. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, do they live on? No, it's your in-laws that live with you. Live with
00:30:30
me. Yeah, right. Yeah. Where are your parents these days? So, they they live out in Ramarama. So, live in a um 5 acre
00:30:35
block out there. Um yeah, they've again they've worked really hard their lives.
00:30:39
So, now they're just putting their feet up and relaxing. So, how much of your basketball was like
00:30:44
natural talent versus versus hard work? Cuz you made like your first New Zealand
00:30:48
age group team at 17, eh? Yep. Yep. So straight out of school I was selected in the New Zealand junior team and um Tad
00:30:54
Borwin who was the coach happened to be the Oakland coach as well. So when I trled for the New Zealand team and was
00:30:58
successful making that team he also was like oh we'll come along and play for
00:31:02
Oakland as well. So I went straight out of school into that. Um again I didn't
00:31:07
know I was so my school team we didn't play in the premier comp that they have
00:31:12
in Oakland. There's premier comp and then I think it's a grade and then the
00:31:15
the grade underneath. We were the third grade in Oakuckland. So, I didn't I was
00:31:19
pretty good in that that group because it wasn't a super talented group um that
00:31:23
we were a super talented um competition that we played in. It was just a South Oakland competition. Um but again, I
00:31:31
kind of cut my teeth at that level um and I was able to play multiple positions within my team and so it
00:31:36
really helped me develop different skill sets um that I believe I've taken on
00:31:40
future. Um, but I didn't really know I didn't know that I wasn't as talented as
00:31:46
some of the people. Like I just cuz I played hard and I and I played aggressive and I was fit. I kind of made
00:31:52
up for a lot of deficiencies at that lower level. But when I got to the higher level, I realized that there were
00:31:57
far more skilled and more talented people. Like I I wasn't a super athlete. I couldn't shoot great like the the
00:32:04
really good players could shoot. But what I had was um I guess a basketball IQ that I didn't
00:32:11
even know was probably superior than a lot of people at the time. I just thought everyone thought the same cuz
00:32:15
you don't ever go what is your brain telling you, you know, but you can see if a guy cannot jump high and you can
00:32:21
see a good if a guy can't shoot as good, but you can't see what's going on in the
00:32:24
person's head. So I had a knack of being able to get steals in a game. And a lot
00:32:28
of it wasn't because, you know, I was fast or I was athletic. It was that I could read a play. So I knew when a guy
00:32:35
was going to pass a court pass a pass across the court, I would anticipate it, get a steal and go down and get a layup
00:32:41
at the other end. And so I would get a lot of my points on just being serviced by someone else or by getting a steal
00:32:47
and and having no one in front of me. But I wasn't super good at beating my player to the hoop and scoring where a
00:32:52
lot of the guys are really talented in that area. So I kind of probably back in the day I probably honed in on the stuff
00:32:59
I was really good at and then I became kind of made myself irreplaceable because I was I could do things that
00:33:04
others couldn't do whereas everyone could do the other things. So I kind of focused on that probably too much when I
00:33:10
didn't spend enough time over here and my game probably wasn't as balanced as
00:33:13
what if I went back and was critical of myself I could have worked harder on the
00:33:16
things I wasn't good at and actually probably elevated my game to a higher level. I don't know. It was pretty
00:33:22
successful and long career. Yeah. I mean, like I say, don't get me wrong, it
00:33:26
was I had a great career and I wouldn't change that. Um, and like I say, had
00:33:29
some good success, but you often look back and you think, did I work as hard as what I possibly could? And to be
00:33:35
honest, when we first started, we didn't know like what the kids know now and how
00:33:38
what they have to do. It's pretty much scripted. You know, if you do X, Y, and
00:33:42
Z, you're going to put yourself in the best position to succeed. And if you've
00:33:44
got some natural talent, you might even go further than the next person next to you. So, we know that now and and kids
00:33:51
know that now. But it's it's it's hard work. Like your average person cannot be
00:33:56
a prof professional athlete. And every kid that's playing sport to this day that's 14 15 goes, "I'm going to be a
00:34:01
professional athlete." Like some people are not cut out to be a professional
00:34:05
athlete. And that's all right cuz there's there's something for everyone.
00:34:09
But if you want to get to the top of your game, it's going to be a lot of boring hours and you've got to put the
00:34:13
hours in. That's the bottom line. Yeah. That's that's another thing I've got
00:34:16
from doing this this podcast. You realize the only cheat code there is is hard work. That's it. It's a really
00:34:21
boring answer and it's not an answer that anyone wants to hear, but that's
00:34:25
it. That's it. It's a cheat code. Yep. And discipline, you know, like you got
00:34:28
to have discipline. Like you got to be you got to be disciplined in what you eat. You got to be disciplined that
00:34:32
you're going to miss, you know, personal events in your life because you're out
00:34:36
training, you know, like like I can remember like when I was younger, I used to go to parties and stuff and then I'd
00:34:41
be like, I know in my mind I go, I know I got training in the morning at 8:00 in
00:34:44
the morning. I can't I can't stay out with you guys. I got to go home cuz I
00:34:48
got training in the morning. And you know when you're eight beers deep, none
00:34:51
of your mates want to hear that. You don't want to hear that. Yeah. Exactly.
00:34:54
Yeah. No one wants to hear that, right? So, you've got to be disciplined to be
00:34:57
able to walk away from your good mates because you know they're going to continue on having a good time, but
00:35:01
you're going to go home early cuz make sure you get a decent sleep to get up so
00:35:04
you can go to training the next day. And then then what becomes happening is you
00:35:08
end up going, I'm not going to even go out with them because I don't want to
00:35:10
put myself in a position that I'm going to have to say no to my mates. So, you
00:35:14
just go, oh no, I'm not coming out tonight. So you sacrifice a lot of your personal stuff early on to be able to
00:35:19
get the gains to be able to be successful. But I can tell you now my mates that that I grew up with and
00:35:25
stuff, they all probably really proud of where I've got to and they know I made
00:35:28
some sacrifices to get there and that's that's part of it. Yeah. I suppose for
00:35:33
anyone regardless of whatever sport that um they want to excel and the question to ask yourself is how bad do you want
00:35:38
it? And if you want it bad enough then that's what it comes down to. You'll do
00:35:41
it. Yeah. Um yeah. Oh the career stuff. We we will go deep on that in a second. But first of all, it must have been
00:35:48
around this time in your late teens when you when you're at the motel that um you
00:35:52
meet your wife who you're still with today. Yeah. Nikki. Nikki. Yeah. So, I've heard two different stories. One,
00:35:58
she worked at a service station and you sort of creeped on her as a customer. Um
00:36:01
another story I've heard is that you you work together at the servo. Both. Right.
00:36:06
You're both very right. So, the service station was directly across the road
00:36:09
from the motel. Um and um often we'd have to that's where you went and got
00:36:14
your bread and milk and you know it was a BP service station so you get your bread and milk and all the stuff. So mom
00:36:18
would go across and get a loaf of bread for you know for breakfast or whatever or milk or whatever it was. And um
00:36:24
Nikki's brother actually worked there and I met him first Jeremy and um and then I I was I first got a job there um
00:36:31
as as parts after school and became friends with Jeremy and then one day we were I was
00:36:38
working with Jeremy and um and Nikki came in and saw him and they were talking and I was like oh yeah and then
00:36:43
she she left and I said man who's that girl and he goes oh that's my sister and
00:36:47
I was like oh okay and I was kind of like and then then she ended up working at the gas station as Oh, she picked up
00:36:53
some part-time work. So, we never worked together or very rarely. I don't think
00:36:56
we even worked together, but um yeah, we kind of like just started becoming friends there and um we were friends for
00:37:03
about a year before we um officially started going out. Um and yeah, I've been together ever since. So, that was
00:37:09
you 30 something years ago. So, it's so cool. So, you're like teenage sweethearts. What What's her
00:37:14
recollection of um love first seeing you? Oh, she was not at all interested in me when she first saw me. Not at all.
00:37:22
Yeah. No. Um, no, in all seriousness, we were, uh, we were purely platonic friends, you know, and I think, um, I
00:37:30
think I either wore her down or won her over, one of the two things. Um, and I think, you know, one of the things we
00:37:36
say to our kids is don't of, you know, often give people a chance. Get to know
00:37:40
someone because, you know, it's not always, you know, love at first sight or
00:37:43
whatever. It was love at first sight for me. It probably wasn't for her, but um,
00:37:46
but, you know, it's not always the fairy tale like that. get to know someone
00:37:49
because the personality is generally the thing that's going to keep you together
00:37:52
over a long period of time. Um so yeah, so again um we we had a good strong friendship and um and then we took it to
00:38:01
the next level and yeah, never looked back. You got married quite young, eh? I think we were 24 when we got married.
00:38:07
Yeah. Yeah. So you'd been together like say six, seven years. About eight years.
00:38:11
Eight years. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing from the perspective of where like where you're at now like a
00:38:17
Yeah. middle-aged man. That's That's cool, right? That's really cool. It is.
00:38:22
I mean, I'm very fortunate. Most people don't find that that one person. Not at
00:38:25
a young age, but some people never find that one person. How did How did you know she was the one? It's funny. I told
00:38:30
my mates um when I first saw her, I was like, I'm going to marry this girl. And
00:38:34
um as a teenage boy. As a teenage boy. Yeah. As a teenage boy. I was like, there was something about her that just
00:38:39
that caught me. Um, I liked how she looked, but also just she was she was cool, you know, and and she understood
00:38:45
me and and got me and and you know, and vice versa. And again, that friendship was really strong. She was almost my
00:38:51
best friend within a year, you know, so it was was pretty cool that you can find
00:38:54
that person. And it's hard. Now we've got our own kids. Their their expectation of finding that the one
00:39:00
early is they just think they should find they should have already found their person by now. It's the bluepint.
00:39:05
Because it's the blueprint, right? And uh and it worked for us. But doesn't
00:39:08
work for everyone. [ __ ] that's the sweetest story. Like your kids may may or may not listen to
00:39:13
this one day and um like to know that um Yeah. to hear the way that you're speaking about their mom. Yeah, that's
00:39:20
really sweet. Yeah. I mean, like I say, um and and she's a you know, I think
00:39:24
back to my success in my career. She's a big reason for it, you know, like obviously there's quite a few people
00:39:28
that are that are important in my career journey, but she would be the most important. She's she's the one who
00:39:35
humbles me. you know, when I'd come home and be on a high on something, she would
00:39:38
bring me back down to reality, you know, and go, "You're not that good." You
00:39:41
know, she wouldn't say those words, but, you know, like would always humble me,
00:39:44
but also the one that would kick me out the door to go and train and and tell me, you know, you got to go work harder,
00:39:49
you know, and so very fortunate to have someone that understands what how to get
00:39:53
the best out of you. And and she sacrificed a lot of her life for me to do what I do, you know, with raising our
00:39:59
kids when I've been up all around the world playing the sport that I love. M I
00:40:03
wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't have a wife at home that was, you
00:40:05
know, that was enabling me to go and do that and putting her own career on hold.
00:40:10
If I was you, I think I would have I would have um [ __ ] it up in my 20s. I would have um Yeah. You know, you're
00:40:16
you're a good-looking guy. You're popular. You're a star on a successful
00:40:20
basketball team. Um yeah, the the the temptation would have got to me, I think, as a a character flaw on my part.
00:40:26
Are you are you religious? Are you guys religious? No, not not religious. Yeah, you it's funny because you you it's just
00:40:31
like religious energy and like um you know meeting young, marrying young and and just having this rock solid
00:40:37
relationship. It seems like there's some almost like religious like foundations
00:40:40
there. That's really sweet. No. I mean, don't get me wrong, when we were um when
00:40:44
we were kids, we went to Christian camp and things like that, but we certainly didn't grow up in the church or anything
00:40:49
like that. No. No. You just got a good north star or a good moral compass. Um and your your kids, so you got four
00:40:57
kids. Um the two older ones, both pretty handy basketballers. Yep. Yep. So, uh four kids, 23, 21, and twins that are
00:41:05
14. Um they actually all play basketball. Um and the older two took it really seriously. So, Jaden, the oldest,
00:41:12
is playing for the FI in the in the Sales ML and um down in Toadonga there. And my daughter McKenzie, she was in um
00:41:20
college for a couple of years over in the States. Um again, loved loved playing the sport. she's had a few
00:41:26
health issues, so she had to come home um due to her health and um she's becoming a chiropractor now. So, really
00:41:31
proud of her and that journey. And then the 14-year-old twins have have never really shown or wanted to be taking
00:41:38
sport at a at that next level um at a at a performance level. They love playing sport and they play net and basketball
00:41:45
for their school. Um but they've never and and to be honest, we've never
00:41:48
encouraged it. I've probably we've parented our two older kids differently
00:41:52
to how we parented the two younger ones. It's actually, it's, this will sound
00:41:56
really funny. It's actually not that enjoyable to have high performing kids cuz every time you go to something, they
00:42:02
expect to be high performing at it. And when they get in the car, if they didn't
00:42:06
high perform, they're not happy. Whereas the two younger ones, they go and play
00:42:09
sport, they get in the car happy every single time we get home, we go and get an, you know, ice cream down the road
00:42:14
after a game and they're not, they don't care if they play good or bad. They're
00:42:17
just happy they ran around with their mates. that's far more enjoyable, which
00:42:20
it sounds crazy coming from someone who's in that high performance environment, but the older two, you
00:42:25
know, and again, I didn't parent very well when those car ride homes after basketball. I'd be telling them all the
00:42:31
things they didn't do right, thinking I was trying to help them, but all it was
00:42:34
doing is crushing them, you know, knowing their dad was, you know, and again, I'm genuinely was doing it to
00:42:39
help, but you know, and I look back now and I go, man, I shouldn't have been I
00:42:43
should have just got in and said, "You played well." Cuz that's what my parents
00:42:46
used to say, get in and go a good game. and they never critiqued anything. So I would leave thinking I played really
00:42:51
good and probably didn't. Whereas my kids would get in even if they played well, I'd point out the things that they
00:42:56
didn't do well. So they'd always feel like there was room to improve. And you
00:43:00
know, I look back at it now and I think, man, I should have just got in the car and said, "Great game. You played well."
00:43:06
And they'll go, "No, I didn't do this." I go, "No, you did." And then that's it.
00:43:09
You know, and then just go and enjoy an ice cream together, whatever it is. But you didn't. And now they're ruined for
00:43:13
life. That's right. Exactly. That's right. Oh, no. It's a good bit of
00:43:16
self-reflection there. You do the best you can with Yeah. You just Exactly. You just do the best you can. Um Yeah. How's
00:43:23
it been for them having the Boucher name? Has hard. Uh especially uh McKenzie, she struggled with it. Um and
00:43:30
again, girls are probably more brutal than boys. Um Jaden Jaden cpped it a little bit. Um and again, he would, you
00:43:37
know, he would kind of take it in his stride and he's he's quite a reserved
00:43:40
guy anyway, so I think he wouldn't say if it bothered him. um he tended to play
00:43:45
better when you know someone would say something to him, he would tend to use that as fuel. U McKenzie on the other
00:43:51
hand, not that it didn't make her play any worse, but she would really internalize after a game. It would
00:43:55
really hurt her, especially if someone said you only made the team because of your dad or something like that and that
00:43:59
would really hurt her. Um and she would didn't understand why people would say
00:44:04
mean things like that and that's that's hard for a especially when you're a
00:44:07
teenage girl coming through. It's it's hard for them to wear that. and and I've
00:44:11
got a lot of mates who have um who have been, you know, Hall of Famers and stuff
00:44:16
and have kids coming through and they everyone experiences the same thing. So, it's it's really hard. So much so that
00:44:21
McKenzie didn't want her surname written on the back of her uniform cuz she didn't want the average person knowing
00:44:25
who she was, which which was sad for me cuz I'm really proud of our family name
00:44:30
and we wanted our kids to all be proud to have it, but she didn't want it on
00:44:33
her uniform, which was hard as a parent. Um, but we would try and coach our kids
00:44:37
through it and just say, you know, like people might say things, but a lot of it
00:44:40
comes from jealousy. A lot of it comes from just trying to hurt you and trying to put you off your game. So, don't
00:44:45
don't let it bother you. And um yeah, and again, that's just part of it. And
00:44:49
they and and it's funny, the younger ones, they're probably too young, a lot
00:44:52
of their age group, and don't even know who I am, so they don't even know. Yeah.
00:44:57
Yeah. Oh, it's rough, eh? Oh, that's heartbreaking to hear. But it's but it's
00:45:02
I mean every anyone who's got a surname on their back, right, they're going to
00:45:04
be a target and that's just how it is, you know, and I think it's anyone you
00:45:08
speak to that has children playing that that's played at a high level, I'm sure
00:45:11
they they've got the same thing. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's talk about
00:45:14
this epic playing career. So, your first um pro contract, what was that worth or
00:45:19
your first paid? Well, it's funny story. So, it was uh we were called the Celtic
00:45:23
Stars, the Oakland team. Um, and I can remember, um, I signed a contract for $50, what I thought was $50 a week, but
00:45:31
no, it was just $50 total. So, I went I went in and got my first check for $50 and I went and spent it. And the next
00:45:39
week I went in, the lady said, "Oh, no, no, there's no paycheck here for you."
00:45:42
And I said, "Oh, that that's weird." And so, she's like, "Let me check." So, she
00:45:45
goes out and makes a phone call and comes back and says, "No, no, you picked
00:45:48
up your paycheck last week." I said, "Yeah, that was last week's paycheck.
00:45:52
What about this week?" and she said, "No, you've that was your contract." So,
00:45:54
I went home and let checked my contract. Yeah, it was right. It was $50 total. Um, so that was my first ever contract
00:46:00
at 17 years old. The worst thing is is when I went in to pick it up, I was with Pierro Cameron and um and he was on good
00:46:07
money back then. I don't know when I say good money, he was probably on like $200
00:46:10
a week and so he' picked up his pay and so we were together and I was like, I
00:46:14
wonder why mine's not here, you And then when I got home, I was really embarrassed that I hadn't read my
00:46:18
contract properly, but also that I I'd signed for $50 for the whole season. But
00:46:23
to be honest, I was stoked as a 17-year-old kid to have 50 bucks. I was like, "Sweet." But I spent it all in one
00:46:28
go. That was the worst thing. How many games were like what was the the game? Bucks a game. Yeah. Yeah. It was not a
00:46:35
very good ratio. When you had counted your petrol money to get there and stuff, it wasn't a very good ratio. But
00:46:39
yeah, even when you account for inflation and things like that, it's still a [ __ ] deal. Um, was it Yeah. Was
00:46:44
there a particular moment when you realized like basketball could be your full-time gig? Probably. Um, when I when
00:46:50
I first got selected for Oakland, I was like, "Wow, this is pretty cool." And
00:46:53
and you know, there were guys above me that you know, you watch um playing the game that had played for New Zealand and
00:46:59
and Piro who was a year older than me and and he he was kind of like right on that fringe of that New Zealand team and
00:47:04
then made it like a year later. Like it was awesome going, "Oh, wow." That you
00:47:08
could do this. and and that was right in the time where people were going off to
00:47:11
um they had just started going off to America for basketball and I can remember turning down a a scholarship in
00:47:17
the US um because I didn't didn't know have the internet I didn't know what was
00:47:21
in the US I knew I knew about the NBA and stuff like that but I didn't know what these colleges had to offer and so
00:47:26
I chose not to go because I playing for Oakland and I was with Nikki at the time
00:47:30
as well and um you know not that she was a she I remember her saying to me oh just go you know like I'll go to college
00:47:36
in America and we'll meet over there or whatever. So, she wasn't holding me back
00:47:40
at all. Um, but I just thought I was happy where I was and I was happy playing for Oakland. And then as that
00:47:46
kind of a few years into that, I realized that I was getting better and better from training every day. And so,
00:47:51
that's when I started thinking I could do this as a job um and play professionally. But, and in those days,
00:47:56
there was no breakers. So, there was no national uh there was no team playing and professionally semi it was all
00:48:01
semi-professional. So, the only way to get a job was to go overseas. So I was trying to work really hard to get
00:48:06
overseas and then then lo and behold um yeah Breakers came along in 2003. So it's kind of answered all the dreams.
00:48:15
Yeah. I mean the the career ended up like pretty damn good. So you can't have
00:48:19
any complaints about that. But do you occasionally think about the scholarship thing and like a sliding door sort of
00:48:24
moment how life would look different? Yeah. I mean again I I think about you know all the things I talked about my
00:48:28
weaknesses. Would they have got better in college? Would they have got worse? So many kids have different experiences
00:48:33
in college at the moment. Some have a really good experience, some have not so good. So, it's hard to know if I would
00:48:38
be would have been a better player if I went. I would like to think I would have
00:48:41
been, but you just don't know. And again, I like again, I'm really happy
00:48:44
with the career I had here. I don't have any real regrets, but I often think if
00:48:48
I'd gone to college, what what would it have looked like? Yeah, this this might be a dumb
00:48:54
question, but for for anyone that's like me that doesn't know too much about
00:48:56
basketball, like what's the difference between being like a really good like
00:49:00
superstar New Zealand level player like yourself and making the NBA? Yeah. So again, there's a there's a massive
00:49:06
different especially now. It's it's a lot harder now, I think, to make the
00:49:09
NBA. Like again, the chances of a New Zealand kid making it now is really hard. And the reason I say that is the
00:49:15
level of athleticism alone is like is like up here, you know, like there's and
00:49:20
you can't your natural ability can't match that. So if your natural ability
00:49:24
can't match where the kind of like benchmark is, you've got to be really
00:49:28
really good at something else or some other things. And so if you're a um kid
00:49:34
from New Zealand and you don't you can't reach that athleticism bar, what are the
00:49:38
things you're going to bring to the NBA? So a good example is Steven Adams, very
00:49:41
good athlete in New Zealand, probably in American terms, not a not a high level athlete, but super physically strong,
00:49:48
like his probably the strongest guy in the NBA and just a a real menace and sets unbelievably strong screens, but
00:49:55
gets on the offensive glass. these are things that he brings to a team that, you know, when he first started, they
00:50:02
could foresee him being that player. Um, and when he was younger, he was more athletic and things, but he's now carved
00:50:08
out a niche in the NBA that is really good. But the game, even when he first started to where the NBA is now, is
00:50:13
totally different. They're not looking for players like him. The only reason
00:50:17
he's still in the NBA is cuz they know what he can do and it's effective. But
00:50:21
they're not looking for the a guy that can do that. They're looking for a seven
00:50:25
foot guy who can shoot threes and and you know dunk on anyone and and block shots. That's what they're looking for.
00:50:32
Not every team can have that cuz not not many sevenfooters can do that. But what
00:50:36
they're looking for now in the NBA is they're looking for young guys that that
00:50:39
can kind of have tendencies that would lean towards doing that. So it's very
00:50:42
hard to make it just on your physical makeup alone, let alone your own basketball ability. Did did your playing
00:50:49
career ever overlap with Steven Adams? Uh we played in his first year playing was like I think it was one of my last
00:50:56
years or one of my last few years. So yeah, we over overlapped. We played actually against each other at ASB
00:51:00
Stadium and in Koi there we played and uh he was good good young player. I think he was like 17 at the time. Yeah.
00:51:06
So briefly crossed paths. Yeah. Did you have any way of like thinking [ __ ] this
00:51:10
kid's got something special? Oh, I knew he was special. Like he was man he was a
00:51:14
again think about supreme athlete and a and a strong kid you know and I just remember and moved really well. Um, I
00:51:20
remember thinking and I'd played against all of his older brothers, so I knew the
00:51:24
gene pool and they were all very good players um, in New Zealand and you know, so I knew that he was just another one
00:51:29
of the Adams coming through that was a good basketball player and a good strong physical basketball play basketball
00:51:34
player and then obviously he from there he went off to college and followed his NBA dream after that. He's doing all
00:51:40
right and I think he's done a bit more than 50 bucks a season. Oh mate, he would have been on millions like crazy.
00:51:46
I think his last contract was around 150 million or something like that. Damn, that's insane. So, um, yeah, who have we
00:51:52
had? So, um, in the NBA, is it Steven and Sean? Sean. Yep. And Kirk Penny had a had a what we call a cup of tea in the
00:51:58
NBA. So, he, I think, picked up a 10-day contract. And so, he he briefly, um, went to the NBA and then in the women's
00:52:04
side, Megan Compine in the WNBA. So, um, so yeah. So, um, not many have made it.
00:52:10
Um, like I say, Kirk Penny was a world class player and even he didn't make it
00:52:14
for very long. We had other players, you know, Pierro Cameron, I think if he was
00:52:18
in his prime, the way they look at um international players now, I believe he would be in the NBA as well. Phil Jones
00:52:25
is another one I think probably had potential to make the NBA. Mark Dickle was very close and ended up having a
00:52:30
serious accident right before the draft and didn't get drafted, but probably
00:52:33
would have been drafted. What people don't know about him is he he led the whole of the NCAA college teams in
00:52:39
assists for the for the of of all the colleges in America. he was the number one in assists and I think it was at
00:52:45
nine some nine assists a game or something which was unheard of. Um so again he's someone who probably would
00:52:50
have made the probably would have been drafted I think if he hadn't had the accident. So we had a few come close. Um
00:52:55
but again it's it has even changed even more now and it's more predicated to big
00:53:00
athletes now. If you're not 6'7 and above and athletic your chance of making
00:53:06
NBA is pretty low. Yeah. You mentioned Shawn Marks your old teammate. He's he's
00:53:10
had a remarkable career hasn't he? Unreal. Unreal. I mean, I don't think
00:53:14
New Zealand appreciate the the position that he's in as GM of the Brooklyn Nets.
00:53:18
Um, that a New Zealander is running, you know, an NBA franchise like that. He's
00:53:23
phenomenal guy. Um, I've spent a lot of time with Shan and um, playing, but also
00:53:28
outside of it since his time in Brooklyn and and he's just a phenomenal guy and
00:53:31
um, you know, big responsibility where he is and he's carved out a I think a 10
00:53:35
12 year NBA GM career which is a long time in the NBA. and not a lot of the guys last uh that period of time. So,
00:53:43
he's done really well. Yeah. And dealing with like billions and billions of dollars, right? And dealing with
00:53:47
athletes that are worth, you know, millions and millions of dollars, you know, and trying to be able to put that
00:53:51
all into a winning formula. It's really pretty tough job. Unreal. And in your
00:53:55
job, sorry, we're bouncing around all over the place here. In in your job as
00:53:59
um the boss of Basketball New Zealand, did you have any like dealings or interactions with Steven Adams? Yep.
00:54:03
Yep. For sure. Um, so I spent a bit of time with Steven in the US and um, you know, and Steven and I have got a good
00:54:08
relationship. Um, and his his um, one of his brothers is one of my best mates and
00:54:14
um, you know, and so my connection through Steven has been pretty strong. So um, again, we've had a a few catchups
00:54:20
and and we get on well and and stuff like that. So yeah, I would call it a strong relationship. Is is he salty with
00:54:26
basketball New Zealand? Not at all. Not at all. That's I think that's a stigma
00:54:30
that's again in the media. And um, was he from a younger age? I don't know.
00:54:33
Again, I haven't actually delved into that, but um ever since I've been at
00:54:36
Basketball New Zealand, he's had no issue with Basketball New Zealand and um
00:54:40
or myself, we've got a again a strong relationship and you know, if there was
00:54:44
anything there, we would have ironed it out by now, but there's never it's never
00:54:47
ever come up in a conversation. H as president of the Breakers now, how are you going to get him over the line? How
00:54:53
Oh, we would love to. Absolutely. Absolutely. We just when the time's right and the the phone call comes in,
00:54:58
we'll be ready. So when he's like 45 maybe. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It' still be
00:55:03
a handy play to have on you, too. Um, just some random little ones here. Is trash talking a thing in basketball?
00:55:09
100%. Yeah. Was it 100%. Not for me. Were you? No, I was I was I'm not quickwitted enough to be a good trash
00:55:15
talker. You in the shower after I should have said that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I was the next day probably for
00:55:21
me. Um, but no, I used to enjoy playing trash talkers though cuz I I loved extra
00:55:26
motivation to want to play hard. Um, and if someone was, especially if they were
00:55:30
trash talking me about how I was defending them or something, I loved it because I knew I was in their head. If
00:55:36
they weren't talking to me, they weren't worried about me. But if they were
00:55:38
talking to me, they were worried about what I was doing or they were upset about what I was doing. Um, I had no
00:55:43
comeback other than shut up and probably had a few swear words in between that, but um, yeah, I I had no comeback. So, I
00:55:49
never really engaged in trash talk. I try to let my game speak for itself. Um, what was some of the best like trash
00:55:56
talk you got? what what sort of things to Was it really offensive or some of it some of it yeah some of it some of it
00:56:02
gets a little bit below the line um with you know might be race involved like you
00:56:07
know might be calling you something something white boy or something like that but um again I I generally didn't
00:56:13
engage back so I never got to the point of probably too out of control um but you know there's a lot of a lot of
00:56:21
talking going on in a basketball game and a lot of you know when someone scores on you they tell you that you
00:56:27
ain't [ __ ] or you know like that you can't defend anyone or whatever it is
00:56:31
you know a lot of guys would talk like that and and it's probably more so nowadays than probably even what it was
00:56:36
back then um but New Zealanders generally aren't trash talkers well certainly in my era weren't trash
00:56:42
talkers we wouldn't talk a lot would say the occasional thing but um I think the
00:56:46
newer generation have been watching a lot of the NBA and that happens a lot there so they've ended up picking up a
00:56:51
lot of the tendencies from the NBA I I read a story about you did did you once Um, forget your boots and play like
00:56:58
borrow someone's borrow someone's like slip-on shoes or something. Yeah, I did. I did. What the
00:57:03
hell? What happened? Um, how first of all, how do you how like surely you have like um not
00:57:10
superstitions, but like a like a routine or a structure. How do you forget your shoes? Exactly. It's exactly. So, we
00:57:15
were um so we were playing um I think I was playing for Perth, I think, at the time. me. I was playing for Perth and we
00:57:22
were playing and usually when you play Ilawar, you stay in Sydney and you just drive down for the game and drive back.
00:57:27
So, it's about an hour and a half away in Ilawa and um we were playing Sydney.
00:57:32
So, I remember having my shoes on the bed and we had these backpacks that weren't very big. So, your shoes
00:57:36
couldn't fit in the backpack. So, you kind of put your your showering clothes
00:57:40
in the backpack or your your stuff in the backpack and then you you pick up your shoes and carry them. And I must
00:57:46
have got distracted somehow and I put my backpack on and just left the room and left my shoes sitting on the bed. And so
00:57:51
I'd got to the locker room and I remember sitting in the locker room and you open your bag up to to start getting
00:57:56
changed for the game. And we just driven an hour and a half from the motel and I
00:57:58
opened my bag and I saw no shoes. And at that moment I realized I don't put my
00:58:04
shoes in my bag. I carry them. So I went, "Oh, they must be in the van." So
00:58:07
I quickly raced out to the van. No shoes. And uh and the worst thing about it was I wasn't wearing sneakers to the
00:58:14
game. I was wearing scuffs or slides. So, I had literally no shoes on. Um, I had socks in my bag, but no shoes. And
00:58:21
one of one of the guys on the team had worn slip-on shoes. Sneakers, but slip-on sneakers. So, I literally had to
00:58:30
put his slip-on sneakers on and play in slip-on sneakers. And luckily we happen to be the same size, but he had but the
00:58:38
the worst thing about it is all basketball players are not all most basketball players have orthotics to
00:58:43
because your feet are going to get messed up. So you they're built for your feet. So he was he had the same
00:58:48
orthotics he took out of his shoes to put in his playing shoes to make sure he had his shoes. So his shoes had no inner
00:58:55
souls in them. So not only did I play with these slip-on shoes, they had no inner souls. So, it's like it was just
00:59:01
running on, you know, the worst possible scenario. And I actually, to be fair, I
00:59:05
actually played pretty good in the game. Like, I actually had a decent game with
00:59:08
these slip-on shoes, but occasionally I would run and I'd feel my heel coming
00:59:12
out of the shoe cuz I couldn't tighten them with shoelaces. So, that never happened ever again after that. Is there
00:59:18
is there video of that online? There must be. Must be. No one knew though. So, no one knew at the time. And again,
00:59:23
no one um we just laughed about it after the game, but no one really knew about it. No one really talked about it, but
00:59:28
yeah. Um, of all the titles you've won, which one do you think would mean the
00:59:32
most to you and why? Man, it's a really hard one. I think um I think the one
00:59:37
that sticks out the most was um again because I single-handedly um nearly blew it, but also won the game for my team.
00:59:44
So, we're in Nelson. I was playing for W cutle at the time and um we were down in
00:59:49
Nelson at their away visiting teams um gym and we ended up being tied ball game um and I got the ball and was dribbling
00:59:58
down the court uh to try and make the winning shot and it got fouled. So ended up going to the free throw line and
01:00:04
having to shoot two free throws. Well, usually what you do in a game is you make the first I think there was like 6
01:00:10
seconds left on the clock. So made the first free throw and normally what you'd
01:00:15
do is you'd miss the second on purpose and I can remember making the first and
01:00:18
kind of silence the whole crowd cuz we were one point up and with only point6 there's a chance you coming losing from
01:00:23
there is impossible and I remember turning around and pro Cameron high-fiving me and he goes miss the
01:00:29
second one and I was like yeah yeah and in my mind and I wasn't the greatest
01:00:33
free throw shooter and I was like no I want to prove to everyone I can make two free throws and so I made the second
01:00:39
free throw and again the crowd was all sad Well, they quickly inbounded to Phil Jones and he shoved he threw like a
01:00:45
threequarter court hook shot that nearly went in and if that had gone in, we would have lost the game and I can
01:00:50
remember seeing it in the air watching the flight of it going that's going in.
01:00:53
That's going to go in and it ended up just missing. And I remember thinking to
01:00:58
myself, my own ego nearly got in the way of us winning a championship cuz I wanted to prove everyone that I could
01:01:02
make two free throws. and um but that was it was it was a really cool to be able to be responsible at the end of and
01:01:09
to be honest I didn't play that well in the game so I kind of made up for it by
01:01:12
making these free throws and and winning the game and yeah that was that's probably one that sticks in my head the
01:01:17
most um and again anytime you win in a away team's venue is really special if Phil's shot had had got in you would
01:01:24
have been beating yourself up but would you would have been would you have been in trouble with the team for sure for
01:01:28
sure especially I mean if pro tells you to miss a shot you're going to miss a
01:01:32
shot like You you don't I wouldn't have I would have hate to even look at him
01:01:36
after that had happened because he had told me to miss it and I didn't miss it.
01:01:39
Was he Was he mad at you regardless or was he swept up in the I think everyone just thought I actually made it by
01:01:43
accident cuz I wasn't that good at shooting so they probably thought I made it by accident. So no one was really
01:01:48
mad. Oh, you're being real self-deprecating here. Um okay, so the there was the um 2000 Olympics uh which
01:01:58
you you missed out on, correct? Um is this a career lie? Yeah. Oh, for sure. It was It was nearly a career-defining
01:02:05
moment. Yeah. I had um Honey Hi Smiler on the podcast uh earlier this week and um she she got a phone call saying she
01:02:12
wasn't going to the Olympics. I think it was when it was in Rio. Um and she processed it by going to a bottle store
01:02:18
and buying two bottles of port and she was drunk before midday. What was um your experience of missing
01:02:23
out? Should you have been in the squad? Um were you expecting to be in the squad? Yeah, I was. I was. I was playing
01:02:28
really good basketball at the time and and I thought I would make the team. I really did. Um, so when I didn't make
01:02:33
it, it's when you truly believe you should be in a team and you don't make
01:02:37
it is when it hurts more. Um, and again I but I'd never been in the team before.
01:02:42
So it would have been knocking some regular um, Tall Black out of the squad. Um and there was a lot the squad had a
01:02:49
kind of mixture of younger guys and there was a lot of older guys um that were in the squad very similar to um the
01:02:55
2002 team but a lot of the older guys were coming to the the end of their careers um and so and had been in the
01:03:02
Tall Blacks for some of them 10 years and so when I think back realistically now I think about why I thought I'd make
01:03:09
the team is cuz I was playing really well but also if I think back realistically I was like these guys have
01:03:13
been in the team 10 years grafting away and they're still good basketball players to knock them out of their spot,
01:03:19
you're going to have to be way better than them, you know, like you're going
01:03:21
to have to be the single biggest difference differentiator. So, was I disappointed? Yes. Was it a career
01:03:28
moment? Yes. Cuz I kind of I remember this is again, you talk about being humbled. I remember um you know, missing
01:03:34
out on the team and and you know, going home and talking to Nikki and she was like, "Well, maybe you just weren't good
01:03:39
enough. Like, maybe you didn't train hard enough for it." And um probably not
01:03:42
in those words. She's probably a bit more sensitive than that. But it was kind of my thought. I was like, man,
01:03:46
maybe I didn't, you know, what could I have done? And actually from that moment
01:03:50
after that happened, I ended up saying I was I didn't want to ever have that
01:03:54
feeling again. So, I was going to train my ass off, but I was working full-time at the time and I didn't really have the
01:04:00
time to train. So, I was like, you know what? I'm going to give up my job and
01:04:03
I'm going to start my own coaching business going around schools coaching basketball cuz I'll have a basketball in
01:04:07
my hand all day every day and I can practice in between training and and in between coaching. And so that's what I
01:04:13
did. So I threw my job in and started my own coaching business and started going
01:04:16
around schools teaching, you know, and primary and intermediate basketball. So I had a ball in my hand all day every
01:04:22
day. Um and that's yeah, I kind of that was my sacrifice. And then from that
01:04:26
next year on I I made the Tall Blacks and and I never left um that uniform behind until I retired. So that was kind
01:04:32
of my dedication in that moment where I realized that I missed out on something really big. This is how much how
01:04:38
confident I was going to thought I was going to make the team. Nikki had already booked tickets to go to the
01:04:41
Sydney Olympics. So, we ended up going to the Sydney Olympics. I ended up getting a ticket and going and being a
01:04:48
spectator and watching the guys play um and and supporting them from from the stands because she'd already booked to
01:04:54
go cuz I was like, "Yeah, you know, we're going to make the team. I was
01:04:57
going to make the team." So, it was it was cool, but it was it was brutal as
01:05:01
well, you know, like it was brutal knowing that you're not there. Um but I I stayed ready in case someone got
01:05:06
injured, and you never know when those things are going to happen. sitting in the stand with this. Exactly. Well, even
01:05:10
if you had slides on, I'm sure you could borrow some shoes from Exactly. Yeah.
01:05:14
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot that you had a job. You were like a travel agent for many years.
01:05:20
I was I was a travel agent. Yeah. Seven years. Wow. Um Yeah. How was Yeah. What was that like? It was I was lucky. I
01:05:29
worked for Star Sports Tours and um or Stars Travel originally and then Star Sports Tours. So I actually used to do
01:05:34
my main job when I was there towards the end of it was doing the we had the contract for Sza and so we did the super
01:05:40
rugby so I did all the super rugby teams and and spring box all blacks uh wabies
01:05:46
we used to do all their travel so it was pretty cool job and and then we'd take
01:05:50
in between that we'd take sports tours away to like the bleders low cup and Melbourne Grand Prix Melbourne open and
01:05:56
you know kind of taking tours away pretty cool pretty cool job when I look back fun you know I was only young when
01:06:00
I was doing it too I was you know like I think I started when I was 18 and then you know I was in my early 20s so taking
01:06:06
away these tour groups to you know taking away like 800 people to a letter of the cup game you know it's pretty
01:06:11
pretty cool job feels like it's a job that that's um involves a lot of admin
01:06:16
it is a lot of admin and again probably actually in a way prepared you for the uh the desk jobs you've got now yeah
01:06:21
really did I mean to be honest like when I was working there they were really good they would allow me to go and play
01:06:26
for New Zealand and things like that so they were always very good in um giving me time off to go to my games I can
01:06:31
remember this This was back in the day where again um if you needed to change a booking you had to go into the office to
01:06:37
change the booking and I can remember going on my way to a game in like Deneden and I would have to go yeah I'll
01:06:43
get my boss so I'd have to ring my boss who would have to go in on a Saturday
01:06:46
and drive into the office and make the changes in the office. So, again, very grateful that they allowed me to do
01:06:51
that. And because most bosses wouldn't want to hear from a 20-year-old kid and
01:06:54
say, "I need you to go in the office and do these changes like Yeah. So, um,
01:07:00
yeah, after the disappointment of the 2000 Sydney Olympics came, um, this must be your career high, eh? 2002." Yep.
01:07:06
Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. So, fourth in the world champs in 2002. Um, yeah. What are
01:07:12
your reflections on that tournament? So, mixed emotions about that tournament actually. So um we obviously we had
01:07:18
prepared really well for the first game who was Russia who were a powerhouse in basketball at the time and um I remember
01:07:23
beating them in the first game and everyone at the tournament was kind of like oh New Zealand upset Russia. Oh
01:07:27
that's unusual and then we kind of started having more success. We beat a few other teams throughout our pool play
01:07:32
and everyone was like oh this New Zealand team but no one knew anything about us cuz again there wasn't a lot on
01:07:37
you could find online. There was no scouting and we played a different style to every team. So, we kind of caught
01:07:42
teams by surprise and I remember we ended up um having to cross over. I think it was um Puerto Rico. We ended up
01:07:48
having to play Puerto Rico in the quarterfinal and Puerto Rico hadn't hadn't hadn't lost the game the whole
01:07:54
tournament. They'd beaten USA. They were pretty formidable team and um but we
01:07:58
were pretty confident that we matched up well with them and we could our style would um be their kryptonite and so we
01:08:03
ended up beating them and making it through to the semi-final and the semi-final is the one that I I play over
01:08:09
and over again in my head. We played we were playing Serbia in the in the grand final uh sorry in the semi-final and we
01:08:14
got up big on them. We got up by like 20 in the first half and I remember thinking we we've got them, you know,
01:08:19
we've we've got them right where we want them and they went into the halftime
01:08:22
break and they came out of the halftime break and just were really physical with
01:08:26
us and and really hammered us inside cuz they were way bigger than us and and just started getting offensive rebounds
01:08:32
and put backs and you know slowly they just eating into this lead, eating and eating and eating and eventually coming
01:08:37
um passing us and winning the game. And I can remember that locker room. We went
01:08:42
in the locker room and and um we were just like sick to our stomachs that we'd
01:08:46
let this one go. Like we should have been playing for a gold medal and we probably deserved to be but we just had
01:08:51
one bad half of basketball that we just didn't couldn't get back. And um the
01:08:56
next day I think it was we end up having to play for a bronze medal game and we just weren't in the right frame of mind.
01:09:01
We were we were dejected and we shouldn't have been cuz you're still playing for a medal at a World Cup. you
01:09:05
think we'd be really on a high and to be honest um we were playing Germany who we
01:09:09
had played earlier in the tournament and they'd beat us earlier in the tournament
01:09:12
and we matched up okay with them. Um they had this pretty good player called Dirk Nitzky who was who was pretty good
01:09:17
and um you know he went on to um you know play well in that game and yeah but that was we ended up losing that game as
01:09:25
well but we look back and and think about we should have meddled at that um but then you reflect on being the top
01:09:31
four in the world and it's pretty phenomenal really and pro Cameron was named in the all-star five in that
01:09:36
tournament. Pero was unbelievable, but so was, you know, we had Phil Jones was amazing. Kirk Penny was amazing in that
01:09:42
tournament. Um, Shawn Marks got his eye poked out halfway through the tournament, so we ended up not being
01:09:47
able to play half the tournament. Had we had Shawn for the whole duration of that
01:09:50
tournament, we probably would have won a medal and we probably could have even possibly won. Um, when we lose we lose
01:09:56
our only NBA player to an injury, you know, and he was ended up watching the game with glasses on for the rest of the
01:10:01
g rest of the tournament, but wasn't able to step on the floor. But had we had him, may maybe we we did better even
01:10:07
than what we did. But um we reflect on it now and think about coming forth is pretty cool. And and just the impact it
01:10:14
made back home here was was pretty special. Yeah, it was massive back here. But were were you guys So it was in um
01:10:20
like Mid America, right? Was it Minneapolis or something? Indianapolis. Indianapolis.
01:10:25
So this is like pre- internet. I don't know. Maybe there was a bit of MySpace
01:10:28
or something. I don't know. But like how Yeah. Did you get um like messages from
01:10:33
That's exactly what we got. Yeah. Yeah. So, our manager in a team hotel room
01:10:37
with Yeah. We would our manager would get on the uh the bus every day and he'd
01:10:40
stand at the front. He'd read out these fax messages that people had sent us and
01:10:44
u they were funny ones. They were hilarious ones in there and um and that was kind of our you know, we'd drive to
01:10:49
the stadium, which was maybe a 15-minute drive, and he would be reading these fax
01:10:53
messages out. And we started each day these there were piles. These piles were getting bigger and bigger. And so then
01:11:00
he would start passing them because they got too many to read. So he just passed
01:11:02
them around and we'd all just read them at different times. And the one was for
01:11:06
us, Rebel Sports sold out of basketballs during that tournament like which we were just like amazed. And so after that
01:11:13
tournament finished, we went um I everyone went their separate ways. Some came back to New Zealand. I went on
01:11:19
holiday with uh with Nikki um and Jaden who was who was just young then and and we went away and had a like
01:11:25
a week on holiday. And I can remember coming back to Oakuckland after after everything finished and I was walking
01:11:29
through the airport and people like, "Oh yeah, congratulations Dylan." You know,
01:11:33
like calling me on a first-name basis and I was just, "Oh, thank you." I was
01:11:36
like, "Who's that?" And Nikki go, who's that? I don't know. And it was happening
01:11:40
everywhere. And I realized, oh, it's cuz they've been watching the World Champs
01:11:44
and no one knew my name when I was when I left New Zealand. And I came back in all of a sudden everyone knew who I was
01:11:48
and was like, you know, like, you know, giving clapping as we were walking through and it was just me on my own
01:11:54
with my family. And that's from that moment on I was like man this captured that this captured the whole of the
01:12:00
nation. And so then everywhere I went after that whether it was the supermarket or any people would always
01:12:04
want to talk about the the world champs and it was like man did everyone watch these games and it felt like it cuz it
01:12:09
was again it was in the paper every day and it was on TV every day and it was on
01:12:12
a I think it was on a pretty good time. It was when kind of like during the day and stuff so people would take time off
01:12:17
work to watch the games and yeah it was pretty cool. Yeah. And then you guys won Hellburg
01:12:23
awards like you won like the the overall like team of the year award and I think
01:12:26
Tab won coach of the year. Coach of the year. Yep. Yeah. Which never happens. No. No. And um and again I I I truly
01:12:33
believe um for me I I did the I accepted the trophy and and gave a speech and um
01:12:39
I truly believe cuz I did that um that kind of then all of a sudden media interviews were coming and I was doing
01:12:46
all the media interviews. I be I became like the face of that cuz a lot of guys were still away. I think Pero was off
01:12:52
playing a professional contract. Other guys were everywhere. But I was in Oakuckland and I was available. So I did
01:12:58
a lot of the media stuff which helped build my own personal profile which I didn't realize at the time. I was just
01:13:03
doing normal interviews because someone asked me to do it cuz I thought well our
01:13:06
sport needs media so I'll do everything that's available. Um but it helped build
01:13:10
my own personal profile from there. You I suppose you're in your late 20s at the
01:13:14
time. The last thing you're thinking is this is good for brand voucher. That's
01:13:17
right. Yeah. There was no such thing as influencer or anything back then. I don't even think we had social media
01:13:21
back then. No. Um yeah. In hindsight, what do you think? What do you think it was that made that team so special?
01:13:27
Again, I think we had a bunch of guys that understood their roles. Um we had a bunch of guys that uh were high
01:13:33
basketball IQ players. Um we bought into a um a system. We worked our butts off leading into that. Like we had some
01:13:41
really good coaches. Um, Tab Borwin and Ned Vuchic were probably both ahead of their time at the time. Um, and so they
01:13:49
brought a style of play that no one had seen before on the world stage and so we
01:13:53
played differently to to most teams. Um, I also think with that group, um, you know, again, we just had guys who had a
01:14:01
lot of experience in the black jersey by that time, even but were still kind of young and fresh. And, um, like guys like
01:14:07
Phil and Kirk and Paulie and Pero had all been in the and Mark Dicko had been in the Tour Blacks for a few years
01:14:12
before that. Um, so they had good experience under their belts, but were still relatively young from a from a um,
01:14:18
athlete point of view. And so it just happened that it all kind of aligned nicely all at the same time. So um yeah,
01:14:26
just again a pretty special group to be a part of. Yeah. When when you guys connect either in real life or in one of
01:14:32
your group chats like um Yeah. How do you reflect on that? Like is the Yugoslavia game like a what if or I
01:14:38
think I think it's we it's funny not many of us have talked about it together, you know? Yeah. still like
01:14:44
it's still probably a bit of a sore moment and um you know occasionally it gets bored up every now and then and you
01:14:48
we all just kind of drop our heads but um but again we're all still good mates.
01:14:53
We all stay in contact and not you know we're typical guys. We're not not on a
01:14:57
on a regular thing but when we do we kind of still have banter and laugh about things together.
01:15:03
It's it's a fascinating insight e into like high performance sports. I'm just
01:15:06
thinking of some other people I've had on the podcast like Dion Nash um Jimmy
01:15:09
Nisham and Shane Cameron. Um and they've they've all got whatifs like things
01:15:14
things from their career that haunt them even though it's a long time ago. Yeah.
01:15:17
Yeah. Absolutely. It's what drives you too a lot of the time like it drives you
01:15:20
to want to be better. So when you get that opportunity again uh you're going
01:15:23
to you're going to capitalize on it. And a lot of times you don't get that
01:15:26
opportunity again. That's the reality, you know, and and I think back to 2004
01:15:30
that pretty much that same team, give or take a couple players. We went to the Olympics and we thought we were going to
01:15:36
do really well. We were probably playing better when we went to the Olympics than
01:15:39
what we were in in 2002. And we came end up coming 10th cuz we lost every game by
01:15:43
like two points here or three points and like this one or two shots in every game
01:15:49
we lost. And had we capitalized on those losses and won, we could have won a medal at the Olympics. And that's how
01:15:55
close we were, but we just didn't win the ones that counted. Whereas in 2002,
01:15:59
we won the games that counted in the crossover games and stuff. So just and that's sport, honestly. That's it's
01:16:05
that's why we love sport and that's why we hate sport. Yeah. This was like a big
01:16:09
period for you. There's a lot going on. So there's the um the World Champs in
01:16:12
2002, the launch of the Breakers in 2003, and the Olympics. Since you mentioned the Olympics, the one that you
01:16:17
did get to go to. Um we'll talk about that. So yeah, 2004, I've had Susie
01:16:22
Bates on the podcast. She was there representing uh New Zealand. Yeah. The women's basketball team. She had a crazy
01:16:28
story about ending up going on a a bus with the US guys and hanging out with LeBron and Kobe and then being in a
01:16:35
booth with David Beckham. Yeah. What was your Olympic experience like? Probably not not quite as good as that. Um but um
01:16:42
I loved it. The Olympics was cool. Just to be with the best athletes in the world was pretty special. Being in the
01:16:47
village was was special in itself. Um but again being able to um for us being able to just be like opening ceremony
01:16:55
was special to be able to be there with all the New Zealand athletes, guys and girls that you'd looked up to and wow
01:17:01
what a what a hero you know for your country and then seeing them win gold medals and bringing it back to to the
01:17:07
New Zealand house and things like that and being able to celebrate everyone's
01:17:10
success there. Um, again, personally, it wasn't a great experience from our um,
01:17:16
basketball winning p percentages or um, you know, perception, but we enjoyed being at the Olympics. And then when our
01:17:23
tournament finished, we we obviously enjoyed the Olympic stuff, you know, being around it and being able to let
01:17:28
your head down a little bit, but certainly don't have any great stories like that. Um, you meet anyone cool in
01:17:33
the food court? Oh, I met lots of cool people, but um, but none none. We didn't
01:17:38
hang out and I wasn't fortunate enough to be with LeBron or anyone like that. I
01:17:42
can remember we went out one night with uh with the Spanish basketball team and they had Pal Gasol was one of their um
01:17:48
main players who was an NBA player at the time and I can remember um that was back and we were still pretty broke
01:17:54
athletes back in those days and these guys were wealthy Euro League, you know, legends or NBA players and I can
01:18:00
remember they invited us over to their table and they were getting bottle service and we'd never heard of bottle
01:18:05
service. We didn't know what bottle service was. we just go to the bar and buy a drink. These guys had bottle
01:18:10
service. They were just bringing bottles of vodka to the table. We'd never seen
01:18:13
that in our life. So, oh, we can just drink this vodka. Like, what? Like, it was that was kind of the first time we'd
01:18:20
ever known about that stuff. And um again, just the difference when you're with high rollers and how they how they
01:18:25
drink compared to how your casual um broke athlete drinks. The other half. What about the um the food court at the
01:18:32
Olympics Olympics Village? It's a mythical thing. It is. And I love food. Um, this is dangerous. Dangerous because
01:18:39
you can have anything you want at any time of the day. Um, I know the McDonald's line at the start of the
01:18:43
Olympics is very quiet. By the end of the Olympics, it's there's Q's and Q's
01:18:47
of people. Um, but uh, every type of food you can think of, every any drink you can think of, every ice cream you
01:18:53
can think of. Like, it's so dangerous. Like, it's so d and and the best thing
01:18:57
is being in there is people watching. you're watching your 15 year old gymnasts walk in and you know watching
01:19:03
what they eat and to the to the powerlifterss walking in and what they eat and and I remember I remember the
01:19:08
handball players these big European handball players their plates would just be overflowing in food and they'd just
01:19:14
be eating just monstrous amounts think far out some people can eat. So just cool to people watch and and be like,
01:19:21
"Oh, there's that, you know, high jump guy that won a gold medal last night or
01:19:25
there's the, you know, pole vault or whatever, you know, like it was kind of
01:19:28
like you'd go you'd recognize them cuz you'd watch them on TV and then they'd
01:19:31
walk past you in the food court and you're like, "Huh, here they are." You
01:19:35
know, or some of them would walk around wearing their gold medals and stuff like, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." Who who
01:19:40
were the stars of the New Zealand team in that campaign? Was that the Ever Swindell? Were they? Yes, they were in
01:19:44
that time. Yeah, I think it was. They were Jeez, you're testing my memory now.
01:19:48
Um I'm trying to think who else had [ __ ] 21 years ago. Oh, Valerie. Yeah. I think
01:19:53
it was Valerie. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And then the rowers, the rowers were big. Um Rob Wedell maybe. Wedell. Yeah.
01:20:02
And also the Hamish Bond and Eric Murray. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. What great Have you got a um the five rings
01:20:09
tattooed? I don't I thought I thought that was that was mandatory. Yeah. Well,
01:20:13
it's funny. I've often seen it and I thought I should get that. Um but yeah,
01:20:17
no I don't. It's so cool that you got to experience that. Eh, it's really neat.
01:20:21
It's a cool experience. So, um yeah, just going back again. So, the Breakers
01:20:25
launched in 2003. Did that was that coincidental or did that come off the back of came off the back? Yeah, it did.
01:20:31
Yep. Yep. Came off the back of 2002 success and um you know, there was a group of um businessmen and and Jeff
01:20:37
Green that had got together and and kind of talked about it and got the license and yeah, made it all come to fruition.
01:20:44
Yeah. What was that like being involved in starting up a franchise in a first time I was ever a professional athlete.
01:20:50
So, you know, I don't even remember how much my first contract was. Wasn't very
01:20:53
much. I was just excited to just be able to give up my real job and and do basketball full-time. So, that was
01:20:57
pretty cool to be able to do that first and foremost. And I was in like say my mid20s at that stage. So, um I was ready
01:21:03
to um take on take on the professional lifestyle and and loved it. Loved it from the get-go. It was hard hard just
01:21:10
changing to that kind of like everyday, you know, daily grind and but it was was
01:21:14
fun. I loved it. Yeah. Loved every moment of it. Yeah. Was the money all right? Must have been okay for you to
01:21:20
give up your travel agent job. Yeah, it was I mean I wasn't getting paid much to
01:21:23
be a travel agent to be honest. So it wasn't hard to give that up, but no, it
01:21:26
was um it was Yeah, it paid enough to be able to live on. Um but again, the the money now compared to back then was is
01:21:34
night and day. H oh the um someone asked me to ask you about the Yaming incident
01:21:40
and I didn't know what what they were talking about. I looked it up on YouTube. So um yeah, what game was this?
01:21:45
So we're playing China at the 2004 Olympics. Um and we needed to beat China to go through to the quarterfinals, I
01:21:51
think it was. And um it was neck and neck the whole way and Yaoing was absolutely killing us in the game. Like
01:21:55
I think he finished with 40 points or something like he had a phenomenal I don't think he missed the shot the whole
01:22:00
game. And so, um, we're getting towards the fourth quarter and Yaoing was on
01:22:05
four fouls. Um, so me being me, I was like, how do we get the fifth foul on Yaoing and we tried various things and
01:22:11
couldn't. So, um, he got a rebound and he came down with it and I stole it from
01:22:16
him. And, um, as I stole it off him, he like turned to me to to get it back off me and I dumped it off to Shawn Marks
01:22:23
and Shawn Marks absolutely posterized him with this amazing dunk right on him, like right on his head. uh which no not
01:22:31
many people posterize Yao Ming and um I thought here's my opportunity. So I jumped in front of Yao Ming and I was
01:22:37
like in your face and I probably said a few other things in your face. I knew that he was going to push me 100% knew
01:22:42
it. So I just agitated him, agitate him and as soon as I sort of felt him put his hands on my chest I I've got this
01:22:48
guy and he just went he gave me a hard push and to be honest I didn't even need
01:22:51
to flop cuz there was a hard push and he just pushed me and told me to get out of
01:22:55
his face and I went sliding along the floor and the referee just gave me the get up. No foul called at all. So got
01:23:01
nothing. I just got up. We carried on playing and then after the game we lo ended up losing. Um after the game we
01:23:08
were sitting in there was like a players lounge at the stadium and where you going and get a drink and you get some
01:23:12
food and stuff and I was sitting in there and I kind of had some ice on my elbow and different parts of my body
01:23:17
which everyone does and Ya Ming came walking in and saw me and he comes over and he put his arm around me and he
01:23:22
goes, "Oh, was was your sore elbow from me?" And I was like, "No, no, no." And I
01:23:27
was like, "No." And I kind of explained to him that it was no malice. And he was
01:23:30
trying to apologize and I was like, "No, not at all. I was trying to I was trying
01:23:33
to get your fifth foul." And um he said, "No, I was only on three fouls." And I
01:23:38
was like, "No, you're on four fouls." And so we and even to this day, I've
01:23:41
seen Yaoing several times after that and we talk about it and he still swears that he was on three fouls and I swear
01:23:46
he was on four fouls. But had we failed him out, I think we would have won that game. And so that was a pivotal moment
01:23:51
in the game that I tried something crafty, but it backfired and just made me look stupid because he just threw me
01:23:57
on the ground like a little kid. Oh, it's an amazing clip. Yeah, it looks like he's bullying you. Like you look
01:24:02
you're um a big dude and you look tiny. Yeah, he is a huge man. Who who else did
01:24:08
you play? Drop some names. Um so in that Olympics um I remember we played uh the
01:24:13
the US team in a in a pre-Olympic game. So, I was LeBron James and um Lamar Lamar ODM was in Lamar Odin was in that
01:24:20
team. I think he was in that team. Yeah. Dwayne Wade was in that team. Tim Duncan, Kobe, Kobe, I don't know if Kobe
01:24:27
was in that team. I don't think Kobe Oh, or was he might have been in Yeah. Yeah.
01:24:30
I think Kobe was in that team. Yeah, they were all pretty young, but they were so so good. Um there was NBA, every
01:24:35
team had NBA players. Uh Russia, we played Andre Karoleno. Um Dirk Nitzky for Germany, Palasol for for Spain, you
01:24:43
know, the the list goes on. and every team had NBA players on them. Um, so it was a pretty much who's who at that
01:24:49
tournament. Yeah. How does it feel to reflect on this stuff? It's cool. It's cool to
01:24:54
reflect. It's funny. It makes you feel really old to be fair, you know, like
01:24:58
now it's it seems a long time ago. And it was a long time ago. You know, we're
01:25:01
in 2025 now. Far out. It's, you know, like 20 odd years ago. Um, so yeah, it
01:25:06
it makes you feel old, but it's cool to be able to reflect and know that you did
01:25:10
that. Um, that's that's pretty cool. Yeah. You've done some stuff. Yeah. Um,
01:25:14
how's your body temperature? Should we turn the air con? Yeah, chuck it on. Yeah. Have a sip of water. Um, now these
01:25:20
are great. I'm loving these stories. Oh, um, yeah, in two 2014 Order of Merit.
01:25:26
So, you get a medal for that. Where's the medal for that? Um, it's in a drawer
01:25:29
with my drawer. The bits of Net. Yeah. No, it's in the It's in a separate
01:25:32
drawer. It's funny cuz I just recently did a photo shoot that they needed and I
01:25:36
had to scramble around and find it and I found it in my my bedside drawer. Um, but it's funny because I've got I've got
01:25:42
quite a few cats, five cats and and two dogs. And so I opened up this meadow and
01:25:46
it had like dog fair and stuff all in it. So I was trying to like quickly get it all off before this thing. And yeah,
01:25:52
it doesn't get open very often. And um it's it's cool. It's it's something I'm
01:25:56
quite proud of cuz it means it's for services to basketball and I basketball's been really good to me and
01:26:01
I've tried to give back to the game whether it's through coaching or whether
01:26:04
it's through administration or volunteering or whatever it is. And um when I got that I was like that's pretty
01:26:10
special because someone's acknowledged that work that I've been putting in.
01:26:13
Well this was 11 years ago and like your contribution has you just got greater since then. So how how does that come
01:26:19
about? Do you get like a is it a phone call from someone? You get sent an envelope. Yeah I think I got just sent
01:26:24
an a letter or an email I think it was saying that I've been nominated um uh
01:26:29
for it and that I've been successful. So again um you you don't really know who's
01:26:34
nominated you. Um, so you just know that someone has nominated you and and someone's approved you and I think it
01:26:41
that nomination goes to Basketball New Zealand and they approve it. Um, so yeah, pretty pretty cool that they
01:26:46
approved it and and yeah, here I am with a few letters after my name. So good. Sorry for not introducing you by using
01:26:52
the letters at the Um, and so you got a government house. Who who goes? Nikki. Yeah, you go. Yeah, Nikki goes. My mom
01:26:58
and dad were there as well. So we all got to um you go you get to have like uh 5 minutes um out the back, you know, and
01:27:04
have a chat with um Governor General. Governor General. Yeah. So it was cool uh to be able to do that. And I remember
01:27:11
my dad's can talk even more than I could. And I remember saying to dad, "Our time's up, Dad. We got to go." And
01:27:15
he just wanted to keep talking and I could see him looking at the door like, "Get this guy out of here." You know, so
01:27:20
it was quite funny. Should that So something like that like I I don't think you can um just imagine, you know, how
01:27:27
powerful it is for your parents. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, they're super proud.
01:27:30
They they again still um you know, they love basketball, but they love following
01:27:34
my journey. And now my son Jaden's doing it. They love watching his games and
01:27:39
following his journey as well. And you know, they just they just ultimately really proud not only of me, but the my
01:27:45
two older brothers as well and their journeys in and different walks of life. But again, just proud parents. Yeah.
01:27:51
Well, that's so cool. God, I've I've been chaotic in this podcast. I'm sorry.
01:27:54
It feels like it's gone in terms of a timeline all over the place. I just remembered the um yeah the the the Perth
01:28:00
year. So you're at the Blake Breakers. You're a proud member of the BNZ Breakers. Um and then yeah, what
01:28:06
happens? How do you end up in Perth? Do the Breakers not want you anymore? Breakers didn't want me. So after two
01:28:10
years of failure, they basically had a bit of a clean out to be fair. And they um you know, they basically were like,
01:28:16
you know, there's a few they basically needed to make some changes. So they brought Andre Lammanus as coach and and
01:28:21
he wanted to go in a different direction and and I wasn't part of the direction
01:28:24
he wanted to go in. And so they said, you know, we don't want we don't have a
01:28:27
spot for you going forward and don't have a new contract to renew. So I then
01:28:31
I took the opportunity to go to Perth who was a pretty successful franchise at the time and um went over to Perth and
01:28:37
as you mentioned earlier like I left on my own initially. So Nikki and the kids were back in school. So they were here
01:28:43
um they end up coming during the school holidays and stuff. So again, living apart was pretty tough, but again, uh,
01:28:48
being able to go to a new team. Sometimes being there on your own, just being able to get into the system and
01:28:53
the flow of things was really valuable. Um, had a good season in Perth. Um, we made it to the semi-finals and lost in
01:29:00
the semi-finals to the eventual winners, which was Melbourne, and then, um, got recruited to be in Brisbane. So, I love
01:29:05
my time in Perth. Love Perth. Perth as a place, but we hardly had any visitors while we're there. That was so I've got
01:29:11
siblings over there. It's so far away. So far, and it's expensive, you know.
01:29:14
So, so the same distance almost as a flight to Hawaii. Yeah, it really is. But you're still somewhere in Australia.
01:29:20
That's right. And so, um, when I got the opportunity and got recruited by Brisbane, I was kind of like, ah, should
01:29:26
I be closer, you know, be closer to New Zealand. It's only a three, three and a
01:29:29
half hour flight. And I knew we'd have more visitors and we more family especially. And so, so we made the tough
01:29:36
call to leave Perth and go to Brisbane. Um, and we spent two seasons in Brisbane
01:29:40
and, um, was lucky enough to win a championship in Brisbane. So, um, and then funny story that I was talking
01:29:46
about yesterday actually with the with the Blackwells was the Breakers wanted to recruit CJ Brutin from from Brisbane.
01:29:54
And so I remember them ringing CJ and and and and talking to him about coming to New Zealand. And CJ said, "I'm not
01:30:00
going to come to New Zealand unless you sign Dylan. Like he's he's the best
01:30:03
teammate I've ever had, you know, like I need him on the team next to me." And so
01:30:07
he got off the phone, he rang me and he said, "I've just told the Breakers they
01:30:10
need to recruit you." Cuz he knew I wanted to be back home playing. I wanted
01:30:13
to play for the Breakers. That's who I loved. And he's like, he's like,
01:30:16
"They're going to call you." And I was, and I got off thinking, "No player would
01:30:20
ever do that." He's like, "I've told them I'm not coming unless you sign
01:30:22
first." And so sure enough, like 30 minutes later, Richard Clark calls me and he's like, "We want to recruit you
01:30:28
back home." And I was like, "My god, this guy's for real." So I can remember
01:30:32
saying to Nikki, "Oh, look, you know, the Breakers want me back. You know, I'm
01:30:36
going to hold out cuz I want to." And she's like, "No way. We're going home.
01:30:39
We're just whatever they offer you, just take it like 50 bucks a Exactly. Yeah.
01:30:42
just take it. We're going home. Um so yeah, long story short, um I signed with
01:30:46
the Breakers and CJ Brutin signed with the Breakers and and came home and so yes, I'd spent three three years in
01:30:52
Australia playing. Um kind of going back and forth. I was still playing for Oakland and stuff in between. So I was
01:30:58
coming home for for months at a time and then going back. Um but being back home
01:31:02
with the Breakers was amazing to be able to come back to a club that meant so much to me and um and then obviously
01:31:07
then from there we had those successful seasons and and won and and my my seasons were we won three championships
01:31:14
in a row and my last game was our third championship. So I got to go out on a high and funnily enough I we won that in
01:31:20
Perth so for in front of a lot of friends and stuff that I still had over there. Yeah, Perth Wildats. Eh, that's
01:31:27
it. What was it like um playing for the Wildcats against the Breakers? It was weird. It was funny cuz I had I had fans
01:31:36
um in New Zealand here and and family members that would bring signs to the games when we'd play the Breakers and
01:31:41
they'd be cheering for me for the Wildcats and and you know, you can imagine how that goes down in a in a
01:31:46
crowd. Um it was always always had extra motivation playing the Breakers, always
01:31:50
cuz I wanted to prove to them that they'd made the wrong decision to get rid of me. So, I would take the team
01:31:56
talks before we'd play the Breakers. And I'd say I'd say, "Fellas, I need you
01:32:00
guys to play at your best today because I want to prove to the Breakers that, you know, they they should have had me
01:32:05
on their team." And, you know, I'd give this motivational speech about why I
01:32:08
needed to beat the Breakers. And um and so I would always go extra hard against the Breakers and it would backfire cuz,
01:32:15
you know, anytime you're in a game where you try and put extra stuff into it, it
01:32:18
never it never pay you just got to play your game. I'd try and do stuff I wasn't
01:32:21
capable of and I'd end up like getting in foul trouble or something cuz I'd try
01:32:25
too hard and I end up over time I'd just relax and play the game, but I had so
01:32:30
much motivation cuz I wanted them to see I was good to recruit me back to the Breakers. And so when I got the
01:32:35
opportunity to come back, it was a no-brainer for me. Yeah, it must have felt like coming home. 100% was coming
01:32:41
home. I mean, when you play for the Breakers, you play with a little bit more um pride than you do just playing
01:32:48
for a normal club team. It's just natural. It feels cuz you're the only you're like a New Zealand team playing
01:32:52
in a in a professional competition. So you have that extra motivation. You're
01:32:56
playing for a country. Mhm. And um when you finished with the um the Breakers, BNZ Breakers, um they retired your
01:33:03
number 24. Yeah. What does that mean for someone that's you're not huge into
01:33:07
basketball? The highest honor that you can bestow on a player, right? It is. And and it's something I'm incredibly
01:33:12
proud of. again I I spent a lot of um you know hours honing my skills for the Breakers to be successful at the
01:33:19
Breakers. So to be honored by the club and retiring my jersey was the ultimate for me and something again I think about
01:33:25
a few things in my career that I'm super proud of that is definitely one of them.
01:33:29
Um cuz just because you're good at basketball that doesn't retire your jersey. You have to be out have made an
01:33:34
impact through the club um through whether it be both on the court but also off the court as well. And so the
01:33:41
criteria basically is can you tell the breakers history without mentioning this player and that's generally how you get
01:33:46
and bestowed upon. So again very lucky to be up there with Paul Hinata Hinady and um CJ Brutin and and the Black
01:33:54
family up there as well. So, um, and there'll be others to come. Um, guys that will be, you know, guys like your
01:34:00
Mikavakonas and your Tom Aocrombies will 100% have their jerseys retired, um, by
01:34:05
this club. And, yeah, the the the bins and breakers mean the world to me and that's why I'm so excited to be back.
01:34:13
Yeah. Was that emotional when they retired the number? It was. It was emotional. Yeah. And it was emotional
01:34:17
because it's almost like that's the closing of your career, too. You know,
01:34:21
like that's kind of like curtains have closed. there's no there's no coming
01:34:24
back from that. Um so for me that that was the end of my kind of like professional playing. I ended up playing
01:34:31
a few more years um in New Zealand in the New Zealand NBL which is semi-professional, but that was the end
01:34:36
of me being a a basically a professional basketball player. Yeah. What was that transition like going from being a
01:34:41
player to not being a player anymore when it's all basically all you'd know
01:34:44
in your adult life? It's tough, man. Like it really is tough. And I remember
01:34:48
and I was fortunate enough I I went into a role straight away with the Breakers.
01:34:51
they offered me a role in the office. So, I went was able to go back to a club again in a club that I was I was
01:34:56
familiar with and knew the people in the office, but you feel like um you feel like a bit of an impostor in there. You
01:35:05
feel like you shouldn't be up there with these people cuz you don't have
01:35:08
basically the skills that they've got. You have to learn everything on the fly.
01:35:12
And I'm not formally educated. I've got a certificate in travel studies. So, I
01:35:16
don't have a bachelor's degree or anything like that. So everything I've
01:35:19
earned is just through hard work and um and learning and I believe I'm a good
01:35:24
learner and when I'm passionate about something I'll learn faster. So um for
01:35:28
me it was it was really tough going into that office environment. But I also loved it cuz it was for a club that I
01:35:33
cared about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was going to be the next thing I I was going to ask like
01:35:37
did did you enjoy it or did you feel I don't know like a sense of FOMO about
01:35:41
what's going on on the court or just a sense of boredom because it's you know
01:35:45
it's a very very different job still in the basketball universe but it's very
01:35:50
different to being a professional player very different and the worst thing is in
01:35:53
our office we've got a window that looks out onto the court so it's like brutal
01:35:56
you're watching your mates run up and down and laughing and having fun and you're there on your computer typing
01:36:01
away like it's actually pretty brutal. Um, the thing I noticed most though was
01:36:05
wearing dress shoes. Like I've worn sneakers my whole life and all of a sudden you're going into a job where
01:36:10
you're wearing dress shoes every day. Man, your feet are sore. Those bloody dress shoes, man.
01:36:15
I tell you. So now I try and wear sneakers as much as I can. Yeah. So the recent part of your admin career, um,
01:36:22
uh, 2016 to 2019 break as general manager. Yeah. How was the imposter syndrome when you when you got that job?
01:36:29
Yeah, it was again same thing because again I'd kind of uh worked my way through the commercial side of the
01:36:35
business and then into that GM role and um you know I was very grateful that I probably at the time I got given the GM
01:36:40
role it was Richard Clark had just left um and the timing probably wasn't right
01:36:45
for me to go in that role but the Blackwell family um took a chance on me to go into that role and put some
01:36:50
support around me to help support me into that role. So um but I learned so much going into that role um learned
01:36:56
from a lot of failures. I learned, you know, so much and I think now I'm kind
01:37:01
of almost going full circle back into a similar role and um what I've learned
01:37:06
now from my time at Basketball New Zealand, I'm I'm far more skilled than
01:37:09
what I was in those early days. So, I'm glad to know I'm going back a far more
01:37:13
polished executive going into that role. Yeah. What are your top priorities in this new role? I think the big thing um
01:37:21
is is getting this club um to be a club that's desirable. Like for me, when you're recruiting players, it needs to
01:37:27
be a place where people want to be. So, we need to ensure we're putting everything um in place that the players
01:37:33
feel like they've got everything they need to be successful. There's nothing
01:37:36
worse than when you're on a team and you don't have the tools you need to be
01:37:39
successful and you look across the road and they've got it across the road, but
01:37:42
you don't have it. So, we want to be able to build a culture within the group
01:37:46
that makes people want to be there, but also then to have the resources available to them to be the best that
01:37:50
they can be. Yeah. This isn't a breakers specific question, but yeah. Why is New Zealand basketball
01:37:58
so underfunded? Yeah, it's I mean it's a I mean I just think sport in general in
01:38:03
this country is underfunded. Basketball's so popular, right? Oh, it's huge. I mean it's uh it will it will be
01:38:08
the number one sport very shortly as far as participation numbers go. Like the numbers are going through the roof.
01:38:13
Probably what's holding it back is there's not enough venues. Um that's
01:38:15
probably the biggest single biggest thing. But and I think again I think the the funding um is predicated towards
01:38:21
Olympic sports. um and and and Olympic success. And I think at the moment with the way the criteria is set, it's
01:38:27
probably not set for sports like football and and basketball and and hockey and those sports. So yeah. Oh,
01:38:33
thanks for that answer. Um what's one common thread you've seen with successful teams, whether it's um on the
01:38:39
court or in the boardroom? Yeah, I think um I think you have to be it has to be something more than just the sport
01:38:43
you're playing. I think you have to have a sense of belonging outside of just
01:38:47
being good at the sport. And I think um that's a crucial part, but also think
01:38:51
playing a role like everyone has a role to play within sport. And um I think the
01:38:56
teams I've been involved in that have been successful have had really good defined roles for each person on the
01:39:02
team. And that's right through to the off court as well. if you do your role
01:39:05
really well and you're in a crucial um piece of the puzzle to be able to be successful. And I think again right down
01:39:12
to your role players to your superstars. Everyone has to do their job and if everyone does their job well it's going
01:39:17
to put you in the best chance to succeed. And what about a leader? What makes a great leader? I think uh again
01:39:22
leadership is um there's there's multiple ways of leading. So um there's
01:39:26
guys who lead by example, there's guys who lead by their voice, but there's
01:39:29
guys who lead by listening and learning and then getting better themselves. So I
01:39:33
think um leadership is a is a combination of all those things. So you might have different styles like for
01:39:38
example um Mavicona was a was a really good leader and he was a lead by example left his you know he would die out on
01:39:47
the court for you you know and you knew that and so you went to battle with him knowing that he would do that but he
01:39:52
wasn't a super vocal guy in the locker room until you needed him to be and then
01:39:56
he would blow up and then when he blew up everyone stopped and listened and and was like wow Mick is speaking so listen
01:40:02
um and then I was probably more of a a vocal leader constant I was a constant voice in the locker room and tried to
01:40:09
constantly keep people on the right page of where we were going. Um, but I spoke
01:40:14
a lot. So guys were probably tuning out half the time. Um, who knows? But you you kind of need that constant voice as
01:40:21
well to to make sure you you are going in the right direction and and be an extension of the coaching staff as well
01:40:26
to be able to make sure the message you're getting through to your team is what the coaches would be saying, but
01:40:30
maybe you've got the ear of the players more than the coaches do. Yeah. Bet you
01:40:34
being outspoken, isn't that part of the reason they um they they got rid of you
01:40:37
to birth? Yeah, it is. It is 100%. Yeah. That's so offensive. Yeah. I mean, I was
01:40:42
pretty outspoken that we were failing and why we were failing and and I made sure I made it clear why we were doing
01:40:47
it. And it's funny because all the things I was saying ended up becoming come to fruition eventually over the
01:40:53
years. And so by the time I come came back, it was all sorted like so it was kind of had I not said that would it
01:41:00
still have happened possibly. But sometimes you've got to you've got to be
01:41:03
put yourself out of the equation and just speak your mind and for the greater good of the club.
01:41:10
Yeah. So, we're back on this thing again, but how like how was your mental health at that time? Like you you must
01:41:15
have felt really I'm just just I suppose I'm projecting, but I'm imagining I'm
01:41:19
you like you you're you're no longer wanted by this team that you love. You're 7 hours away from your family and
01:41:25
in Perth and a team that has been your fiercest enemy. um basically just for standing up for
01:41:31
like what you believe in and what's right. Were you did you fall into some sort of a depression or not really? Nah,
01:41:37
I mean I'm a pretty I consider myself a pretty resilient guy. Um like I again I
01:41:42
I use goals and I use like um you know motivations to keep me going. And for me I wanted to I'd worked so
01:41:51
hard to be a professional athlete. I wasn't about after two years to give it
01:41:54
all away. I wanted to actually really make it. And so when I went to Perth, I really focused on my game and try to get
01:42:01
better. And again, a lot of it was motivation to show the Breakers that I'd made a mistake. Um, and but for me
01:42:06
personally, it was becoming the best player I could possibly be. And then by by the season finishing in Perth, I was
01:42:12
kind of over the Breakers stuff. Like I was kind of like I'd found a home in
01:42:15
Perth and and Perth wanted to resign me as well. So I was quite honored that the
01:42:19
club who had gone to had wanted to resign me and were offering me a bigger contract and all the rest of it. And
01:42:24
then Brisbane had offered me a bigger contract as well. And so it was kind of like, oh man, I'm actually valued by
01:42:29
these other people. So I felt I felt the love from these from from both Perth and
01:42:33
Brisbane that, you know, that they they've given me opportunities to be able to go and play for both these
01:42:38
clubs. And so it was hard leaving Perth cuz I actually the people there were great. Um I enjoyed my time there. My
01:42:44
teammates were great. You never like to play one season and leave because it's
01:42:48
it was a good situation, but it just wasn't close enough to home. and and I explained that to them and it sounds it
01:42:54
sounds like an easy excuse to leave but it was actually a legitimate excuse. Yeah. Yeah. That must been weird. So
01:43:00
suddenly you've got like enemies um in the New Zealand crowd and enemies in the
01:43:04
crowd. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good on you. I suppose that's what like separates you
01:43:10
from a lot of other people that champion sort of mindset like you know even though it's a negative situation and it
01:43:15
could crush a lot of people um you just use it as fuel. I'm a I'm a glass half
01:43:19
full kind of guy. I believe I see the positive in everything. Um even when something bad's happening, I you know
01:43:25
and and it frustrates Nikki, my wife, like when I always try and find a positive in something. She's like
01:43:30
sometimes it's okay that it's just a negative, you know, and I go, "Yeah, but
01:43:33
then you got to find the positive to move out of the negative space." So, don't get me wrong, I get down. I get
01:43:38
down on things, you know, and things do upset me and things things do cut me deep, but I move on pretty quickly. I
01:43:43
forgive and I move on pretty quickly. Um and um you know my glass half full mentality is that I try and find a
01:43:50
positive in everything and and there was a positive going to Perth. I grew as a player and as a person and and I
01:43:55
developed and when I came back I was better than what I was when I left. So it's it all worked out in the end of the
01:44:00
day. It was just a long route to go back to where I wanted to be. Yeah. How are you with um like vulnerability like
01:44:06
having having like you know deep and serious and potentially uncomfortable conversations with um with people? Yeah.
01:44:12
I think I'm pretty good. So, I think I'm I've I've got a lot of empathy. Um, and
01:44:16
again, that's why when I was portrayed as this kind of like thug or whatever.
01:44:20
Um, I' I didn't enjoy that because that's not who I am. I've got a lot of
01:44:24
empathy for people. I care about people and I want to help people. I'm I'm the
01:44:28
sort of person I'm I try and be as selfless as I can and I want to make sure people around me feel the love um
01:44:36
and feel that I'm supporting them. But that's both from a, you know, whether
01:44:39
I'm in business or whether in friendships. I want my friends to feel like I care about their lives and and
01:44:44
their families. Um, and the same with my own family, I want them to feel like I care about them and that they're the
01:44:49
most important thing to me. So, that stuff's really important, but also when
01:44:52
people are doing it tough, I like to be there to support them cuz I've got an
01:44:56
empathetic side that, you know, when someone needs something, I want to be there to support them. Yeah. Well, we've
01:45:01
been chatting for almost a couple of hours and that's definitely the vibe I get about, you know, the Dylan Boucher
01:45:05
that's been sitting in front of me today. Awesome. Yeah. Um, what are your best and worst habits? Uh, my worst
01:45:12
habit is, uh, biting my fingernails. I still do it. Um, hold them up. We show them. Yeah. Oh, they're not Oh, some of
01:45:19
them are quite bad. Do they bleed in the corners? No, I'm not I'm not that guy.
01:45:23
No, I have I have limits. Um, but I The only time I stopped biting my nails was before my wedding cuz we needed to do
01:45:29
the wedding hand. So, you can stop. I can stop. Um, but it's and it's not um
01:45:35
it is a nervous thing. I think I think it's my, you know, like it's a it's a
01:45:38
nervous twitch, but again, I I'm a picker. I pick up my nails and things like that and then I make them uneven
01:45:43
and then so I bite them to try and file them. So, it's a really disgusting habit. I do it as well. I I tell people
01:45:49
I'm like a recreational biter. Like I never bite. Yeah. Yours yours are pretty
01:45:52
good. But it's for me it's like a concentration or a thinking thing. It is. I often often and you know it's
01:45:57
funny now I'm on teams or Zoom meetings all the time. So now I can see myself on
01:46:01
camera and I'm like, "Get your hand out of your mouth and it reminds me." But
01:46:03
when I'm when I'm not on camera or anything, I'm just, you know, again, I'm
01:46:06
thinking and I'm But it's embarrassing like we're middleagers like this is
01:46:10
something that kids do. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and what are my good habits? Um, I think
01:46:16
for me again I I go back to um just I always I'm I'm always trying to be a
01:46:23
good person and and I'm and I try really hard and I fail miserably most of the
01:46:26
time, but I try and be a good person and I try and keep everyone happy and sometimes that comes back to burn you.
01:46:31
Um, but I like to keep people happy. I'm a I'm a people pleaser and I like
01:46:35
people. I enjoy people and I enjoy company. So, I liked having friendships and stuff, but sometimes it does come
01:46:40
back and burn you sometimes. Being such a good dude, has that made it hard in the management positions where often you
01:46:46
have to have Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. And it's funny, I'm getting removed enough
01:46:51
whereas I'm still got some guys who are my teammates or my mates. Um, and that's
01:46:56
really hard. You know, having hard conversations with people is really, really hard when they when they when you
01:47:00
have a relationship with them. I'm getting to the point now where I don't
01:47:04
have they're not my people I've played with and so it makes it a little bit
01:47:07
easier but still they're still human beings and sometimes you're crushing
01:47:10
dreams um when you're having hard conversations with people. Yeah. Yeah. How how is that suddenly becoming the
01:47:15
boss of some of your old old mates? Did you have to like I don't know like avoid
01:47:21
social functions and I think you've got to know when to leave social functions.
01:47:25
I think that's the I I never try and avoid them, but like for example, if I'm
01:47:30
um you know going somewhere, I'll have a beer or have a couple beers or whatever
01:47:34
and then I'll know my time and and cuz they they don't want the boss there all
01:47:39
the time, you know, like it's and so I feel that. So it's like be social but
01:47:43
then know when to leave I think is crucial. Um and that's I've tried to get
01:47:46
that balance right, but usually when you leave the credit card goes with you. So
01:47:50
it's so sometimes they do want you to stay. Yeah. Um, when was the last time
01:47:55
you cried? Um, I'm actually a serial crier. Um, are you like happy tears when
01:48:02
I watch TV programs? I'm a shocker. Like it's TV programs get me, man. And um I I
01:48:08
often have tears running in my face in movies or or or TV programs. And um I don't know what it is. It just strikes a
01:48:15
chord. And um there was a um program that used to be on um and I can't even remember the name of it now, but David
01:48:23
Lass used to Oh, I've got him coming in for a podcast. Yeah. It's um there's a
01:48:27
new season. It's called David Lass investigates now. Yeah. Yeah. So, he would do go and find your families or
01:48:32
whatever and man, it would just be tearjerkers for me. I'd be struggling and I think maybe in a in a previous
01:48:37
life I was left behind as a child or something or something happened, but I find those really emotional. Um, and I
01:48:43
think about how close I am with my own family and um, with my own kids and wife and and also with my brothers and my mom
01:48:49
and dad and I think about those people that don't have that and and and I feel
01:48:54
for them. I feel sorry for them and then when they try and connect with their family or they finally connect with
01:48:58
someone that they haven't been with for 20 years, it breaks my heart and so it
01:49:02
makes me quite emotional. So I quite cry quite often but not I don't cry. It's
01:49:07
normally not to do with me. It's it's my emotional side I think coming out. So
01:49:10
tears have got to come out eventually and that's when they come out. It's a
01:49:13
great emotion though. E something you should lean into. Were you were you always like that or has that come with
01:49:18
age? I think I've always been like that. I've never been afraid to cry. Um and um
01:49:23
but again it's usually been crying um either happy tears or like my kids like
01:49:28
when I start talking about my kids I have a lump comes up in my throat because they just they're my world you
01:49:33
know and so when they when I'm talking about them I get emotional about them.
01:49:36
And so when I see them, you know, like succeed in something, it doesn't have to
01:49:40
be sport, it might just be they do well in a test, I'm so proud of them that
01:49:43
they've especially when I see that they've worked hard and they they see
01:49:46
the outcome of working hard. It's actually really pleasing. Yeah. Oh. Um Yeah. I just remember there's something
01:49:52
else I read about you that you and I have in common. We we both love um baths and candles. Scented candles. I love a
01:49:59
bath. I had a bath last night. Yeah. This has always been a thing. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's um it's a very feminine
01:50:07
sort of trait, I get told. But I love it. I'm a sucker for it. Absolutely. I
01:50:11
love a bath and love. Yeah. Burning a candle. Yeah. That's Yeah. There's
01:50:14
nothing wrong with it. That's You lean into these feminine traits. Um what are
01:50:18
your biggest flaws? Um my biggest flaws I um I often don't get the balance right
01:50:24
with work and and home life. Um I I sometimes cuz again I'm a people pleaser
01:50:29
so I try and you know my work will overtake me sometimes and and sometimes you know my family feel it and you know
01:50:35
put I put hours and hours into my jobs um that I do and sometimes that can that can take its toll on the family and so
01:50:42
there's times where I feel like I haven't been home cuz I've been away or
01:50:45
you know and I know it's no different to a lot of people but I spend a lot of my
01:50:49
time on the road playing basketball and my kids have not seen me a lot and so I try and be there as much as I for them,
01:50:55
but sometimes I don't feel like it's enough. Uh, what about future goals?
01:50:59
Like where do you turn um 50 just in between Christmas and New Year this year? Where do you see yourself at say
01:51:05
55 60? I'd love to say retired. No, but realistically, oh, I don't know.
01:51:11
Probably not. I say that. But how old were you were your parents when they retired? They were pretty young. Um,
01:51:16
they were they've had some pretty good success. They were able to do it from a
01:51:19
young age. But I think for me um I think I would like to be in a position where um
01:51:27
where I really enjoy what I do. Um and I think that's the that's the key to life.
01:51:32
If you can just do the things you really enjoy and not have to do the things that
01:51:35
you have to do, um that'd be a really good position to be in. So I don't know
01:51:39
what that looks like yet. Yeah, I'm the same. Like to me that's what retirement
01:51:42
would be. Maybe it involves, you know, some sort of work or you work in some capacity, but as long as as long as it
01:51:47
doesn't feel like work. That's right. Or something you have to be doing. Yeah.
01:51:50
Um, are there three words that you, you know, maybe Nikki or your kids would use
01:51:55
to describe you? Three words I think they would say, um, I would like them to say funny. They
01:52:03
think I'm funny. My My twins certainly still laugh at my jokes. So, um, I feel
01:52:07
like I'm a light-hearted, you know, like I've got a light-hearted humor about me.
01:52:11
I don't take things too seriously. Um, I think they would say I work hard. Um, I
01:52:17
think they can see that and they they feel that. Um, and then I think I would hope that they would say that I'm a
01:52:23
family first person. That's that's what I if I if I could um have one thing to
01:52:29
sum me up when I when I finally pass away, it would be that I that I'm a family guy, that I cared most about
01:52:34
family and that would be I would be happy with that. That's so good. That's so cool. What
01:52:41
What about legacy? Um, again, um, on a legacy piece, I often think a lot about legacy. For me, I would like to because
01:52:51
I've been involved with basketball my whole life, I would like to see basketball being in a better place than
01:52:56
than when I first um got involved in it, and it already is. But, um, can can I help build that to be even better than
01:53:03
what it is now? Um, is always what I think about. And uh from a legacy piece from a from a family, I just hope that
01:53:10
you know, you're able to show your kids, you know, what good looks like and then
01:53:15
hopefully they can emulate that over time and and learn from your mistakes to make sure they don't make the same
01:53:19
mistakes. And my I certainly have not been perfect at all in my life. Far far from it. But I figure I've had some good
01:53:26
moments as well that they can maybe focus on the good moments and and learn from the bad moments.
01:53:31
How are you not in the Hall of Fame? I don't know. Like when you were the boss of basketball New Zealand, couldn't
01:53:39
you be like, "Oh, just one more thing for the agenda." No. I mean, again, I
01:53:43
feel like I'm a pretty humble guy, too. And um you know, I don't like I feel
01:53:47
uncomfortable with accolades. I really do. I don't It doesn't sit well with me,
01:53:51
which is probably why I don't have things hanging up in the house and stuff. But um I always believe things
01:53:56
will things that when you deserve it, something that they'll come, you know,
01:54:00
so I'm not in a hurry for anything like that, you know. again, I've got a lot to
01:54:03
give in the game before I worry about that stuff. Yeah. Are you proud of yourself? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I'm as
01:54:09
humble as I am, I'm also proud and I'm also I've worked my ass off to to be
01:54:12
where I am. And um you know, and I hope people can see that and see that if if you work hard, you can achieve things.
01:54:19
And and for me, I'm not a super talented guy and I'm not super smart and I don't
01:54:24
I don't have any of these natural attributes that some people have, but the one attribute that people talk a lot
01:54:30
about is work ethic. And I believe I have that and I believe that's what's
01:54:33
got me to where I am today and that's what will continue to get me to where I
01:54:36
want to get to is just being able to work and and just be a good person. I think people want good people around
01:54:41
them. I think that's a great place to end it. Um this has been great. I can't believe
01:54:47
we haven't met until today, but I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you
01:54:49
better. It's been really really insightful and um a great episode. Dylan Boucher, number 24, a great New
01:54:55
Zealander. Thank you mate. My pleasure. Thank you very much.