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From glitz and glamour of NBA to Dunedin | Stuff.co.nz
Who said New Zealand's National Basketball League wasn't interesting?
Tonight's season opener between the Auckland Pirates and the Otago Nuggets will feature one of the more fascinating characters on the professional sporting scene, Lance Allred.
The life of Otago's new American import is stranger than fiction: spending his early years on a polygamist commune in Montana, becoming the first legally deaf basketballer to play in the NBA, where he was a team-mate of superstar LeBron James, fighting a battle with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder and then writing a book about it all.
Not your average pro sportsman then.
Let's start with the deafness: Allred is 75-80 per cent deaf and wears hearing aids – when he can.
"I practise with the hearing aids in but if the arena gets too loud, I take my hearing aids out because the hearing aids just shut down," Allred said from his new home in Dunedin.
"In the fourth quarter, in a loud arena, everyone's deaf so in a land of temporary deafness, the permanently deaf man is king. So sometimes it works out in my favour. Some guys can't dribble, some guys can't shoot. I just don't hear very well."
Thirty years old and 2.11m tall, Allred is self-deprecating and disarmingly honest.
He played 10 minutes across three NBA games with James' Cleveland Cavaliers in 2008, making a field goal and a free throw for a career total of three points.
Allred was then cut and he fell into a "year-long funk".
"I had severe depression and suicidal thoughts, because you spend your life so goal driven. My stint in the NBA only lasted four months. I invested 14 years of my life for a four-month gig in the NBA and tell me, was it worth it?"
Allred began writing for "cathartic reasons" but his story quickly attracted the attention of publishers HarperCollins and his autobiography Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamentalist Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA hit bookstores to critical acclaim in 2009.
He is now working on a sequel, Basketball Gods: The Transformation of the Enlightened Jock.
"One of the strongest motivators [to write] is being able to help and encourage others with disabilities. Sadly no-one really reads much anymore unless it's about politics or vampires."
After overcoming the worst of his personal demons, Allred finds himself a world away from the glitz and glamour of the NBA, suiting up for the unfashionable Nuggets, who won a grand total of zero games last season.
And he's loving it.
"If someone told me three years ago when I was in the NBA that I would be playing in New Zealand three years later, I would have laughed at them but that's what life does to you.
"I have team-mates here living under conditions that NBA guys would never dream of but they're happy, they're content. They don't have all of these possessions bogging them down, they're just like, `hey, let's play ball and have some fun.' That's been refreshing."
Allred will team with Wellington product and Tall Black Craig Bradshaw in one of the more imposing front-court combinations in the league.
They might not win the NBL, but they should have some fun along the way.
"I have a lot of confidence in these guys. These are young guys that obviously went through a pretty hellacious year last year but they grew from it."
The Wellington Saints open the defence of their championship against the Waikato Pistons at TSB Bank Arena on Friday night in a rematch of last year's grand final series.
Who said New Zealand's National Basketball League wasn't interesting?
Tonight's season opener between the Auckland Pirates and the Otago Nuggets will feature one of the more fascinating characters on the professional sporting scene, Lance Allred.
The life of Otago's new American import is stranger than fiction: spending his early years on a polygamist commune in Montana, becoming the first legally deaf basketballer to play in the NBA, where he was a team-mate of superstar LeBron James, fighting a battle with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder and then writing a book about it all.
Not your average pro sportsman then.
Let's start with the deafness: Allred is 75-80 per cent deaf and wears hearing aids – when he can.
"I practise with the hearing aids in but if the arena gets too loud, I take my hearing aids out because the hearing aids just shut down," Allred said from his new home in Dunedin.
"In the fourth quarter, in a loud arena, everyone's deaf so in a land of temporary deafness, the permanently deaf man is king. So sometimes it works out in my favour. Some guys can't dribble, some guys can't shoot. I just don't hear very well."
Thirty years old and 2.11m tall, Allred is self-deprecating and disarmingly honest.
He played 10 minutes across three NBA games with James' Cleveland Cavaliers in 2008, making a field goal and a free throw for a career total of three points.
Allred was then cut and he fell into a "year-long funk".
"I had severe depression and suicidal thoughts, because you spend your life so goal driven. My stint in the NBA only lasted four months. I invested 14 years of my life for a four-month gig in the NBA and tell me, was it worth it?"
Allred began writing for "cathartic reasons" but his story quickly attracted the attention of publishers HarperCollins and his autobiography Longshot: The Adventures of a Deaf Fundamentalist Mormon Kid and His Journey to the NBA hit bookstores to critical acclaim in 2009.
He is now working on a sequel, Basketball Gods: The Transformation of the Enlightened Jock.
"One of the strongest motivators [to write] is being able to help and encourage others with disabilities. Sadly no-one really reads much anymore unless it's about politics or vampires."
After overcoming the worst of his personal demons, Allred finds himself a world away from the glitz and glamour of the NBA, suiting up for the unfashionable Nuggets, who won a grand total of zero games last season.
And he's loving it.
"If someone told me three years ago when I was in the NBA that I would be playing in New Zealand three years later, I would have laughed at them but that's what life does to you.
"I have team-mates here living under conditions that NBA guys would never dream of but they're happy, they're content. They don't have all of these possessions bogging them down, they're just like, `hey, let's play ball and have some fun.' That's been refreshing."
Allred will team with Wellington product and Tall Black Craig Bradshaw in one of the more imposing front-court combinations in the league.
They might not win the NBL, but they should have some fun along the way.
"I have a lot of confidence in these guys. These are young guys that obviously went through a pretty hellacious year last year but they grew from it."
The Wellington Saints open the defence of their championship against the Waikato Pistons at TSB Bank Arena on Friday night in a rematch of last year's grand final series.