Luc Longley’s basketball heaven: Life with Jordan, Pippen, Rodman and Jackson

“Basketball heaven.” Luc Longley needed only two words to describe his role as starting centre of what many consider to be the greatest basketball team of all time, the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. “It was real basketball, where you shared the ball and everyone got to eat at the table,” said Longley of the team featuring Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and Steve Kerr that went on to a then-record 72-10 season, the first instalment of a second three-peat of the 1990s. West Australian Longley has for three decades reserved a seat at the table of Australian sporting immortality. The first Australian to play in the NBA and win a championship, a three-time Olympian, Australian Institute of Sport and Basketball Australia Hall of Famer, Longley was inducted into the WA Hall of Champions in 2007 and will be bestowed with its greatest honour on November 10 in Perth when he is elevated to Legend status. For all he has achieved on the biggest stages, Longley is touched by his forthcoming gong. “It’s really nice to be on the global stage and succeed, but there’s something extra sweet about being recognised by your crew at home, by your own people, where it all started,” Longley told The Sunday Times. Born in Melbourne and raised in Fremantle, Longley is one of three sons alongside Sam and Griff to basketballer Richard and equestrian rider Sue – who met, fittingly, on a basketball court. Luc’s ascension into the heady world of the NBA was rapid. From junior basketball with the Perth Redbacks alongside future Olympic teammate Andrew Vlahov, through under-age state and national teams, to two exhibition games with the Perth Wildcats, to a stint with the AIS under the tutelage of learned coach Dr Adrian Hurley. And then a seismic culture shock. Recruited out of Scotch College by University of New Mexico coach Gary Colson, Longley had an instant impact with the New Mexico Lobos. “When I got to New Mexico - and if you’ve seen Breaking Bad, well, it’s a different spot to Perth,” Longley said. “The biggest shock though was I was expecting to go there and get my arse kicked and I was actually surprisingly good, because at that point, Americans were basketball gods, and we were just pretending, right?” Those were days when the internet and mobile phones appeared only in sci-fi movies. The US was a long, long way away. “I had seen posters of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, but I didn’t know how to gauge the gap between us and them,” he said. Longley found out pretty quickly when he was drafted to his first NBA team, Minnesota Timberwolves, with pick seven overall in 1991. “I’d never really lost consistently before. Growing up in Australia. I was winning everything, basketball was sort of easy, but we (Minnesota) won 15 games out of 82 so that’s a long six-month season when you’re travelling and you’re losing every night.” That was all about to change. After two-plus seasons, the 218cm Aussie behemoth was traded to the star-studded Bulls late in the 1993-94 season. “I went from playing mercenary hero ball at Minnesota, and thinking the NBA wasn’t what I hoped it would be, to suddenly landing in a team where it was very definitely about ball movement, timing, making someone else better,” Longley said. “All the things that I enjoyed about basketball was what they were prioritising in Chicago. “Then obviously they had the recent history of winning, the world’s best coach (Phil Jackson) of that era, players who I’d seen on TV who just played another level.” The Bulls’ 95-96, 72-10 season was eclipsed by the Golden State Warriors’ 73-9 in 2015-16 but they suffered a 4-3 loss to the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs. “They didn’t win the championship in that year, which I think devalidates it,” Longley said. After Jordan returned after a short-lived retirement in 1995 with his famous “I’m back” fax, the Bulls were also strengthened by the injection of the unconventional and eclectic but defensively elite Rodman. “There was a sense of inevitability about each game. It was a shock when we lost and we didn’t do that much,” Longley said. “We just found a groove. You dream about playing basketball where everything slows down a bit and things get easier and you make all your shots. It was that. “Since then, I haven’t bought a beer in Chicago. The town embraced us. They had already embraced the Bulls, but they embraced all of the new guys. Yeah, it was something else.” Longley still catches up on the phone once a month with his old Bulls’ coach Jackson. The 11-time NBA championship coach who won another two as a player had a “huge influence” on Longley. “He was much more of a carrot than stick coach. I never responded that well to the stick,” he said. “I wanted to please Phil, I wanted to play his kind of basketball. I was inspired to play the way that he wanted us and me to play. “He managed to convince me that none of it was gonna happen without me. Now between between just you and me, I reckon it was Michael Jordan who was that, but he (Phil) somehow convinced me that everything I did was really important, and you wanna play for that guy, right? It’s been more than a quarter of a century since Longley left the Bulls. Some memories remain vivid, like the pre-game laser and sounds shows at Chicago’s home court, the United Center, instantly recognisable by the Alan Parsons Project soundtrack Sirius. “I literally forget about it for weeks at a time and then someone will send me some Instagram clip,” he said. “Today, just for example, I had three people send me a fight that I got into in a game (October, 1995), where it’s me against three guys from Washington throwing punches. “It seems like another lifetime.” Longley represented the Boomers at the Olympics – as a 19-year-old in Seoul in 1988 when they finished just outside the medals, in 1992 at Barcelona (sixth) and Sydney 2000 (fourth), missing Atlanta in 1996 due to ankle surgery. He was also involved as an assistant coach in London in 2012 (seventh) and Rio in 2016 (fourth). “I feel like one of the clunky bits of my career is I seemed to come fourth every time I went to the Olympics,” he said. “Even when I was a coach, we came fourth, we would always seem to lose that bronze medal game, and Sydney was no different. “We wanted to be the team that brought the first medal to men’s basketball in Australia, so the Olympics are always a bit of a sore point for me. I never got that medal. That was a shame, but you can’t have it all. You can’t win everything.” Towards the end of his tenure with the Bulls, Longley began to struggle with a degenerative ankle injury. He was traded to the Phoenix Suns for the 1999-2000 season and to New York Knicks a year later. But he was never the same player and three or four days after terrorists crashed two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in Down Town Manhattan, Longley and his first wife Kim flew back to Australia on a friend’s private yet. “It was an unscripted nightmare. It didn’t follow my script, and certainly didn’t follow the Knicks’ script,” he said. “There is a song by (American rock band) Little Feat about an an old guy and it says that his mind makes a promise that his body can’t fill. “You spend your whole life trying to be good at something, and then you run out of options with your body and the body stops being able to cash the cheques. “It was hard because I was in my basketball mental prime but in physical decline. “It was a struggle for a while to sort of come to turns with everything. I didn’t do well after my career. There’s no doubt about that. But I was very happy to be in Perth, but I think like a lot of athletes, you have got to redefine yourself.” Back in Perth, Longley married again, to WA musician, cook, television personality and author Anna Gare. He found love again. And he rediscovered his other love, the ocean. The pair moved to a property in Denmark he had purchased in 1991 at the age of 22 while he was playing with the Timberwolves. They sold that property last year and have since moved back to Fremantle. He is never far from the ocean, both in geography and bloodlines. Longley’s family has a long history with sailing – his uncle John was a grinder on Australia II during its 1983 America’s Cup victory – and the former NBA star loves his boats and is passionate advocate for marine conservation. “I was away from the ocean for 15 years, so to be be back around the ocean was probably where I needed to focus,” he said.

Luc Longley’s basketball heaven: Life with Jordan, Pippen, Rodman and Jackson

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