BOSTON OR BUST
BAYNES’ NBA QUEST
AS a 15-year-old boy from Mareeba, Aron Baynes dreamt of playing in the NBA. Tomorrow, the Boston Celtics centre will line up for his second championship playoffs.
BASKETBALL coach Brad Burdon watched his new recruit walk into the gym and felt his pulse quicken.
The newcomer was 203cm tall (6’8”) and well-built, and there was another thing about him too: he was 15 years old.
“In the sport of basketball most coaches are egotistical, they think they can teach a player to do anything, but there is one thing you can’t coach,” Burdon said.
“You can’t coach a kid to be 6’8” at 15 years of age.”
The “kid” was Mareeba’s Aron Baynes, now 31, 208cm (6’10”), 118kg and set to start for the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs, beginning tomorrow.
Earning about $5.6 million a season and a cult figure in one of the biggest sporting cities in the US, the former Cairns schoolboy is living the dream.
He and his wife Rachel and their son Mason, 2, have embraced Boston, just as Boston has embraced them.
He already has one NBA championship ring, with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014, and is a key member of an Australian Olympic team that finished just out of the medals in Rio but is strongly tipped to do better in Tokyo.
If there is one thing that sets Baynes apart from the rest, it is his single-minded work ethic.
As Burdon – the first person to put a basketball in Baynes’s hands – soon found, he was anything but a natural talent.
Physical education teacher and head of the basketball school of excellence at Cairns State High School, in 2001 Burdon was short of players for the team he coached in the local A-grade competition.
Working with him at the time was Baynes’s older broth- er Callum, then 19, another “big unit” he had recruited for the side.
“I had played a little bit of basketball with some mates from high school,” Callum recalls.
“I was studying teaching at uni and I was doing prac work at Cairns High. I’m 6’8” and when I walked into the staffroom, Brad said: ‘Do you play basketball?’ I said ‘not really’ and he said ‘well you do now’.”
Driving Callum to a game one day, Burdon mentioned that he needed another player.
“I’ve got a little brother,” Callum said. “I don’t know if he can play, but he’s big.”
Burdon said: “Bring him along to the gym.”
“He was big all right but he wasn’t very skilful,” Burdon recalls.
“He could hardly catch, but I’ve never seen anyone work like he did.
“There will always be people who are more talented than Aron in different areas, but I’ll tell you one thing for certain – no one will ever outwork him.”
Selected as a fringe player for the Boomers at the 2012 London Olympics, Baynes did what he has done his entire career – exceeded expectations.
He ended the tournament as arguably Australia’s best “big” and firmly in the sights of the NBA scouts.
Playing in Slovenia at the time, when the season ended he joined the Spurs as back-up to power forward Tim Duncan.
After nearly three years and a championship ring, he signed a two-year, $US12 million contract as backup centre to Andre Drummond with the Detroit Pistons, but turned down a third season to join Boston for slightly less money in order to gain more court time and better championship potential.
It has proved a match made in basketball heaven.
With the Celtics beset by injuries, Baynes has stepped up and played a major role in a side that has defied all the odds to earn a spot in the playoffs.
As always, Baynes’s work ethic in the gym has been an inspiration to his teammates and, no longer a quiet newcomer from Australia, the fiveseason NBA veteran is now one of the most popular players on the Boston roster.
It is a laid-back attitude and natural use of Australian vernacular (Baynes has a popular YouTube show in which he teaches his teammates the meaning of Aussie sayings such as “bloody ripper”) that has endeared him to NBA fans in the US.
“Basketball is not the biggest thing in my life,” he says.
“Once you have a family you understand that.”
But while he might be a warm and gentle soul off the court, once on the boards he is all business. While he can score points when required, his greatest attribute is his ability to plant his feet, spread his massive arms and make like a five-storey apartment building.
To his family, he is a loyal and loving husband and father; to the Celtics, he is a vital cog in a machine they hope can go all the way.
With the Celtics playoff campaign to start against the Milwaukee Bucks tomorrow, Baynes is in career-best touch after he scored 26 points to lead his team to a 110-97 victory over the Brooklyn Nets in their regular season finale.
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE PEOPLE WHO ARE MORE TALENTED THAN ARON IN DIFFERENT AREAS, BUT I’LL TELL YOU ONE THING FOR CERTAIN – NO ONE WILL EVER OUTWORK HIM BRAD BURDON
The NBA playoffs screen on Foxtel’s ESPN live from 5am tomorrow