Hoop dream: The Tullamore trailblazer
Pat Burke remains the only Irish-born player to play in the NBA, but he’s certain he won’t hold that distinction for much longer
PAT BURKE remembers the security checks. Countless security checks. There were retinal scans and fingerprint imaging before he even reached his own locker in the changingroom and was able to stare across the floor and see Tracy McGrady, the future Hall of Famer, and Grant Hill. They were superstars he could now call teammates.
Burke did allow himself to reflect on the journey that brought him from Tullamore to Orlando Magic’s starting team. It wasn’t a straight path. He was 28 years old by the time he became the first Irishman to play in the NBA. A decorated college career with Auburn hadn’t yielded a draft to the big-time, so he went to Europe (winning a EuroLeague title in Greece with Panathinaikos in 2000) to establish himself.
A couple of years later, Doc Rivers – the Magic’s young coach who would later lead Boston Celtics out of their championship wilderness – was putting his faith in the 6’ 11” Irishman as his starting centre in the season opener against Philadelphia 76ers. And for the next dozen or so games, only McGrady spent more time on court for the Magic than Burke.
‘I’ll never forget the first day, coming into the locker room and seeing McGrady, Hill and Miller, guys I watched on television, and we were just playing some pick-up. It was really fulfilling to be able to hold my own with these guys on the court and have them come up and say “who are you and where are you from?”, he recalls.
Burke arrived in Orlando from Tullamore, via Cleveland. Born in December 1973, the youngest of six children, his parents left Offaly for the States when he was just four. The US midlands were nothing like the Irish midlands. Winters were colder and the young Burke ended up playing ice hockey, rather than Gaelic games.
When he was 16, his parents moved to Florida. It coincided with a growth spurt for the young Burke, who shot up more than eight inches in less than a year. He seemed the perfect specimen for basketball, although his first High School coach was less than encouraging.
It was only when Marty Waters, the coach at Marnier High School, took him under his wing that he blossomed. ‘He embraced the fact that I wanted to play, wanted to learn the game and had a hunger to improve.
‘The first day I met Marty, we went off to shoot some hoops and I must have missed 95 out of 100 shots, I was already jaded with my previous high school coach telling me I was the worst in the world but Marty talked to me. He told me that I had a very soft touch and that I had no bad habits. He changed my life,’ Burke adds.
He progressed rapidly to shine in college basketball with Auburn University. Both the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers took an interest before the NBA draft, but Burke decided to immerse himself in a different basketball culture in Europe – firstly in Spain and later in Greece and Poland.
‘If I had to do it all again, I would still go to Europe. It is there that I learnt the value of being in a team and going on this journey with teammates, people who are strangers in your first training session and eventually they became closer to you than your own kin,’ he says.
He was able to bring those experiences from Spain and Greece into the Orlando Magic locker room. But after his encouraging start to his first NBA season, things tailed off for Burke. He stagnated and while Doc Rivers insisted he wanted him back for a second season, Burke felt it was better to go back to Europe for the development of his career.
‘I was sitting at home and Doc Rivers called me and he asked me “what do you want to do? I really enjoy coaching you”. He said he put me in too fast and didn’t let me warm up to what the NBA was and I thought that was very honest of him. At the very beginning of that season I came out of nowhere and, for about the first 15 games I was the starting centre, and it was like I went dormant. But I felt in my heart that I should go back to Europe.’
His second stint in Europe included time with Spanish kingpins Real Madrid at a time when Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham were playing for the soccer counterparts.
He also lined out for the Ireland senior team during that time when they were on the cusp of a breakthrough, having initially got involved with Irish basketball as a college student.
‘Growing up, being Irish was just part of our life. My father had subscribed to the newspaper from the first week that we arrived in America and the first time that I realised there was an Irish basketball team was an advertisement in that [publication] looking for players who could qualify for Ireland to come to a camp in Rochester, New York,’ says Burke.
He recalls on one occasion in Madrid when all his teammates were going to join up with Spain, a Real executive asked him where he was going.
‘I told him I was going to play for Ireland. And he just sort of snorted at me, sniggered at that, like saying what’s the point in that? That lit a fire under me, to be honest, made me even more determined to represent my country,’ he adds.
And he was part of the senior men’s team came close to a remarkable breakthrough. In 2005, they played Denmark in a two-legged play-off to reach the top echelon of European basketball. The games were televised live on RTÉ. Unfortunately, they just fell short.
‘It was such a shame, one of the great what-ifs of my career and for Irish basketball. What might have happened if we’d won that game, history might have been so different,’ he recalls.
‘But then the game in Ireland got a black eye and bloody nose and it ended up with the senior sides being disbanded but one of the positives out of that is that they focused on youth development and that is why we are seeing the fruits of that now.’
The following year, Burke returned to the NBA with Phoenix Suns. It was at the time the league was emphasising an international feel with Chinese superstar Yo Ming. Although Irish-Americans Marty Conlon and Cal Bowdler had played in the NBA, Burke discovered he was the first Irish-born player.
‘With Yao Ming, the NBA were marketing the international element and I remember the All-Star weekend that season in Atlanta and they had this big poster of myself and Ming. It was crazy.’
He returned to Europe for a couple of seasons in Poland and Russia before retiring to Florida where he set up the Hoops Life camp in 2011, to help kids develop life skills and social responsibility through basketball. Tipperary man Niall Berry works with him in the camp which has seen almost 700 kids pass through its doors in the past seven years.
Burke, himself, came to Ireland in April and admits the youth development here impressed him. He believes that there will soon be another Irish-born player in the NBA if what he saw at the National Basketball Academy at Gormanston is anything to go by.
‘Over two-and-a-half days, there were 300 kids, 150 boys and 150 girls. And the thing was that these players were playing for themselves. It was all very calm. There was no shouting or yelling or arguing with teammates. It was all about encouragement. We went down to Tipperary to watch an Under-17 girls match and it was the exact same way of playing.
‘Players were encouraging each other. They was no yelling or criticising, which you see a lot in America because kids are being driven by their parents to be the next Steph Curry. And I think the NBA are recognising this. Three years ago, 24 of the 32 picks in the NBA draft were international. They realise there is another way to learn the game and be coached.’
Sixteen years after he became the first Irishman to play in the NBA, there is a real international feel to the league.
A record 42 different nationalities were represented last season. It is only a matter of time before someone from here follows in Pat Burke’s giant footsteps.