From the courts to the clubs: meet the performers combining basketball and comedy

Comedians Luke Benson and Clay McMath both draw on a love of basketball, and formative experiences in the sport, in their comedy festival shows this year.

Comedian Clay McMath performing. Image: supplied

With limited exceptions (like this Paul Williams banger, where he compares himself to NBA draft flop Anthony Bennett), the worlds of basketball and stand-up comedy have rarely overlapped.

All that will change, however, this comedy festival season when Clay McMath and Luke Benson, both following the old adage ‘write what you know’, bring their basketball-themed shows to stages in Adelaide and Melbourne.

The Pick and Roll talked to both comics about turning their passion for the game into comedy.

Clay McMath

At high school, Clay McMath was always the kid making his friends laugh, quoting lines from Dave Chappelle’s legendary special, Killin’ Them Softly.

But he was also an elite athlete, the son of athletic parents – his father, Harold McMath, had almost made the Chicago Bulls roster. Playing as a wing or a stretch forward, he progressed from South Australian junior representative basketball to an AIS scholarship and Division I college basketball with Rhode Island’s Bryant Bulldogs.

Yet as McMath tells The Pick and Roll, the dream of playing college ball stateside wasn’t quite as he imagined.