How family and culture drives Patty Mills towards greatness
It's more than just basketball.
Credit: James Rush
Some people wear their heart on their sleeve in a metaphorical sense. For Patty Mills, that phrase is more literal.
At first glance, the tattoos that climb up his left arm might not seem particularly significant. Dig a little deeper, though, and they tell a story of one of Australia’s greatest athletes. A series of Mills family totems — the hawksbill turtle, the wedge-tailed eagle, and the frigate bird — sit alongside the flower of the Torres Strait, a hibiscus.
As a black athlete in the United States, where he has spent much of the past 13 years while playing in the NBA, Mills says he can often be misidentified as African-American. The tattoos are a way for him to stay connected to his roots and, as he unpacked in a recent discussion with local YouTuber and director James Rush, they can also correct those misconceptions and prompt fans to learn a little more.
“It’s a massive identity piece for me, because when they see this they realise that there’s something more here… my identity, my culture, my Australian culture, my Indigenous culture,” Mills said. “This kind of is just a nice little topic starter for everyone that sees this so it’s clear for the whole world to see whenever I shoot a basketball.”
In the conversation with Rush, Mills broke down the top five moments of his life so far and what they meant to him. Unsurprisingly, basketball isn’t the sole focus when the Boomers star looks back and recalls his favourite memories. The great nephew of Eddie Koiki Mabo, a land rights campaigner whose name is now synonymous with Australia’s landmark court decision around Indigenous land rights, Mills is proud to be a product of his ancestors, his culture, and his upbringing. With his father Benny a Torres Strait Islander and his mother Yvonne an Aboriginal Australian, his heritage is rich and varied.
With that comes a greater understanding of the balance between his professional life and personal life, something that many athletes struggle with. “Basketball can be very hectic, you can get caught up in a lot of stuff,” Mills said. “My culture is something that I can step off the basketball court and dive straight into… [and] that ability to be able to tap into my culture helps me with basketball.”
One way he does that is through traditional song and dance, which enthralled him from an early age even growing up in the hustle and bustle of suburban Canberra. Mills has spoken previously of watching video tapes of dances and listening to cassettes of Torres Strait lullabies when he was a child. In his interview with Rush, he grew emotional as he remembered travelling back to his father’s hometown on Murray Island, dancing at the birthplace of his great uncle and at the place he was laid to rest, and carrying those moments with him since.
“It’s the one thing that I’m able to take with me anywhere, and that’s my culture – the sound of the drums, tight and dry snakeskin that’s pulled over the warup with the beeswax on it and hearing someone’s hand rubbing the drum to warm it up, or the sound of the lumut being played with the bamboo,” Mills said.
“Any opportunity that I get to be able to go back and dance on that place is really special for me… it’s just being able to stay connected with who I am and my identity, but I think more so too, it was the community being able to see me in that light and understand that he’s still Patty Mills.”
Given that perspective on life, it’s no surprise that Mills has poured a huge amount of time, money and love into causes beyond the game of basketball. For more than a decade now, Mills has been one of Australia’s most outspoken and generous athletes. In 2011, he raised $40,000 for flood-ravaged regions in Queensland by designing and selling T-shirts; he powered the creation of Indigenous Basketball Australia, a not-for-profit that delivers programs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth; his entire NBA salary from the COVID-disrupted 2020 season was donated to Black Lives Matter Australia, Black Deaths in Custody, and the ‘We Got You’ anti-racism campaign; and the Team Mills Foundation has contributed to a number of causes since launching in that same year. That only scratches the surface of the impact Mills has had at the community level.
Another partnership came in 2012 with Cottage By the Sea, who provide short-term care for children in need. That cause hit home for Mills, who saw his college home at St. Mary’s as a similar refuge when he first left Australia for the United States and felt stranded away from his family, friends and culture. One of the program’s existing ambassadors also prompted Mills to get involved – as he told Pounding the Rock in a 2013 interview, Cathy Freeman’s presence alone was enough to draw his attention.
As a sports-loving youngster, the Olympics captivated Mills in a way that no other event could. He had just turned 12 when the 2000 Games in Sydney rolled around, and sitting on the floor of his family’s living room watching on TV was a formative experience. “Being able to represent Australia, represent your friends, represent your family, represent your culture… watching the Olympics growing up for me was something that hit different for me,” Mills said.
As an Aboriginal Australian still learning about his roots and his culture, those feelings were tenfold when Freeman took to the track. Her heroic performance in the women’s 400 metres final, winning gold even with the weight of the entire country on her shoulders, was instantly iconic, and it has always stayed with Mills when he has represented Australia. “I don’t even think when I was watching that I truly understood at the time what was going on, but I was watching and learning,” he said. “How she carried herself as a proud Aboriginal woman was the most important thing that stood out to me.”
21 years later, Mills was creating his own history on the global stage of the Olympic Games. He was already squarely in the spotlight as the Tokyo Games approached – heading into his fourth Olympics and following the heartbreak of a medal round loss in Rio five years prior, he was set to captain a Boomers team that was clearly targeting a first men’s basketball medal and preaching “Gold Vibes Only”. That made it scarcely a surprise when he was bestowed one of the greatest honours for an Australian athlete, named as one of two flag bearers for the opening ceremony.
While it was hardly a shock, it was still a momentous decision. Mills became the first Indigenous Australian to carry the flag at an Olympic Games, and having seen how Freeman united the country more than two decades prior, he knew the significance of the moment. “To be able to be the first Indigenous person to do that I think is a sign of bringing people together, [and] is a real strength in being able to move forward,” Mills said. “To do that for Australia with the Australian team behind me was a proud moment.” While Mills carried only the Australian flag, a mask decorated with Aboriginal art and a traditional beaded necklace made it clear that he represented his Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities just as strongly.
Of course, any Australian basketball fan could tell you how the rest of the Olympics went. The Boomers finally claimed their long-awaited medal, with bronze quickly dubbed “rose gold”, and Mills was named to the tournament’s All-Star Five after ranking third in both scoring and assists. His performance against Slovenia in the bronze medal game was the stuff of legends, as he poured in a career-high 42 points and willed his team to a historic win. The result left Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze in tears, with much of the country feeling the same way.
From a kid that idolised Australia’s Olympic heroes to a medal-winning Boomer, things had finally come the full circle. “For me, it was living a moment in my own career of what I was watching Cathy Freeman do, sitting down on the ground in the lounge room watching her on TV,” Mills said.
Just as memorable as the made baskets and huge plays from Mills were the moments after the final buzzer. One photo spread online like wildfire post-game, with Mills and long-time Boomers teammate Joe Ingles locked in an emotional embrace. After sharing the court at four Olympics and plenty more major tournaments, it was an emotional release that reverberated around the world. “Me and him are very close and have been for a long time, and have been through a lot together,” Mills said. “One of those hugs where neither of us wanted to break the hug – I felt that one a lot, and I think he did too.”
A similarly emotional moment came when Mills stepped up for a customary post-game interview that was anything but standard. Clearly still processing his emotions, he spoke about the journey, the Boomers culture, and his teammates, before sharing his plans to hang his bronze medal at his parents’ house. That is now where it resides, a small token of thanks to the two people that he credits with much of his success. “I will never be able to repay mum and dad back with anything that deserves what they’ve been able to do for me, so the least I could do was just grab this medal and take it home and give it to them,” Mills said.
When all is said and done, that is the side of Patty Mills that will be remembered first – the family man, the proud Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander, the devoted philanthropist, and the inspirational Boomers captain. Those are the things that set Mills apart from your average athlete, and they’re the values that he holds most dear in his heart.
That’s why, when asked by Rush what the number one moment in his life is, it’s “not a hard one” to answer, and yet the hardest to answer of all. Usually such a natural and eloquent speaker, he’s immediately overcome with emotion and forced to take a long pause before continuing. “Obviously I know the answer to it, it’s just tough to say,” he said. “It’s just trying to get my shit together before I say it.”
As he holds back tears, you can almost see the moments flashing through his memory — a chance meeting between two basketballers at St. Mary’s College, a courtship that wandered the United States and much of the world, a proposal on the ocean off the coast of Hawaii, a wedding on the land of that same island that has become a home away from home, and so much more in between.
“The number one moment is marrying my wife Alyssa… she’s definitely the rock and holds everything down, without her support I don’t think there is me,” Mills said. The life of a professional athlete is full of ups and downs, and after meeting Patty before his NBA career had even started, Alyssa has seen them all and helped to keep him afloat throughout.
“I just wish people, the supporters, the people that see the basketball side of Patty Mills, understand that Alyssa’s the real reason why I’m able to go out there and do what I do.”
At the end of the day, it always comes back to family. While Mills glides across the basketball court like the frigate bird and sees the game with the eye of the wedge-tailed eagle, it’s the hawksbill turtle that bears the most striking resemblance. It’s said that the turtle represents the Torres Strait Islanders’ quest to assert their cultural identity, while Mill’s great-uncle has said that the barnacles collected on their shells represent the family that a person carries with them.
Mills has always gone above and beyond in that sense, taking the culture of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders across the globe with him while representing the whole of Australia. Even with all of that weight on his shell, he has surged through every current and shows no signs of slowing down. With NBA title contention on the cards in Brooklyn and the 2023 FIBA World Cup on the horizon, he and his family still have plenty to look forward to.