Josh Childress: NBLxNBA is a massive game changer for Australian basketball
Josh Childress came to the NBL when the league was reeling. But he’s seen it grow into one of the best leagues in the world, and knows this week's NBLxNBA series is huge to keep that trajectory going.
A decade is a long time in sports. But when looking at where basketball, and the NBL especially were in Australia when Josh Childress first arrived in 2014, it’s almost unrecognisable.
Childress, who had played seven seasons in the NBA and two in the EuroLeague (and Greece), first came to the NBL for the 2014-15 season with the Sydney Kings. That was the year before Larry Kestelman took over the league.
The NBL was struggling to put fans in seats, to secure meaningful broadcast revenue, and the standard of play had stagnated a little from its heyday. But Childress felt like it had potential. Turns out he was right.
Today, Childress is a minority owner of the South East Melbourne Phoenix and was in Melbourne for their historic NBLxNBA game against the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday. Sitting down with The Pick and Roll pregame, Childress reflected on where things were at when he touched down in Sydney eleven years ago.
“I think the league was in a very unique position because honestly, Australia and Australian basketball, there’s a ton of talent,” he said.
“And it’s just a function of not having the right infrastructure and league in place to help support that growth. And the league has obviously grown tremendously, but it was at this inflection point where either it was going to sink or swim.
“Obviously, having Larry come in and do what he did, we’re all seeing the effects and the benefits of this now. I don’t think anybody would imagine, ten years ago, that we’d be hosting an NBA team here in Melbourne.
“It’s been a function of obviously consistent work and building the talent and the pipeline of opportunities, but also, just investing into the league and to the club and to what basketball is in Australia, has changed a lot of that.”
Childress led the league in scoring and made All-NBL First Team in his first season with the Kings. He played a second season with Sydney in NBL16 and then came back after a year away to play with the Adelaide 36ers for the NBL18 season.
By that season, the third in the Kestelman era, the league had already started to grow and attract better players, both locals and imports. Childress, who helped the 36ers to the Grand Final series, before getting hurt in game 2, saw firsthand the trajectory that the league was on.
“It improved drastically. And you see that not only in the on-the-court product, but off the court,” explained Childress.
“There’s a commercialisation that happened at the league level that I think, brings the league to a standard that welcomes other folks, right? We’re seeing obviously the NBA partnerships, not only them playing here, more NBL teams going over there to play, and obviously Adelaide winning, you know, against an NBA team just justifies the talent level in the NBL.
“But I think, European basketball has always been kind of tier two relative to the NBA, right? You got NBA and EuroLeague. I think now that’s shifting. The NBL can make a case for being a top two or top three league in the world, based on a lot of those changes happening.
“So, we were talking about this last night at dinner; a lot of that younger talent may have been playing footy because there wasn’t as clear of a pathway in the NBL for guys to have a long-standing career. Where now, that 15-year-old who’s six foot four and growing, and has an athletic build, can say, ‘hey, I actually will step in and play for South East Melbourne Phoenix versus going to an AFL [or] NRL team, because there’s an opportunity here for me to continue my career.’
“So, all of it packaged together has just been a fantastic outcome for the league, and it’s obviously continuing to grow.”
It’s often thrown around that the NBL is now the second best league in the world and Zion Williamson was coerced into saying that at a press conference last week. Whether it’s second or third or fifth doesn’t matter as much as how it is attracting the right players to want to play here, and the pathways it’s providing.
Childress, who was one of the first big-name imports with a lot of NBA experience to come and play here, thinks it’s much more about the local players than the imports. And that’s one of the most impressive things to him that has helped the NBL flourish over the last decade.
“Some of the domestic leagues around, you have obviously the Spanish League and the German League. There aren’t a ton that top to bottom, have the local talent that Australia has, to field high quality teams,” he said.
“Typically speaking, the imports will all be dictated by budget, right? And that’s just a function of the nature of professional basketball.
“But it’s the local talent. How good is the local talent? And I think the Australian local talent is just as good, if not better than most around.”
And having said that, we continue to see high-level imports that have NBA experience, forego a bigger payday elsewhere because they see the NBL as a better pathway to get back to the NBA.
The history of players making an NBL to NBA jump the last six to eight years has been impressive, between the Next Stars and experienced players, and Childress knows that’s huge for the continued growth of the NBL.
“It’s a massive game changer,” he admitted.
“And you see every year, one, two, three, five guys transitioning to the NBA. It’s a real pathway. And you couple that with shorter season, English-speaking country, comfort and lifestyle. You may take less money because you know that at the end of the day, you’ll feel comfortable living here, you feel comfortable playing here. It’s less of a formal transition.
“I’m from LA. Me coming here wasn’t too different than living in LA. And so that has become a bigger thing for players than we may realise.”
And those are the things that Childress connected with when he played here, that now keep him coming back, year after year, to visit.
He also made a ton of great friendships and relationships here that he sees as probably the thing he remembers most fondly about his time playing in the NBL.
“Best memory is just teammates. Still always comes down to people,” he said.
“I had great teammates here, many of which I still talk to today. And I had a great three seasons here. I wish I could have stayed on the court a bit more, from an injury perspective; just how it goes sometimes.
“But I’ve had lifelong Australian friends. And that means a lot to me.”
While Childress wishes he could have won more when he was here and maybe had the chance to play for the Phoenix in the NBL, he has no regrets about his time here.
In fact, quite the contrary. He loved the league so much that he became one of the first people to invest in the Phoenix club ahead of their inaugural season back in 2019.
Childress, along with Al Harrington and Zach Randolph, bought into the team as minority owners alongside majority owner Romie Chaudhari, because they saw something in this league. And for Childress, it was as simple as him having played here for three years. That was enough for him to want to be involved.
Childress at SEM Phoenix Practice last week. Credit: South East Melbourne Phoenix Media
“I saw that 2014 season and I saw my 2018 season, and I saw the growth of the league and what that all looked like. And I understood that it’s a place for me to invest,” he explained.
“It also keeps me connected to Australia. I try to get here once a year to catch games and support the team, which is important to me because as I said, I have a ton of friends and connections that I made over the years.
“And it’s just a good place to stay connected to. Basketball’s growing, my business efforts more broadly are growing, and so having this opportunity in a place that I enjoy coming to, was all I needed to know in order to make that investment.”
With NBL team valuations booming in recent times, it certainly seems an astute investment decision.
Childress has been, and remains, quite hands on with the team as a minority owner.
“I’m involved with recruiting. I’m involved with some of the business strategy. And now with [new Phoenix CEO] Simon Derrick coming in, we’re talking a lot more about just the commercial aspect of our business,” Childress said.
“Expanding more into Asia, doing more work in the U.S. and just really creating more than a team here. We’re talking about a business platform that we’re going to build off of.
“And so that’s been a lot of the work that I’ve been doing, trying to help us as an organisation think through that, alongside our other ownership group.”
Having an NBA team come to your backyard to play and helping you attract 15,000 fans to see them play against your team, can only help the commercial outlook for the Phoenix.
For a team that hasn’t been involved in past years’ NBLxNBA games in the United States, this was a great way to showcase the Phoenix brand, so naturally, Childress was very excited about how big this is for the club.
“It’s massive for us as an organisation,” he acknowledged.
“So, we’re very thankful for this opportunity. I think how I view this is, this is a part of our journey. It’s another stepping stone for us to prove that we’re capable of handling this sort of opportunity as an organisation.
“Us, not having played in the U.S. and then having the opportunity to play here, it continues to bolster our fan base and bolster the thought process around us as a pillar in this league.
“As a business professional, you need to have specific markets to be strong. And for the NBL, Melbourne and Sydney are two of those markets. And so, the better we can be as an organisation, the better it is for the league.”
Beyond just the Phoenix, Childress can also see how big this sort of an event is for Australian basketball. From grassroots level to elite junior pathways, to eyeballs on the NBL itself, having an NBA team play in Australia has a big impact.
“I think the more competitive we are on the court against NBA teams, the more a 12-year-old kid in the stands can see themselves playing on this floor, in hopes of playing in the NBA or playing against NBA players,” said Childress.
“And so, the level of support and hope that this creates for the local community, I think is massive. And us having the opportunity to do that here, it just grows the game of basketball. And I think the more the game grows and the more obviously the NBL grows, but just the opportunity set for more players to play in the U.S., to go to college in the U.S., to come back home and continue to grow this league, it just compounds on each other.
“So, having the game here on home soil is massive for us, because it gives our fans a chance to see that we’re competitive, we’re going to work hard. And just, fans that may be NBA fans, hopefully now become Phoenix fans.
“And that’s what we’re trying to do, is grow the game of basketball more broadly so that we can have more fans and a bigger fan base here.”
The Phoenix competed hard on Sunday against the Pelicans, but ultimately were blown out, losing 127-92. They did not shoot the ball well at all, but still made some great plays on both ends of the court and earned the respect of their opponents.
Jordan Poole of the Pelicans shared postgame about wanting to play against guys in a different league whenever the opportunity arises, and he only had positive things to say about the experience.
“I think it’s something we should make more routine for sure,” Poole said.
Zion Williamson and Jordi Hunter exchange jerseys postgame on Sunday. Credit: NBL and South East Melbourne Phoenix Media
The success of this NBLxNBA series may not be measurable until years from now, but it has certainly laid the foundations for the NBL, and basketball in general, to continue to grow in Australia.
Childress, as an owner, obviously would like to see the league continue to thrive and open up new opportunities. His vision for where he’d like the NBL to get to in the next five years builds on this experience and seeks to find similar opportunities to globalise the NBL brand, but to start by expanding within the local region in this part of the world.
“I think the league hopefully gets to a model where there’s a few more markets that open up, a model that activates I think the Australasia corridor a bit more,” he said.
“And finding ways to partner with and or compete against other Asian countries, Asian leagues, and then a continued kind of growth in partnership with EuroLeague and with the NBA to make this more regular.
“And maybe we’re doing a couple games in the preseason, a couple games in Europe. Basketball is a global sport and we want to continue to make our platform global.
“So, in the next three to five years I’m hopeful that as this continues to grow and you see the success of these sorts of games, there’s more investment into the league, but there’s also an expansion into a global footprint to showcase these wonderful, talented athletes.”