Risk Taker: Leigh Ellis on basketball, opportunities and the pursuit of joy

Above everything we know Leigh Ellis for, this current chapter of his basketball journey exudes a pure joy that speaks and connects to basketball fans out there.

Leigh Elllis has made a career from taking risks. 

As an intern at The Score - a Canadian media company - he was asked if he could attend the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees media availability. His instructions were explicit: Hold the microphone in a scrum so sound bites could be captured. Nothing more.

Basically, do what no one else wanted to do.

With the Yankees in town - one of the glamour franchises of Major League Baseball - there was bound to be a frenzy of media activity. Players would be swarmed, and access would be tightly guarded. 

The Yankees boasted a star studded roster. Undoubtedly, one of the Yankees’ biggest stars was Derek Jeter, who was still at the height of his powers. 

As Ellis arrived at the bustling scene, a fledgling idea flashed across his mind. What if he was able to do the unthinkable? What if he was able to secure a one-on-one chat with Jeter?  

And so Ellis bypassed the media scrum and sauntered over to the dugout - a big no-no - and proceeded to introduce himself to Jeter, shaking his hand with the bemused star and requesting a one-on-one chat. Jeter, of course, acquiesced. Ellis, the rookie, had somewhere secured a prized soundbite from the Yankee just by asking. He managed this by unwittingly circumventing media protocols. 

Ellis calls it naivety and not knowing what you don’t know. Or just jumping in and giving it a go.

When quizzed by his superiors how he had managed to secure a chat with Jeter, Ellis simply replied, “I just asked.”

As Ellis recalls this memory, a great smile is etched across his face. It was a cheeky, opportunistic moment that set the roots for a dream.

Dreams are often borne from just being at the right place, at the right time.

When Ellis is asked about his keys to success, he’s unsure.

“There is no blueprint,” he says.

At the heart of it, Ellis points to taking opportunities as they present themselves, not being afraid to ask, and not being afraid of rejection or failure.

At its root is that pursuit of joy.

Ellis parlayed that attitude (and risk-taking) at The Score into a gig with The Basketball Jones, where he would team up with Tas Melas, Phil Elder (J.E. Skeets), and Trey Kerby, ultimately parachuting onto our screens as a stat-loving analyst on The Starters on NBA TV. 

Credit: Supplied

From that point, Ellis became a talisman of the Australian basketball media landscape. 

There was something about hearing an Australian accent on the screen covering the NBA, in America, that made a generation dream. He made that impossible dream feel possible. He pioneered it. He lived it.

Over the course of 11 years, Ellis was an integral part of the daily NBA-scape, arguably at the vanguard of new age media. Where once screens were dominated by past players and larger-than-life talking heads, The Starters showcased a group of friends who just loved talking about basketball. They loved laughing about basketball.

“I wasn’t anything special,” Ellis tells The Pick and Roll.