Hoopsfix Podcast Ep.4: Interview with John Amaechi

By Sam Neter on June 26, 2014

The Hoopsfix Podcast is back! In this episode we got the chance to sit down with the main man, British basketball legend, John Amaechi, to talk hoops.

John is someone, I feel, who is greatly misunderstood by the British basketball community and also hugely under-appreciated for the successful career he did have. Rather than talk about a lot of the things we hear from him on regular basis (state of UK basketball, gay athletes in professional sport), I wanted to go in depth on his actual basketball career.

In this podcast, hear from John on:

How a fat nerdy kid from Stockport (his own words!), who only started playing basketball at 17 years old made the NBA.
The highs and lows of his college career, split between Vanderbilt and Penn State where he was an Academic First Team All American and All Big Ten First Team.
What went wrong at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament and when he realised he wasn’t going to get drafted.
His first pro contract, for two games, in France to prevent a team getting relegated.
What his first experiences of NBA basketball were.
How crazy the fans in Greece were, going as far as to murder one of his pets after a losing streak for the team(!).
What playing in the BBL was like at one of its peaks.
Why he turned down a $17million+ offer from the Lakers, and promptly got shafted by the team he chose to stay loyal to.
What he wants his legacy to be, and what he’s currently doing.

It went on a little longer than planned (full thing is just short of two hours), but I feel there’s a ton of interesting stuff in there and would’ve rather gone on longer to get the full story then cut it short!

As always, I’d love to get your feedback, come back after you’ve listened and lets get some discussion going in the comments.

The show has been approved on iTunes – find it here and please subscribe to automatically receive new episodes straight to your phone/computer/tablet (ignore the BBC 5 Live podcast it has automatically pulled in on iTunes, I’m working on getting it removed)!

Image Credit: NBAE/Mansoor

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