In the days leading up to the 2021 NBA Draft in July, Australian teenager Josh Giddey was still in the dark about where his NBA home would be.
The 6’8″ point guard was somewhat of a mystery coming into the draft and was tipped by many draft experts to be selected somewhere between picks 10 and 12.
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A trade on the morning of the draft saw the Memphis Grizzlies acquire the 10th pick from the New Orleans Pelicans, and the Grizzlies were picked as Giddey’s team in both ESPN and The Athletic’s mock drafts.
Speaking to Wide World of Sports ahead of Giddey’s NBA debut for the Oklahoma City Thunder, his father Warrick revealed how close Giddey came to joining the only other team he’d worked out for: the Golden State Warriors.
Giddey looked poised to head to San Francisco with the No.7 pick in the draft to join Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, until he turned Thunder owner Clay Bennett’s head in a stunning private workout.
“When he worked out with Oklahoma, they bought the owner down and it was ironic, Josh said the owner was clapping and cheering as he was making shots because they were the only ones in the gym,” Warrick Giddey, a former pro in Australia himself, said.
“Then they did a psych test with him and gave him some clothes and to me, that was enough to suggest that they were really interested at No.6.”
However, despite impressing Bennett with his stellar workout, the Australian was left in the dark as the Thunder played “possum” according to his father.
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“The agent couldn’t get a gauge because they wouldn’t return calls,” he said.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. Golden State had made contact and said they were keen to take Josh at pick seven if he was still on the board at that stage.
“Going into the draft that night, we were reasonably confident that if he got through to seven Golden State would take him, but we were absolutely thrilled when Oklahoma decided to take him.
“It would’ve been [a surprise] to the public. Josh had done a workout with those guys in Golden State before the draft, and they were the only two workouts he did because he was with the Boomers.
“He’d done all the verbal interviews and met most of the teams face-to-face and we thought that was more important so people could see the size of him.”
While the allure of playing alongside Curry would’ve been appealing for Giddey himself, his father feared the Warriors could draft his son and deal him to another team.
“We were always worried that Golden State might’ve got him and then on-traded in a Ben Simmons deal or another due to the fact that Steph Curry and the senior players were saying they’ve got a window of opportunity to win a championship and probably thought they couldn’t do it with a young draft pick,” he said.
“It would’ve been a great place to go to, imagine getting drafted into a team with Steph Curry, Josh would’ve just been beside himself, but realistically there was a chance he would’ve got traded.”
Giddey’s agent had mentioned prior to the draft that Oklahoma City would be the perfect fit for the 19-year-old, leaving his family thrilled at the eventual outcome.
“We wouldn’t have even really considered it until they were talking to him,” Giddey’s father said.
“Before he got drafted, the agent was saying this would be the best fit here in Oklahoma – a young group, a smaller city, not as many distractions, just sort of a bit out of the road, so it ticked most of the boxes.
“They’ve always gone young in the draft – most of the superstars they’ve got have been draft picks.
“Their windows aren’t massive, there wouldn’t be heaps of players having 10-12-year careers there, but hopefully Josh can be one of those players.
“A lot of them do like the big lights and they like to do their time there and almost move on, but hopefully they can keep this group together for a significant time and have a crack at it in three-to-five years’ time.”
Despite the Giddey pick raising eyebrows on draft night, it’s looked like a home run by Thunder GM Sam Presti after a tremendous pre-season from the Aussie.
Giddey started all four of OKC’s pre-season hitouts, leading the team in minutes with 28.9 per game, while posting averages of 13.5 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists, with the rebounds and assists also team-highs.
With No.1 pick Cade Cunningham injured to start the season, and the other four players ahead of Giddey, Houston’s Jalen Green, Cleveland’s Evan Mobley, Toronto’s Scottie Barnes, and Orlando’s Jalen Suggs having indifferent pre-seasons, Giddey is an early Rookie of the Year favourite.
The fit alongside his young Thunder teammates has been ideal for Giddey, and his father says the youngster is thrilled to be in Oklahoma City.
“He’s loving it. He feels comfortable and he loves his teammates,” he said.
“They’re such a young group with a young coach and they’re all going on the same path in a sense, so to be honest I don’t think there is much pressure on the team as such to win games, it’s more about how they play and about improving week-to-week.
“He’s really excited to just get out there and see where they sit within the ranks of the league.
“They’re going to be playing the Lakers, Utah in the first game, which will be amazing, Philly’s coming up, so they’re going to play some pretty damn good teams – I think seven or eight of the first teams they play were finals contenders, so they’re thrown to the wolves.
“He just loves the players, they’re a good bunch of young kids. The coach has indicated that he’ll be playing lots of minutes, whether that means he starts or not [remains to be seen], I would suggest he will if he’s started all four pre-season games.
“The coach has really said to expect a lot of minutes this year, they want to push him and they want to see what he’s got.”
While Giddey dabbled in tennis, cricket and Australian rules football as a youngster, basketball always remained his number one love, particularly with both of his parents playing professionally.
However, it wasn’t until he turned 16 that Giddey started turning heads on a regular basis.
“Mentally, he’s always been ahead of the bunch and always sees the game a pass ahead, it was just a matter of his body catching up with the skills he already had,” his father said.
“He could’ve done a lot of the stuff he’s doing now at 6’4″ but it probably wouldn’t have had as much impact as he has at 6’8”.
“He missed the state Under-16s side as a top-age kid and then he missed the state Under-18s side as a bottom-ager and it was right then that he started peaking.
“Once he went down to the NBA Global Academy at 16, that was when we thought, ‘Okay basketball could be his future’. It was the NBL or the NBA and it was just a matter of how big he grew and how hard he worked.”
Giddey’s family won’t be in attendance for his regular season debut, but got to experience a taste of the NBA world at the draft in July, an experience his father described as “surreal”.
“We saw the other world that the NBA people live in, you could maybe say it’s another universe,” he said.
“[The thing that stood out] was probably just the money they spent. The private jet from New York to Oklahoma, it was the first time on a private jet for me and imagine 13 and 16-year-old girls [Giddey’s sisters] jumping on and wondering what’s all this life about, so that was pretty amazing.
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“Just to see their facilities, the professionalism, money’s just not an issue for them, whereas everything here is a budget in most of our sports.
“You think of the AFL, they’re probably at the top of the pile in terms of Australian sport, multiply that by ten or maybe 100, that’s the NBA. They want something and it costs half-a-million, they go and buy it.”
While Giddey has enhanced his reputation greatly throughout the pre-season, his father has one piece advice for his son: to stay humble.
“Being a professional player doesn’t give you a right to treat people differently and to think that you’re above and beyond people,” he said.
“He’s really humble, he’s got a good sense of humility I think, so it’s really about keeping his feet on the ground. Don’t let it all get ahead of himself and keep working hard, that’s the main thing.
“I think he realises that a major group of NBA players’ careers don’t last more than two-to-four years, so he knows the importance of these next few years to be able to go and get that next contract.
“A lot of young kids get there and are overwhelmed with the money and go crazy. They party and they spend the money and they don’t concentrate on the job at hand – which is to become a better basketball player and to keep your job in the league.”
Giddey is the third player to be drafted in the first round of the NBA Draft having played in the NBL’s Next Stars program after Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball and Orlando’s R.J. Hampton, and his father, whose No.6 jersey is retired by the Melbourne Tigers, says it is about time the world took notice of Australia’s domestic competition.
“I think America’s missed the boat, maybe not in the last ten years, but in the 20 years before that,” he said.
“You had great players like [Andrew] Gaze and [Mark] Bradtke, there was a wealth of Australian talent that were probably good enough to play in the NBA.
“You’ve got to be proud of the way they’ve marketed it and what they’ve done through the Next Stars program and really putting us on the international map.
“We’ve had the talent here for a long time and it’s just good that America’s finally woken up started to smell the roses.
“Hopefully, with what LaMelo’s done and now Josh, it’s really opened their eyes that the imports who have come here have made it a stepping-stone to the NBA.”