On Thursday 26 June 2024, Maribyrnong Sports Academy expects to have Alumnus Johnny Furphy (class of 2022) drafted as an NBA player, a first for the Academy. This week we spoke to two people that have been at the centre of Johnny’s growth as a basketballer - his parents Liza and Richard.
From the trips around the city to junior rep basketball, to the under 12 SSV team. And from his time at MSA to his final college destination in Kansas, Johnny’s mum and dad have watched him grow into a young man who is about to be handed over to the world. And to say they are excited about the future for him would be an understatement.
Johnny’s mum Liza says he was never really pushed as a child to focus on any one sport.
“Because Johnny was our third child, we just really went along with him and what he wanted, we drove him around to places and we never really forced anything onto him. We were always encouraged by his success but the drive for him to become a very capable player really came from him.”
That drive now has Johnny waiting for draft day and the possibility of being a first-round draft pick into the world’s number one basketball competition, the NBA. And his family can’t wait to get to the States and be a part of the big day.
“Johnny has been offered a table of seven in the Green Room which is backstage at the draft event” says his father, Richard.
“We will join him there with his brother and two of his past coaches. The exciting thing about him being invited into the Green Room is that it’s expected he will go in the first round as the clubs submit their draft selections to the NBA, and when aggregated the top 20 players are selected and given a seat in the Green Room, so a lot of the pre-draft nerves are eliminated. Now we just wait and see where he ends up”.
Johnny came to Maribyrnong Sports Academy as a basketball athlete and Year 7 student in 2017, a decision his parent initially had reservations about.
“To be honest when Johnny was in grade 5 he had decided that he wanted to go to Maribyrnong, because he had a friend who was going there and he could play Basketball all day long. We were a little sceptical because we didn’t know much about the school.” says Richard.
“We wanted Johnny to go to a high school where he would be encouraged to do well academically and when we spoke to MSA about that, we were told that students are told that you may or may not make it in your sport, so we need to make sure that you keep your grades up. That made a lot of sense to us”.
As parents, Liza and Richard have had to live with their youngest child living away from home - first when he went to Canberra at the AIS in 2022 then to College in Kansas in 2023. Liza says that is particularly tough for a mother.
“Johnny going to Canberra was tough for us because it was halfway through his VCE year and he was whipped away from us, stolen away, just pulled out of school halfway through his VCE year, and we weren’t expecting it, it just came out of the blue. We were expecting him to spend a year at home but then Kansas came and that also came out of the blue. He’s still my baby and I’ve hated not having him around. Every time we see him he has grown up that little bit more, and while you want that for your kids not being a part of it is hard.”
Richard says he is excited to see where sport and being selected into the NBA can take his son over the next few years.
“Sport to myself and the family has always been informative and about why you play and what you can get out of it, whether it be who you meet or the things you get out of it along the way. The education at college, it’s always been about what sport can provide for our kids. So having this NBA experience is incredible and getting to the top has never really been what it’s about. It more what it can do for you and what sort of platform it can give you to do things down the track.”
With a son about to be picked in the NBA, a daughter who is also at college as a star soccer player and another son who is a category B rookie at Geelong in the AFL, Liza and Richard are very much looking forward to the future for their kids and seeing how far sport takes them in life.
But for now, Wednesday 25 July 2024 (New York time), will hold a special place in history of the Furphy family.