It might sound simple, but resilience and the right mindset are the keys to success, both professionally and personally. One man who knows this better than most is Luc Longley (lead image) AM, Australian professional basketball coach and former NBA player.
Appearing at Cannes In Cairns, Longely told of his journey into the NBA, how he learned to put his baggage aside and how he overcame struggles when imagining ‘throwing away your problems’ just wasn’t enough any more. Inspiring and motivational, Longley is not just a professional basketball coach but a beacon of resilience and a case study of how mindset can change everything.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Australia, where basketball “wasn’t really a thing”, without much of a desire to be an NBA player, Longley went on to become the first Australian to play in the league at the ripe age of 22.
In a less-than-ideal situation, playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves during a period of struggle for the team, Longley found himself a mentor in former Boston Celtics player Kevin McCale. “You just need one guy that believes in what you’re doing and believes in you and that’s all it takes. So that’s how I started to grow my game with finding someone that sort of believed in me, made myself good enough to be traded them, which is what happened,” Longley said.
Stepping into the Chicago Bulls training centre, which was equipped with logo-emblazoned flooring, a team of masseurs, yoga classes, and a running track around the court, Longely was overwhelmed by just how many levels ahead the team was of Minnesota. Immediately, surrounded by some of the greats of the game, he knew he had to give it everything he had.
“I’m there with the greatest people in the game. And they were literally doing footwork and spatial skills without a ball. I just thought to myself that if they were gonna make something work, now’s the time, and I poured myself into it”.
Phil Jackson, coach of the Chicago Bulls at the time, was a crucial part of Longley’s journey. The multi-championship-winning former NBA player, who went on to become renowned as one of the best coaches of all time, had a simple piece of feedback for Longely in those early days: “I think you’re bringing a bag of poo to practice”.
This funny one-liner quickly became a mantra for Longley because, as Jackson so eloquently put it himself in Longley’s anecdote: “When you have a bag of poo, you can’t play basketball… you need to figure out somewhere to put your bag of poo before you get to practice tomorrow”.
The reality of the entertaining metaphor is that you can’t come in and expect to give something your all when you are carrying a bag full of emotional baggage. So, Longley began, literally throwing imaginary “bags of poo” into garbage cans before practice. On one particular occasion, when his personal life was at a real low point, Jackson pointed out that he was carrying
“Luc, you got a double-handed bag of shit today. I want you to walk past the scores bench, pass around the other team’s bench, down the ramps and then past the bus to those big dumpsters where they put the rubbish from the arenas,” Longley recalls Jackson saying.
And so he did just that, “I lift up the giant lid and throw my imaginary big bag of shit in and look back. Phil subs me back in, and now I’m playing free and loose and with creativity and with confidence”.
Longley looked back fondly on those memories, still marvelling that Jackson had taken the time to understand and give them the tools to help him be better than he was. “The real leadership to me was the best mind in basketball had spent enough time thinking about me and caring enough about me to give me something useful, and that was even more valuable than the tool itself,” Longley explained. “It’s that sense of belief from someone you respect and admire and want to please and, from that moment on, I wanted to play for Phil, I wanted to win for Phil,” Longley said.
Upon reaching retirement, Longley referred to both his body and his mind “cooked”. “I was exhausted. I was embarrassed, retiring injured. I wanted to just raise my kids. I came home and I was very depressed”.
At that stage, depression was not really a thing that was talked about, and certainly not among men so Longley found himself really struggling with emotions he couldn’t fully wrap his head around. “I identify myself as a basketballer, but that was gone, and in the process of that, I’d lost my marriage,” Longley explained. “I ended up having to address that – not by medication but by learning, by listening and a slew of women in my life that gathered around me”.
“Basically, what I learned was that mental health is a little bit like a giant concrete DNA-shaped spiral; there’s no top, no bottom, and you don’t arrive at being healthy. If you can imagine walking up this giant concrete spiral, it’s a little bit never-ending, and you’ve got to keep a soccer ball in front of you. You don’t have to kick any goals. You don’t have to do anything tricky. You’re just going to keep the ball in front of you every day and keep moving up the spiral. We have to find the skills to move that soccer ball, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s surfing, whether it’s unconditional love, whether it’s forgiveness. Whatever it is, you just have to keep your toes on the ball to stay healthy”.
