Hoops

Josh Green: AFL background?

I've often thought that basketball is the closest sport to AFL. If you want to explain AFL to an American then do it terms of basketball - just a bigger field and with kicking. And many of the skills between the sports are complementary. It is no surprise that boys talented at football are often talented at basketball (when they grow up playing both).


And I also have a theory that boys who play basketball are better AFL footballers for having played basketball - they learn fast hand skills and precise passing (handballing) and can look after the ball better in close play. And conversely, boys who play AFL can use those skills to advantage in basketball. I think the sense of where your team mates (and opponents) are at any time (emanating from AFL having no offside rules) and using their body for position/protecting the ball/themselves, helps young basketballers. Where did Delly learn to be so hard at the ball?

Open to debate, but is it a coincidence that the strong AFL states (Vic/SA) are also the strong basketball states?

And people might complain when an elite basketballer heads off to AFL but maybe AFL has made many basketballers better for their AFL experience.

Girls basketball has been particularly strong in Victoria where many elite Victorian girls have grown up playing a bit of AFL (playing with the boys until about 12yo). With the recent upsurge in women's AFL and many young girls now playing AFL through their teen years, I predict that Victorian junior women's basketball will go to new level in the next few years.

Just my thoughts but I think the sports are good for each other.

I can see many in this thread are annoyed by the Australian media's constant mentioning of football backgrounds for our basketballers but this is just the nature of being a talented Australian junior sportsman. It used to be that almost every kid growing up in Australia would play cricket over the summer months and one of the dominant football codes in the winter months. Those kids would then have to make a decision somewhere between the ages of 14-17 as to which sport they wanted to pursue going forward, despite possibly being able to play both sports at the professional level.

You often hear the US media talking about how talented LeBron James was as a high school American footballer but that's really the exception in America. Most kids in the US have already settled on one sport by the time they reach their teenage years. Then you have really exceptional athletes that thrive in more than one sport at the professional level like Bo Jackson and that garners an extremely large level of interest.

I guess the point I'm trying to get across here is that there will always be intrigue when an athlete shows promise in more than one sport and because the AFL has such a stranglehold on the narratives pushed by the Australian media, we are going to continue to see/hear this. Tamuri Wigness also played Aussie rules as a junior and was scouted by the Gold Coast Suns so don't be surprised when that story pops up in a few years time. Patty Mills was a very talented junior footballer and was offered a contract by the Swans. Bogut, Delly, Ingles, Mathiang and Simmons all played Aussie rules in their younger years. It's sort of unavoidable in certain states like Victoria. Like it or not, it's going to continue to be a topic of discussion.

In regards to Josh, the kid is 6'6 with a wingspan of 6'11, is lightning quick and just as athletic as any junior basketballer in the US. You can imagine how much he would have dominated in the low standard of local Sydney Aussie rules coming up against physically inferior opponents.

Oh God I hope so. Maybe the national press can write an article about it.

10-20 guys on afl lists who played basketball as pros, college athletes, semi pro ball, junior ajcs.

Just in case anyone doesn’t know, Craig Moeller played one game for Fremantle

are you mixing him up with the Josh Green who played for Brisbane and Essendon - originally from Tas?