Feb 22, 2021
Every so often, at one of the camps he runs for kids in his native Australia, Patty Mills will be approached by one of his lifelong fans with a request:
Can you dunk for me?
For most NBA players it’d be a breeze. He’d clear out a path, measure his steps and drive the ball through the rim with authority. He’d land and his admirers would celebrate because they’d just seen something unfathomably cool.
Illustration by Davide Barco
Unfathomable is the right word for it, too, because there is a problem with this scenario: Patty Mills doesn’t dunk. Of all the choices he could make with the ball, dunking, he says, isn’t even an afterthought. “I want to say it’s at the bottom of the list, but to be honest, it’s probably not even on the list,” Mills says. On being unable to show off for the kids: “That’s a little bit of a deflating moment when I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t think I can get there right now, mate,’” Mills says. “‘But I’ll keep