Bradley hopes TT can produce an NBA player

YANNICK QUINTAL

NEW Los Angeles Lakers guard Avery Bradley wrapped up the third and final day of the Avery Bradley Skills Academy Basketball Camp at the Central Regional Indoor Sports Area in Saith Park, Chaguanas yesterday.

Newsday caught up with the former All-Defensive Team shooting guard, hours before he returned to the United States, to talk about how the local talent has shaped up, the possible future of basketball development in the Caribbean and his goals for the 2019-2020 NBA season.

YANNICK QUINTAL (YQ): What has it been like working with the coaches and the youths in your basketball camp over the past three days?

AVERY BRADLEY (AB): It’s been great. It’s a blessing for me to be here. I appreciate the USA Embassy for partnering with us to make this possible, but it’s been good. I’ve seen a few familiar faces; a few campers that were here two years ago, so it's nice to see them again. We feel like there’s a need; there’s a lot of athleticism that is here but the skill work, if they’re able to improve it, I feel like Trinidad and Tobago could have their next NBA player without us knowing it.

YQ: Are there any other Caribbean islands your are looking to visit to host your basketball camp at?

AB: There’s not. I’m not gonna say I don’t want to because the Caribbean has a special place in my heart, with my family being from here but Grenada and Trinidad those are my home. I got family in Grenada, family in Trinidad so so those are the two most important places to me right now and I just want to help those two places as much as I can before I expand.

YQ: The NBA hosted a Basketball Without Borders camp in the Bahamas in 2017 and there have been players born in the Caribbean that have made it and had success in the NBA; more recently with Bahamians Buddy Hield and DeAndre Ayton as well as household names like Al Horford, JJ Barea and basketball greats such as Patrick Ewing and Tim Duncan. Carl Herrera was a Trinidadian-born player that was a role player on the championship teams of the Houston Rockets in the 90s. So what is the possibility of the NBA implementing their Basketball Without Borders programme in the Caribbean?

AB: Yeah I mean I would love to. That is my vision and I think it's needed. I always tell people, you know, my high school teammates were Tristan Thompson (Cleveland Cavaliers) and Corey Joseph (Indiana Pacers). Tristan Thompson has Jamaican roots and Corey Joseph has Trinidadian roots and a lot of people don’t know that, you know? They’re both from Toronto. I feel like most of the players in the NBA that are from Toronto which is a lot, over the past five years; a ton, and they’re all very good players and all have Caribbean roots. And I feel like, Andrew Wiggins (Timberwolves), Joel Anthony (plays in Argentina) who I played with. I played with Al Horford (76ers) from the Dominican Republic. There’s a lot of talent here. It’s just, we just got to do a better job of teaching them how to play basketball properly and again like I said, there could be a lot of professionals that come from the Caribbean like as of late, (DeAndre) Ayton and Buddy Hield (Bahamas).