Tall tales of a hoop dreamer

TALL TALE. If John Burke had a buck for every time somebody made a crack about his size he'd be a rich man today. He thanks his stars that he's not a schoolboy in post "thanks big fella" Ireland.

You shake his hand and he looks down on you benignly enough and before you know it a dumb statement about his size has been blurted out.

He looks momentarily weary. Passing comment on his size is a defence reflex for brains that can't process the dimensions of the man they see before them. There is something very intimidating about a man whose chest is at eye level. Everyone comments on his height.

He heard a story recently about an old and cantankerous basketball player who was stopped in Miami one day by some cheap-suited wiseacre and asked for the millionth time what the weather was like up there.

"So he spat at him and said it was raining. I wish I'd heard that story 10 years ago.

Ten years ago. He outgrew the door frames in Naas CBS when he was 16 or 17. The door frames were six feet, eight inches. So was John Burke. He suffered a few weeks having a bruised head. Ever since it has been second nature to stoop under lintels.

His parents were both well over six feet and in Naas they knew he'd be big. He passed the six-foot mark before his voice broke and he just kept going. His basketball stats say be is 7' 2" now. He reckons he's a little bit smaller, but you have to allow the PR people their hyperbole. From the perspective the rest of the world see John Burke, it's irrelevant anyway. Ireland's only native-born full-time professional basketball player is big. Very big.

So big that he grew up (and up) thinking that he was a freak. He remembers when he had tipped the seven-foot mark going to America for a basketball camp and hanging out with a Californian of similar dimensions. John Burke's jaw hung open for the whole week.

"I never saw the guy again, but I do remember he was so confident about his body and about his size. People would ask him if he was seven-foot tall and he would say `yeah, sure'. Then they'd ask me the same thing and I'd say `nah, only about six-nine'. I thought being seven-foot tall would make it official that I was a freak."

At home in the days before hoops, life was a depressing, small-town drudge. Being head and shoulders above his peers was a form of isolation which might have left marks on a lesser man.

Little things defined his life. From the time he was 12 until after he was eligible to vote, his shoe size was the same as his age. Act your age not your shoe size, they'd chortle. Definitely as freshly hilarious the hundredth time round as the first.

Clothes were a problem, trousers in particular. The only ones to be had for a while were the right length in the leg, but made proportionately at the waist. John Burke would go flapping about Naas like a cross between a scarecrow and a circus stiltsman.

"Being big took up my whole life," he says now, tracksuited and comfortable and confident. "I was so worried about it. I remember I kissed a girl for the first time when I was 18-years-old. It was such a relief. "I was able to get a girl, I was able to get a girl."

It's a sensitive moment, but suddenly in the face of all this vertiginous height there is a dizzy spell. Sheer curiosity takes over. The tape of the interview records this exchange.

"God. How big was she?"

"Five feet, 11 inches, I'd say."

"Jaysus that's big enough, she must have been relieved herself."

"Wonder where she is now?"

He's used to it. Life in Ireland especially is a long series of remarks and explanations. How do you drive, how do you travel on airplanes, buses etc, etc. He's had it since childhood.

"I was a great target. To add to the fun, I had - well I still have them - these ears which stick out a mile. Worse than that I used try to cover my awkwardness by being the class clown. I was always the smart fella, always the first to make the joke.

"I got into some trouble when I was in my teens, got my head kicked in once actually, pretty badly, and I was as much to blame as anyone. I was compensating for being unusual by exaggerating other things about myself.

Still, even now that he has filled out and has the build and poise of an athlete and looks like he might be the chief bouncer at a night club just for bouncers, he finds himself the target of numbskulls who think that felling a seven footer proves something about their testosterone levels.

"It doesn't happen so much in America, I suppose because who knows I might produce a gun or something, but it happens a bit in Ireland, perhaps because the drink culture is different. It's a strange thing. I know that in a bar or a hotel room with a lot of people about that almost anybody who knows how to take care of themselves could beat me Lip. The thing is that people who can take care of themselves aren't the ones who are insecure enough to want to give you hassle. You get these little guys with chips on their shoulders. You get good at just defusing it and turning away.

He is glad to have gotten good at some things. As a teenager he got dragged out on to muddy playing pitches by a succession of hopeful coaches.

He recalls wading like a flamingo around a soccer field, sticking out like a giraffe among buffalo on a GAA pitch and, worst of all, protruding several feet into the air as the mopey lock at the back of a rugby serum.

"I liked all the games. I always liked to work up a sweat, but I just wasn't very good at any of them. I had height, but I didn't have any real physical presence. I was easy to bring down or knock off the ball and I wasn't good with my feet. If I'd grown up in America I would have been steered into basketball immediately, as soon as I looked tall. Growing up in Naas, though, all I knew about basket-ball was that it was a game which girls played. I might have been freaky, but I was no girl."

At 17, though, basketball inevitably discovered John Burke. It would be nice if he could tell how he suddenly reached down and picked up a ball and began popping jump shots in from every angle of the court. The truth is a little more prosaic.

"I was terrible at the game. Coaches like Enda Byrt were very good to me and very patient, but I was very bad. Being tall is a big advantage in basketball if you have the basics, the handling skills and the positioning instincts. There aren't many things in life more embarrassing, though, than being almost seven-foot tall and out on a basketball court and being bad at it, just getting in everyone's way. It's the one thing that people assume you are going to be really good at. When it doesn't happen immediately you can get very depressed."

He progressed slowly but steadily enough for Hofstra University in New York to take a gamble on him. He played a couple of years at Hofstra before moving on to Southampton College (Long Island University) where in his last season he had the good fortune to be coached by a former NBA star, Sid Green.

"At the start the States was a nightmare. I used to be so homesick I'd cry myself to sleep every night. Terrible stuff. I thought I wasn't going to make it. I wanted to go home. I'd decided to go home at one stage and I had this dream where I got home and everyone who had been at my going away party was there.

They were all surprised to see me and they were whispering to each other `poor John, he bottled it. Wasn't able for it'. So I stayed. The only chance I had was to stay.

My last year at Southampton with Coach Green brought my game on to another dimension. I led the country in blocks and rebounds and was captain of the team."

More, he got selected (the only Division Two player to make the cut) for the National Coaches All Star game in Rutger University. New Jersey. Big deal, or in that neighbourhood anyway.

"The All Star game gave me a sniff of it, of the exposure and the demands. It's not a game for the very best college players in America because they are the ones who are going straight into the NBA. Everyone knows everything there is to know about those guys. It's a game for the players on the fringe of that level, to give them a showcase and a bit of exposure.

He damaged his wrist in the last game of the season for Southampton College and the injury diminished his playing time and ability in the All Star game. Nevertheless his performance got him written up in Sports Illustrated and drew sufficient attention to point the way to a pro career.

"I played about 16 minutes. It would have been well over 20 if it hadn't been for the wrist. It meant I couldn't rebound (a key duty of big centres) properly. I didn't play great, but I didn't look out of my depth either. I equalled the record for the number of blocks in an All Star game (four) and got some good response out of it.

"Games at that level aren't really about what coaches make contact with you, but what agents get in touch. NBA teams might talk to you without an agent. Hardly any organisations in Europe will. The agents are all swarming around giving out their cards. Some of them wouldn't be people of the highest quality. You just hope to find somebody reputable whom you are comfortable with."

When the wrist recovered and the summer ended, he found himself playing out his first pro contract with Oldenburg, a professional second division club in Germany.

"It was a nice town and a good club. The contract was good but wasn't huge, but they were a reliable club. A lot of teams in Europe have reputations for offering big contracts loaded with the top money at the end. They might play you for a month or two and dump you and you'll never see the money and some other sticker will be wearing your vest. Oldenburg were very reliable like that, but being one of the foreigners there was pressure. I thought the season went OK, considering injuries and whatever. I look back on the stats and it was good.

He performed sufficiently well to be able to go back to Germany next season as a starting centre with a Division One club if he so wished. He's moving on, though, probably he thinks to Spain where he hopes to play back up centre with one of the big clubs attached to soccer teams. Seville is the favourite at the time of writing.

After that who knows where? There are leagues in France and Italy and (the best of all European leagues) in Greece.

"Greece would be a great place to play, but it's very hard to crack. They are basketball mad over there, but the money is so good it attracts a lot of very good top foreign players. They can pick up big name NBA players coming to the end of their careers or out of contract. It's very competitive for big men."

And the NBA? Another hoop, dream for those nights when he lies with his feet dangling out the end of the bed?

"I wouldn't rule it out, but I'm a bit off that standard now.

They have 30 seven-footers playing in the NBA and the difference in strength and athleticism is quite big. You look at the big guys in the NBA and they have great fast handling and positioning, but they are also very good at coming back tip quickly if they are knocked down. They have great vertical jumps and good shots and they move quite quickly.

"I think the verdict on me out of the All Star game was that I either needed to be more muscular or more athletic. I've put on 15 to 20 pounds in the past year through the weights. With my frame there is only so much weight you can put on, but it has made me better.

But if the Chicago Bulls can carry that big Aussie Luc Longley about, what's wrong with John Burke from Naas tying in with the poor bedraggled Boston Celtics?

"That kind of struck me, actually, that somebody might see a seven-footer from Ireland, the first Irishman to play in the NBA and all that and use it as a bit of a marketing opportunity. They could do all sorts of promotions and just play me for a few minutes every night. That's just a daydream, though. I'd like to be on any team on merit. I'm working very hard now and I find the harder I work the better I get. It's like anything else. I'll keep knocking away and take what comes along."

If he had stayed in Naas rather than run away with the great pro-sport circus, who knows what would have become of him.

As a young lad he had a succession of jobs most of which never worked out because he was too big to use the available tools.

"I wouldn't like to give the impression that I fancy myself as anything special now, but sometimes in a situation like mine you need to go away from home and travel just to develop. I don't think I could have done that in Naas. Basketball has given me a life and a confidence in myself. I've grown into my body and a lot of that has to do with being away and with basketball. It was good for me finding something I was good at.

Life plays tricks. Time was when he would have surrendered a limb if along with it he could have surrendered 12 inches of height. Now he notices that sometimes after a game he will go socialising with basketball players and a couple of them will be seven footers and he will feel uncomfortable in their presence. He has gotten so used to the perspective he has on life, to his height being such an integral part of his make-up and the way he perceives the world, that being amongst other giants is discomfiting.

"The next step would be making sure that I don't hide behind basketball for the rest of my life. I'd like to think that I have 10 years left as a professional player. After that I don't want to be in a situation where I have to get an assistant coach's job or else I won't survive. When the time comes to develop beyond professional sports that will be the next challenge. To do that, to be able to step out into another life and be just as confident in a world where size doesn't give me a competitive advantage. That's important."

Whatever about height, the NBA could use somebody of John Burke's class.