What should luc call me

He doesn't want it badly enough. Vlahov had spent a year at high school in the US where his basketball skills had not gone unnoticed. An enterprising coach from the University of New Mexico, Gary Colson, flew to Perth to check him out, and Vlahov invited Longley to join them at the local basketball centre. Maybe he needed a foil for him to look good against, because I was still just bouncing around, having a bit of fun.

Anyway, I was seven foot, I could use both hands, I could catch and run and chew gum at the same time. An adventurous and inquisitive person by nature, Longley jumped at Colson's offer of a scholarship to attend the University of New Mexico and play in its basketball team, the Lobos. I saw the movie Animal House, and toga parties looked like fun. And I just thought, great, I'm going to go and have a go at all that. The lanky Australian with the flowing red mullet was not an immediate success.

But in the course of a year, I put on 15 kilos of muscle and started to hold my ground a bit more and get more effective. In , midway through college, Longley was selected to play for Australia at the Seoul Olympics. The team came fourth, and something clicked for Longley. He returned to New Mexico with renewed focus and determination. He continued to work on his game and refashion himself, and NBA talent scouts began to take notice.

By the time Longley finished college he was hot property and when the NBA draft came around, he was the seventh pick.

This effectively meant he was considered the seventh best player in college basketball, an astonishing achievement for any player, let alone a laid-back Australian with a question mark over his commitment to the game.

In the NBA draft, the weakest teams get to choose from the best players, so the downside of being drafted so high was that Longley would be joining one of the worst-performing teams, the Minnesota Timberwolves. My game from college didn't translate in the NBA, but they had given me a million-dollar signing bonus. I was the first Australian to make it. I had to succeed. Just as he had at college, Longley set to work on himself and his game.

By his second year with the Timberwolves things began to fall into place, and then came the phone call that would change his life. The bad news is you're being traded. The good news is you're being traded to Chicago, to the Bulls. Longley couldn't believe his luck. The Chicago Bulls had just come off a run of three consecutive NBA championship wins — popularly known as a "three-peat" — under Michael Jordan.

Although Jordan had retired to pursue a baseball career, the team still had one of the NBA's greatest coaches in Phil Jackson, and one of the most gifted players in Scottie Pippen. The only unusual thing that struck me about him was his accent.

That became something for me to get used to a bit. And lots of lucky stuff after that. In coach Phil Jackson, Longley found a guide and mentor, someone who understood him and made him believe in himself. And in teammates Pippen and Steve Kerr, he found genuine friends. But a year after Longley joined the Bulls, Jordan returned, radically changing the team dynamic. Second was not good enough. Jordan had doubts about the new members of the team, believing they were trading on the hard work he had done in the early 90s and lacked the ambition, skill and discipline to win another championship.

As far as Jordan was concerned, if you weren't winning championships, what was the point in playing? Jordan was particularly concerned about the tall, laid-back Australian. I felt the need to push him," he recalls. That's what I call it — tough love. We all felt he was capable. But you have to be capable every single night for us to maintain success. Once again, Longley was forced to reshape himself, to transform his inherently gentle nature into something more warlike.

He found that process, and Jordan's remorseless aggression, challenging. I'm not a conduit for that kind of electricity naturally. When Jordan returned to the Bulls the team was rebuilding and was eventually knocked out of the competition in the play-off stage.

But they came back next season with a burning desire to win. And win they did. The Bulls' second "three-peat" — their three consecutive NBA championship wins in , 97 and 98 — is considered one of the greatest sporting achievements of all time. In addition to the constant pressure on court, there was an ever-increasing frenzy off it. The eccentric Dennis Rodman had joined the team the same year Jordan returned and their combined celebrity, along with what the team was trying to achieve, created a perfect storm of hype and adulation.

Every town, there'd be hundreds of people outside the hotel. I was Norman Gunston for two years. When Longley wasn't borrowing the identity of the quintessentially Australian comedian, his go-to alias was childhood hero and Australian Rules legend Bruce Doull.

Known as the "flying doormat", Doull was a ferocious defender on the field but modest and gentle off it, much like Longley himself. By the time the third championship year rolled around the Bulls players were physically and emotionally exhausted. Bulls management had already decided the line-up would be dismantled the following year and Jackson began referring to that season as "the last dance" to motivate the team to one final win.

Sensing history in the making, the NBA sent a documentary crew to film the Bulls behind the scenes. He was, after all, the starting centre — part of the core group of five players who would begin each game. He knew how to position himself well. And the broken arm, plus all the usual runny noses and diaper rash episodes every little guy goes through. But even when your "boo boos" were bothering you, and the hot June days made your cast sweaty and itchy, you were always a trouper.

You kept that wicked sense of humor, and even learned how to shoot baskets and take slap shots while one arm was out of commission. That all seems like ancient history. You were jumping up and down now, sounding more urgent than before. Dit tup Daddy! In Lucspeak, "peas" means "please" and "djoo joo" means "thank you. And we played football for a while longer, until a commercial, at which time you picked up a hockey stick. Hockey time.

Heeeere Daddy. Hockey dick. It means, "Here Daddy, have a hockey stick. I see broken furniture in our future together, kid. There will come a time, much too soon, when I will stop letting you win, and you'll start to figure that, given your overwhelming physical advantages, maybe you ought to take it easy on the old man. I can wait for that, frankly. Right now, you're turning 2 and I already wish I could turn back the clock. The Capital Campaign was needed to build an endowment to assure a healthy future for the University.

My understanding then was that Loyola was behind in building its endowment compared to other same size Universities. Perhaps Fr. The University board, led by Fr. Baumhart had made the difficult decision to close the dental school and the dental school alumni were very upset. As someone working with Mundelein alums I was witnessing first hand - the sadness and loss that alums feel when they lose their school and maybe this is why something attributed to Fr.

Ray stuck with me all these years. It might have been Beth, or Mike, Connie or Rob - but someone shared a story of an irate dental alum who repeatedly berated staff by phone, in public forums, and by letter of his anger about the dental school closure. Staff members had tried to listen and to reason with the angry man, but in the end it came down to an angry phone call, withdrawal of the man's financial support and the alum hanging up on Fr.

Baumhart's response when he shared the outcome of the call with development leadership was this:. It's easier to stay angry than to do the work it takes to reconcile. The message stayed with me as an example of a leader that rolled up his sleeves and took the heat. He also took the lesson and passed it on to the staff. It's always easier to stay angry, but we are asked to do better and he lead by example. I was always impressed by Fr. Baumhart's humility and kindness. In , after being fired from a law book publishing company, I received a call from Fr.

Baumhart and he said to come out for an interview. So I started on December 22, and made phone calls every day to people and insurance companies that owed Loyola money.

Over the years I stayed close with Fr. After Fr.