When Ash Arnott first laid eyes on Johnny Furphy, the then-14-year-old looked more likely to have a future as the frontman for Australian indie rock band Ocean Alley than as a player in the NBA.
“A little surfer boy,” as Arnott described it to foxsports.com.au, with the blonde hair to match.
Although Arnott, now assistant coach of the men’s program at Basketball Australia’s Centre of Excellence (CoE), saw more than just those long locks.
He saw a light frame but one with plenty of room to grow, knowing Johnny’s brother Joe had started out at a similar height before growing five or six inches one summer.
He also noticed the way Furphy moved. It was and still is “different”, as Robbie McKinlay, the head coach at the CoE, put it.
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“The way I sort of describe it is he kind of glides,” McKinlay told foxsports.com.au.
All of this is to say that Arnott saw something in Furphy. He wasn’t entirely sure where it would take him or what he would become, but he always knew this kid “had a chance”.
A chance to play college basketball for the Kansas Jayhawks and then go declare for the NBA Draft after his freshman year?
“I’d be lying. I can’t predict that,” Arnott said.
“But my job back then was to try and identify players to see who could maybe take the next step and be a pro. That’s the idea through Basketball Victoria and Basketball Australia, to identify kids that you think can go on and be professional basketballers, and knowing that he was going to be tall and a long athlete, I always had that belief that this kid could be good.
“He’s gone way past what my beliefs were when I saw him.”
Which says a lot given how much Arnott believed in Furphy, not just in that first time he saw him back in 2018 but throughout his time at the CoE, where he and other staff would tell Furphy “you are where you’re supposed to be”.
Furphy wasn’t supposed to be here, preparing to attend Thursday’s first round of the draft in the green room, where the top prospects in each year’s class wait to hear their name called.
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Last year, 24 of the 25 players invited to the green room were selected in the opening round, with ESPN reporting Furphy is drawing “strong interest” from as high as Memphis at ninth overall.
Just over a year ago the prospect of Furphy declaring for the draft, let alone going in the first round, was the furthest thing from his mind.
In fact, the prospect of even playing college basketball wasn’t really on his radar. He had just one college scholarship offer and was already planning on spending another year at the CoE.
So, how did Furphy go from a relative unknown to a potential lottery pick in this week’s draft?
It all starts in the unlikeliest of places.
Well, if you asked Arnott he would probably push back on describing it as unlikely. Because, as he pointed out, “this is the small world” of Australian basketball after all.
‘WHO’S THAT KID?’: HOW FURPHY WENT FROM UNKNOWN TO ON THE RISE
The story of Furphy’s rise starts, not on a basketball court, but at the AUSVEG Convention in Adelaide.
Arnott’s parents were vegetable farmers and Richard Furphy, Johnny’s father, was at the Convention as part of his work. They also happened to be seated at the same table.
So, they got to talking and naturally, as is the case with all parents, the topic of their kids eventually came up.
It turned out Joe, the Furphy’s eldest son, was also a talented basketball player and the family were trying to get him to college. It also turned out Ash Arnott wasn’t a new name for them.
Arnott was an assistant coach with the Basketball Victoria State Development Program at the time and, being the “small world of basketball” as he would say, they already knew of him.
So, Arnott agreed to catch up with Joe and Richard one day at a cafe near Waverley Park, where the Hawthorn Hawks train, and also began the process of reaching out to some colleges.
Then he learned about Johnny.
“So I made an effort to go out and watch him,” Arnott said.
“Straight away I was saying to Richard, ‘Mate I love his frame’, you can see he’s the baby of the family and the way he moves you can see he’s skilled but he was just so lightly built.”
Still, again, Arnott saw something in Furphy. So, he talked to Michael Czepil, Basketball Victoria’s Metropolitan High Performance Coach, convinced there was a “hooper there”.
Furphy made Southern Cross Challenge teams, would regularly be picked for the State Development Program and was part of the Under 18 state team as an emergency player.
But it wasn’t until 2022 that he made his first state team and even still, it was as part of the second team at the Under 20 National Championships up in Mackay.
That happened to be the first time McKinlay, head coach at the CoE, saw Furphy and he also liked what he was seeing.
“Hey mate, do you know Johnny Furphy?,” he asked Arnott around halfway into his first game.
“Yes I do. I know him very, very well,” Arnott replied, adding: “You like him, don’t you?”
Intriguing was the word McKinlay used, according to Arnott.
Marty Clarke, technical director at the NBA’s Global Academy, also got his first look at Furphy in Mackay.
“I just said, ‘Who’s that kid? I hadn’t seen or heard of him’, and I know most of the guys around that level because generally you’ve seen them at 16s and you’ve seen them at 18,” Clarke told foxsports.com.au.
“He just looked different. He ran up and down the floor effortlessly, and that was the first thing I would have said, ‘Oh, that guy runs really well’. And then he shot it and the shot looked nice.
“He played really hard, attacked the rim off the dribble, attacked the rim on rebounding. He tried to play defence, and I was like, ‘Oh this kid is pretty good, who is he?’.”
There were some things Furphy had to work on. His handle “wasn’t great” while he “didn’t go side to side all that well” either.
“But they were all things you can work on,” Clarke added, and the way Furphy handled himself on the court suggested he was a kid that was ready to learn too.
His high “wasn’t too high” and his low “wasn’t too low”, as Clarke put it, while McKinlay said Furphy was “steady the whole time”.
“And that’s when the whole entire staff started to get this interest in Johnny,” Arnott added.
From there, Furphy was invited to play in the NBL1 Wildcard series in Perth as part of a CoE squad which included Alex Toohey, Ben Henshall, Alex Condon and Tyrese Proctor.
“If you saw him in his first couple of games there to where he is now you just would laugh,” Arnott said, thinking back to the moment Furphy first joined the team for breakfast in Western Australia and was asking him if he could get a coffee.
“Because none of our kids would ever do that,” Arnott laughed.
“They were still drinking hot chocolates and just getting their bacon and eggs and I was like, ‘coffee Robbie’ and just jokingly said, ‘coffee Johnny’ and he goes, ‘Yeah mate can I get a latte please’.
“And I look back at Robbie like, ‘Oh my God’, because that was just the type of kid he was. He beat his own drum, he was comfortable in his own skin and not in a bad way.”
Because as Arnott got to know this “skinny little kid from Clifton Hill” more and got to “peel the layers back”, he found out a morning coffee wasn’t just a morning coffee for Furphy.
It was “something special for him”, something he and his dad Richard would always share at the Victorian markets. Just one, small glimpse into the person behind the player.
The player that scored 12 points in his first game at the Wildcard series to go with just as many rebounds and five steals in a 46-point win against the Rockingham Flames.
Halfway through that game, McKinlay was already convinced.
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“This is a kid we need to bring into the CoE,” he said, and it was a process made easier by the fact Proctor was leaving the program for Duke, opening up a scholarship for Furphy.
Although Furphy’s move to Canberra was far from straight-forward, starting with the fact he was halfway through Year 12 and as a result had to finish his final year of high school online.
Then there were the shin splints which, while not serious, did “sort of restrict what he could do straight away” according to McKinlay.
And you can add in a broken wrist too, which Furphy suffered in a March 2023 game while playing in the CoE’s 110-37 win over the Penrith Panthers in the NBL1 East.
But in between those setbacks, Furphy was starting to show signs and playing high-level basketball along the way, first during a joint trip with the NBA Global Academy to Spain in October 2022 and then in January the following year at the North East Prep School Invitational in Providence, where he was named to the All-Tournament Team.
Still, at that point he only had one college scholarship offer from Sacramento State. By the end of July that had all changed after Furphy turned heads at the NBA Academy Games.
Suddenly he was one of the most sought-after recruits in college basketball, with around 30 high major offers from programs including Kansas, Gonzaga, Providence and North Carolina according to McKinlay.
“That first game Robbie and I kind of looked at each other,” Arnott said, “and we were like, ‘This is the coming out party. This is the Johnny that we were waiting for’.”
THE WAKE-UP CALL AND ‘F-U’ DUNK IN FURPHY’S ‘COMING OUT PARTY’
Although at one point during a game against NBA Academy Select Red, the Johnny they had been waiting for had gone missing again.
“We were sort of just running up and down,” McKinlay said.
Going through the motions. So, he called a timeout and pulled Furphy to the side.
“And I said, ‘Hey Johnny, you’re wasting my time, you’re wasting all the college coaches’ time, you’re wasting your time. What’s going on?”.
McKinlay knew how important a tournament like this could be for Furphy’s career. How important it had already been for Alex Toohey, who committed to Gonzaga but ended up playing in the NBL as part of its Next Stars program after breaking out at the Academy Games the year prior.
It is why he got on a call with Furphy and his parents before the trip to Atlanta, telling them: “Listen. These Academy Games, this thing’s going to blow up in a good way”.
“Now, to the level it did, I didn’t forecast that,” McKinlay added.
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But he knew there was at least the opportunity for Furphy to make a name for himself, especially with multiple high-major coaches and NBA scouts watching on.
Furphy assured McKinlay that he was fine, telling his coach: “Nah, I’m good”.
“OK. Well, do something,” replied McKinlay.
He did something alright. A play or two later, Furphy got the ball on the left baseline and ripped it to the middle for a monster dunk that brought the entire CoE bench to its feet.
The opposing coach called a timeout and McKinlay grabbed Furphy once more.
“That was an F-U dunk, wasn’t it?” he said, to which Furphy innocently replied: “What do you mean by that?”.
“Well,” McKinlay responded, “I got on you and you were sort of just saying, ‘Hey go sit down and shut the you know what up’.”
“No it wasn’t that,” Furphy told his coach, with a “little cheeky smile” as he went to the bench.
It was one of many highlight plays Furphy had in the tournament, including another big dunk against one of the African NBA Academy teams, as he went on to average 14.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 1.3 assists and 1.8 steals a game to start what Clarke described as a “meteoric rise”.
“He exploded at that tournament,” added Shawn King, who coached Furphy in the Under 18s at Hawthorn and then in 2022 when he played for Melbourne University in the Big V.
“I always thought he would be like a D1 player. But he kind of just took it to a whole other level.
“You could see glimpses of the NBA. I thought he could be an NBA kid. But obviously I didn’t think it would happen this quick.”
Arnott, meanwhile, said Furphy’s success at the tournament and the interest that followed gave rise to a “new Johnny”.
“He had this swagger about him,” the CoE assistant coach said.
“He knew that he was at the level and he was ready for this next step in his career and you see the last couple of games he played with the CoE in the [NBL1] East. He was dominant.”
Furphy was just as impressive at the Sportradar Showdown in Las Vegas later that month and with interest quickly skyrocketing, then came another sit-down with his parents and McKinlay. Because as much as he had planned to stay at the CoE for another year, McKinlay was right. It had blown up in a good way.
Fortunately, McKinlay had the expertise of Clarke and others at the NBA Academy, including Greg Colucci and Brian Cardinal, to lean on as they mapped out Furphy’s next steps.
“He was going to stay (at the CoE) an extra 12 months,” McKinlay said.
“We just sort of sat down and said, ‘Why would you want to stay now when you’ve got these schools that want you now’.
“The one luxury he did have was because it was so late in the piece most of the rosters were set and so I said, ‘You’re going in to fill a need… you may commit and stay for an extra 12 months, but that roster with the transfer portal could be a completely new roster’.
“The family decided they wanted to head off straight away and it happened at light speed. And next thing you know, he was at the University of Kansas.”
THE MOMENT FURPHY PROVED HE WAS READY FOR COLLEGE BASKETBALL
As fast as it all happened, Furphy still had plenty of catching up to do when he arrived in Kansas, having missed summer workouts and the Jayhawks’ exhibition game against the Bahamas National Team.
It was always going to take time for him to adjust to the physicality and speed of college basketball and the fact he arrived not as prepared as the other freshmen on the roster, through no fault of his own, only should have made it even harder for Furphy to earn playing time.
The emphasis there being on should have, because if there is anything to take away from Furphy’s rapid rise, it is the fact that he continued to exceed expectations.
“What Johnny did is he got himself right physically,” McKinlay said.
“He jumped straight into the playbook. I know they’ve got over 100 plays in that playbook. He made sure he didn’t give the coaching staff a reason to not play him and I thought he did a good job with that.”
Furphy started out the season as a rotation option for Kansas coach Bill Self off the bench but ended up starting 19 of 33 games as a freshman, finishing 14 of them in double figures.
His shooting efficiency dipped down the stretch as he was forced into a more prominent role, which in turn led to more attention for the Australian from the opposition.
But as a whole Furphy was highly productive once given a starting role, going 12-for-22 from downtown during one four-game stretch of the season as he rocketed up draft boards.
For King, Furphy’s former coach at Hawthorn and Melbourne University, his breakout season with the Jayhawks wasn’t a surprise.
“Once he feels comfortable in his situation he gets better and better and I think you saw that at Kansas this year where he didn’t quite have the rhythm and then all of a sudden he found it and he’s like, ‘I can do this’ and then he was playing at a different level,” King said.
McKinlay, meanwhile, actually got to meet up with Furphy in early December and watch him play 14 minutes off the bench in Kansas’ 69-65 win over UConn.
“He hit two big threes in that game in that environment,” McKinlay said.
“And it was like, ‘OK. If this doesn’t rattle you here in this one, then you’re fine’.”
McKinlay also got to watch one practice session where he said Furphy, still only relatively new to the team, was already “telling some of the older guys where they needed to be”.
“I was like, ‘OK. He’s fine. He’s ready to go’. The big environment didn’t bother him,” McKinlay added.
“He’s got a self-confidence that, it’s hard to crack that thing. He’s got a belief in himself and his ability.”
A belief that meant when McKinlay was once talking to his dad Richard, who asked Johnny if he thought he was going to make the NBA, the 19-year-old was quick to reply.
“Yeah absolutely,” McKinlay said, recalling that conversation early in Furphy’s time at Kansas.
“That sort of surprised his dad a little bit, that he had that confidence. He definitely showed that in the second half of the season for Kansas.”
McKinlay had a lot of scouts reach out to him about Furphy and he told them all the same thing: the ball doesn’t stick with Johnny.
“His quick decision-making is going to help him in the NBA,” McKinlay said.
“I think NBA players are going to enjoy playing with him because they know if he doesn’t have his shot then he’s going to move that thing on quick or he’s going to cut to the right space or whatever it is.
“He’s just got to continue to work, get stronger physically, so when he does drive the ball he doesn’t get bumped off his line. I think once he gets that down then, he’s going to be one hell of a player.”
ESPN’s Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo have Furphy going to the Magic at 18th overall in their latest mock draft, adding he is receiving “strong interest, starting with Memphis at No. 9, extending throughout the teens and ending with Cleveland at No. 20”.
Sam Vecenie of The Athletic also has mocked Furphy to Orlando, while The Ringer has him at No.24 to the Knicks, CBS Sports has him at No.20 to Cleveland and it is No.27 to Minnesota for Bleacher Report.
Either way, most experts seem to agree that Furphy, while raw, has the right combination of size, shooting and athleticism that makes him an intriguing upside swing in this year’s draft.
But as the bright lights of the NBA await, Furphy still hasn’t forgotten where he came from.
Which is why when he and his family received an invite to the green room, Furphy had two more familiar faces he wanted to be alongside when his name was called.
REFLECTING ON HOW FAR FURPHY HAS COME… AND HOW FAR HE WILL GO
McKinlay was “speechless” when, “completely out of the blue”, he got a text message from Furphy inviting him to the draft, which will be held at Barclays Center in New York.
He didn’t just invite him though. Furphy also offered to pay to bring McKinlay over too.
“That’s something that I didn’t expect but it just speaks volume to him as an individual, how he was brought up in his family,” McKinlay said.
“He’s just a phenomenal kid… he knows where he’s come from and people that have played a small part in it.”
King received the same offer, as did Arnott. Unfortunately he’s in Turkey as assistant coach of the Crocs squad representing Australia in the FIBA Under-17 Basketball World Cup and can’t make it.
Three of Furphy’s former CoE teammates from the Academy Games — Dash Daniels, Nash Walker and Sa Pilimai — are part of that Crocs squad and even from afar, and at 3am local time when the draft will start in Istanbul, Arnott will be watching.
Watching and then thinking about just how far that “little surfer boy” has come and how far he has to go, still only 19 years old and hopefully with a long NBA career ahead of him.
But as much as Johnny Furphy’s story is about how much things have changed over the past two years, it is also just as much about what has stayed the same.
Because in many ways he is still that little surfer boy who didn’t make a state team until 2022 and yet “never said one negative word” according to Arnott, choosing grace and gratitude — thankful to even have the opportunity to try out.
“A big part of that is just hanging in there,” Clarke, the technical director at the NBA Global Academy, said.
“If you hang in there and do the work and keep believing, there’s a chance you’re going to get where you want to get to. If you get all disappointed early on because you don’t make a team or you don’t get as many shots as you want to get or you’re not playing as much, then you give yourself no chance, absolutely no chance.
“I think the thing for Johnny is he just hung in there, hung in there long enough until he was ready and an opportunity came along and then he made the most of his opportunity.”
There are many lessons to be learned from Furphy’s success but that in particular, the ability to stick it out and keep showing up, is the part Arnott holds onto as he ushers in the next generation of Australian basketball talent in his role as assistant coach at the CoE.
“Not getting too high and not getting too low, but continuing to work and showing up, that was one of his greatest assets,” Arnott said.
“A lot of these new athletes coming through want everything now and I understand, you want every opportunity that comes your way, but the most important skill these days is to be able to turn up every day and be available and work on your game and that’s something that I think sometimes gets missed.
“Everyone wants to talk about Johnny’s athleticism, his skill. The skill part came from his ability to work on his game constantly.”
Connected to that is the fact everyone has their own pathway. Furphy took the college route. Dyson Daniels went through G-League Ignite. Josh Giddey was an NBL Next Star.
They all went on different journeys and yet it led to the same place. It started in the same place too, in the same locker rooms where McKinlay said the next Johnny Furphy may be sitting right now.
“What we tried to let the kids know is [that] Johnny was here 12 months ago,” he said.
“He was in this locker room sitting where you guys are. So while we sometimes think the NBA is so far away, in actual fact, it might be 12 months away, so you better get yourself ready now for what may come.
“Just because you didn’t make that first team you thought you should have made, if you keep working then good things can definitely happen. Johnny is the poster boy for that right now and there’ll be another Johnny Furphy, who knows when?”
But even if there is another player like Johnny Furphy, there won’t be another Johnny Furphy the person. McKinlay said he doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t like him.
In fact, Furphy was his son’s favourite player during his time at the CoE. McKinlay isn’t sure why his son, who was five years old at the time, gravitated towards Furphy in particular.
But every time McKinlay talked to his son on the phone after a game, he always asked the same question: Where’s Johnny?
There were plenty of other great players on the roster at the time, including Toohey, Condon and Henshall, who were part of a 2004 age group that McKinlay described as “special”.
“I think there’s a lot of future Boomers in that crop of 2004 players,” he added.
Furphy was included in the Boomers’ extended squad for the upcoming Paris Olympics before being cut when a revised squad was later announced, although the fact he was in the mix in the first place speaks to just how highly-regarded the 19-year-old already is.
Again, remember this was a kid who didn’t make his first state team until the Under 20s and even still, it was with the B team.
This was also a kid who, after being told by Arnott early at the Academy Games that a high major Division I school had interest in him, couldn’t hide his excitement.
Because if there is one thing Arnott will take away from his time with Furphy, it is joy.
“To see the smile on his face,” Arnott said, “and [him] being like, ‘No way. Oh my God’, and just to remember that he was still an 18-year-old kid.
“To see that pure joy in him and then once he’d really taken off and started playing this great style of basketball, sitting back and just being like, ‘This kid is going to be special’.”
And while Arnott won’t have be there in person on Thursday, instead sitting in a hotel room in Instanbul over 8,000 kilometres away, he had a first-hand look at all the key moments leading up to it.
“I guess just having a front row seat to it, not necessarily being a part of it, but just having a front row seat to how special he was becoming, I think that’s the best memory,” Arnott said.
“And I’m most thankful for just being a part of it, having that front row seat. Nothing better than that.”
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