Basketball and everything in between

At the request of my fellow host of the TO – The Official Podcast of the TO, my next NBL legends feature will be on Dwayne McClain.  Dwayne was a very athletic 2/3 man who took the league by storm when he first arrived in 1991  He was everything that the Sydney Kings needed him to be at that time – an awesome basketball player, African American, super cool and could talk (marketable)  He was the face of a national advertising campagain for Diet Coke which was a first (and still only) for our sport in this country.

Dwayne was a 6″6′ shooting guard who played his college ball at Villanova.  He was also a member of Villanova’s championship team in 1985 against Georgetown.   I ordered that tape from Pontel in 2002 and didn’t even think about it.  My goals was to get as many NCAA championship games as I possibly could.  Anyway, I was watching the introductions to the game and not really paying to much attention and who should run out but a young Dwayne McClain.  It was bloody awesome.

After his college career, Dwayne played in the NBA with the Indiana Pacers averaging 3.5 points per game in the 45 games that he played in.  Dwayne also played professionally in France, Canada, The Philippines, Indonesia and Greece before coming to Australia.  The turning point was when he joined Magic Johnson’s Touring Dadells Veteran Team.  Dwayne was the young leagues in the squad.  I remember him throwing down a huge reverse jam in one of the games. 

His impact on the Sydney Kings was immediate.  He was confident with the ball and backed himself in most occasions.  He wasn’t the greatest shooter but he could get to the rack and was pretty bloody hard to stop.  He came 3rd in the league MVP voting in 1993, was named to the All NBL first team in 1992 and was selected as a NBL All Star in 1991 and 1997.

Whilst everybody loved the Dwayne McClain from the Sydney era, I actually preferred the one who finished his playing career with the Brisbane Bullets.  In the 1996 season, he started out like a house on fire for the Gold Coast Rollers.  After six games, he he tore up his knee and was unable to see out the season.  The Bullets took a punt and recruited him in the 1997 season and teamed up with Steve Woodberry as the imports for the Bullets.  A lot of his athleticism had deserted him by then, so he relied more on his smarts to get the job done.  It was clinical to watch and proved how good of a player the guy actually was.

The NBL was a better place when Dwayne McClain was in it.  He was awesome, had a NBA type game and was extremely marketable.  Schibz Spiel recently had an article titled ‘Hip Hop Hoops’ and it talked about making the NBL marketable again by attracting marquee American guys.  Dwayne certainly would have fitted into that category.