19 years ago today, Andrew ‘Gazey’ Gaze — aka the Aussie GOAT, aka Air Gaze, aka the Grey Mamba — strapped on his K-Mart signature edition Dunlop Gaze 1s for his sixth game for the San Antonio Spurs… and, after roughly 80,000 buckets in the NBL, finally scored his FIRST NBA points in over six years!
That’s right, the Grey Mamba finally got the hoop wet in a blow out Spurs win over the #Sonics, getting on the court for a single glorious minute of ground-bound magic! (by the way, the fact that the Aussie Larry Bird couldn’t get more run is a bigger outrage than Hot Dogs from Big Brother never winning a Logie.)
In a single minute that was better than the entirety of Josh Bootsma’s AFL career, Gazey put in more hard yakka than a Queanbeyan traffic cop after SUMMERNATS. The Grey Mamba hit one the two textbook-form 3-pointers he attempted and handed off an assist so picture perfect that Gregg Popovich later commissioned bloody Ken Done to paint an abstract of it.
Like a combo of Don Bradman, Dawn Frazer and Makybe Diva, in only 60 seconds Australia’s greatest sporting hero ended up with 3 points and 1 assist.
Now, I’m no scientician — and stats are for nerds — but by my calculation, if Air Gazey had played a typical 36 minutes, he would’ve had 36 assists and scored 108 points!!!
Sure, Gazey still led the Spurs to an NBA title that year, but Pop choosing to barely play the all-time Aussie GOAT 🐐 was a worse decision than the jokers at Channel 10 cancelling Cheez TV.
Just the NBA’s pervasive anti-Strayan bias at work I reckon.
Anyway. Gazey finally scoring his first bucket with the Spurs was about as bonza as a Bunnings snag after you spent Friday night smashing tins!
#ONYA Grey Mamba!
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