“Scottie, you made it look easy, / the way your legs ate air, / found every escalator up. // i was watching your game. / working my own factory” – José Olivarez, “Ode to Scottie Pippen”
Leigh Ellis had the dream job. That’s the lede on Leigh—not just an NBA podcaster, but one-sixth of The Basketball Jones/The Starters/No Dunks, a crew of Guys Being Dudes who are so smart about basketball that the NBA actually gave them a TV show for a while. Leigh Ellis got to not only watch and talk hoops for a living, his knowledge almost certainly influenced the outcome of the 2015 Three Point Shootout at All-Star Weekend featuring the greatest shooter in human history. He got to interview legends like Isiah Thomas and Kendall Gill; he uncovered that Nic Batum’s go-to favorite Super Bowl snack is to “cook some duck with potatoes or maybe apples” (footage lost to the archives at The Score, but lives rent-free in my head). Leigh Ellis, in a sense, made the NBA.
Then he walked away.
Apparently trying to go for the world record in “Most Dream Jobs Held In One Lifetime,” Ellis announced at the beginning of the 2022-23 NBA season that he was leaving No Dunks to *Jules from Pulp Fiction voice* walk the earth. Or rather, play pickup basketball across the earth. A lifelong lover of travel, Ellis is looking to use basketball as way of understanding and experiencing other people and cultures. The working title so far is “20 Cities, 20 Countries, 20 Games,” and it’s being documented on Ellis’s YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. There, you’ll find Leigh playing pickup basketball, getting schooled in trick shots by Maria from Serbia, drinking a postgame Rakija with former NBA player Damjan Rudež in Croatia, or asking Saša Dončic if he’s ever lost a game to some guy named Luka. Leigh was kind enough to sit down with me and talk international hoops, differing pickup styles, and the connections you make with people beyond the court.
Note: this interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
You often tell a story about the 1987 All-Star game being seminal to your NBA fandom as a kid. Obviously the game and the league is more global than it was when you were coming up, kids today have the internet, it’s easier to find basketball. Still: has it occurred to you that you could be some ten-year-old kid’s Rolando Blackman doing this?
Interesting, yeah. I often think about how, if I met that 10-or-11-year-old kid today, who saw that All-Star Game for the first time and had these dreams of like, “man I would love to be in America. Following the NBA, covering the NBA and being a part of it—I reached that. The funny thing is, I used to be a little bit embarrassed to say this, but I had dreams of making the NBA. In the traditional sense, become a player and a star. Like a lot of kids do. Whether that’s basketball, football, baseball, whatever—most kids, boys and girls have a dream of reaching the highest level. Physically, [laughs] genetically, I didn’t quite get there as I envisioned.
But I did eventually make it to the NBA on NBATV and so for me it wasn’t any less of an experience because that was something that I also dreamed of. When I was a kid, I was like the school sports journalist. I had all the scores, all the stats. People used to come to me and say, ask a question—you know, they’d tease me in a way, but I didn’t care, because I loved sports. So, you know, I think what is important is that we all do have those dreams and maybe they don’t quite come to fruition in the way that we thought or hoped as a kid, but you can get sorta close to it anyway.
So for me, that game really did symbolize a big, important moment in my life. It took me on a path. Now, that path wasn’t conventional by any means and it certainly wasn’t in a straight line, but I sort of followed it anyway. And eventually got to a point that I was, you know, I was in the NBA. I was able to realize that dream, in a slightly different way than being on the court and being Michael Jordan, but being pretty cool as well, being in the NBA for six seasons—officially in the NBA for six seasons, I’ve been podcasting around that, of course—but to be on NBATV was an awesome experience.
That is an inspiration. I mean, I had the same NBA dreams as you and the same genetic predisposition, I think. But basketball never stops! That’s kinda echoing with your current project, keep being around the game and see what happens.
Yeah, like you said earlier: it wasn’t a global game in the late 80s, the same sense. Certainly that it is now. I mean, there were the odd international player, but now, you only have to look at the last four MVPs—and there’s a good chance it’ll be five years in a row—that it’ll be a non-U.S. player who wins it again this year. But also, just the exposure. Like you said, internet, cable TV, we can watch games anywhere in the world now. There’s so much more access to it. I think that’s a huge, huge part of why the game has become so popular internationally, is that people can watch it now. Not only that, but you have really strong leagues in Europe and South America. Even the Australian league, I mean, financially, the Australian league is tough to compete with some of the bigger European leagues and the Asian leagues. But certainly the quality of basketball is very good. We saw a team from Adelaide, you know, preseason, friendly, exhibition game, they went and they won against an NBA-caliber team in Phoenix at the start of the season. So the game itself has really risen around the world.
Absolutely. Three of the best five players in the world right now are European (obviously Giannis is African-European), something that was hard to imagine even less than 10 years ago. I think when you were on NBATV, that was hard to imagine. Do you see this trend continuing? You talk about other pro leagues. Do you see the potential for basketball, not just the NBA, but basketball—to be as big as, say, soccer internationally?
I mean, I think it’s going to continue to get bigger, I don’t know if it can ever reach quite the levels that we just saw with the [FIFA] World Cup, where basically the whole world is engaged at some point. But I don’t think it needs to be, and I don’t think it means it’s a failure if it’s not. I just think that basketball is still—its strength is that it’s the cool sport. We all love it when a guy, you know, breaks someone’s ankles, steps back and hits a three, goes up for a dunk, dunks it on someone, you know, Giannis has this incredible ability to come down the lane and all of the sudden he rises up with his left hand and just crushes a dunk. But then he might get dunked on at the other end as well! So, basketball’s a great sport for show-offs. It’s a great sport for people to be like, “watch this trick I can do.” It has that appeal.
And it’s great for both sexes right now! The WNBA has really taken off in the last few years. So boys and girls everywhere are really starting to see basketball as a way to show off their artistry, creativity, you know, the spontaneity of: in-the-moment you can do something really cool that might be viral around the world in seconds. So I think basketball is only going to get bigger and bigger.
When you see international players having legitimate success—not just being role players, not just being end-of-the-bench guys or anything like that, but MVP, Most Improved, Defensive Player of the Year, winning championships, really showing, like Giannis. When he won the championship two seasons ago as MVP—Finals MVP—that was just an incredible moment. We’ve seen it before: Dirk won a championship, of course, Hakeem Olajuwon going back. But it feels now that, man, it could be Dončić, it could Jokić, it could be Giannis again, you know?
And look, that’s not a knock on any American player. It’s just the strength around the world now, these athletes. And they’re not conventional. I mean, it’s funny when you compare Giannis to Jokić. Giannis is a Greek god, his body doesn’t look like he has a pound of fat or wasted skin on him, whereas Jokić, you know, looks like he hasn’t been in a gym much his whole life. Same with Luka Dončić, Dončić isn’t a chiseled athlete, the same as Giannis is. But they’re all equally effective, because to me, ultimately, they’re just basketball players. That just shows that there’s not one way that works. You might be that Giannis type, but you don’t have to be. If you’re a basketball player and you’ve got finesse to your game, like Dončić and Jokić, you can be just as impactful as Giannis, who is a physical specimen.
That’s something I really love about basketball as well, that there are multiple styles and multiple flavors, and I think that the international aspect of the game as we’ve seen it increase in the 21st century has only contributed to that. There was a term I liked in Josh Coyne’s writeup of you—“the language of basketball.” That’s something I’m really interested in, you talked about the different styles that people play. I wanna shift to pickup for a second.
I feel like there are certain universalities in the language of basketball—like, warmup shootarounds are ‘make it take it,’—and what I like to call ‘dialects’ in the language of basketball—like whether you’re playing ones and twos or twos and threes. Have you noticed any customs playing pickup in Europe (or Australia) that might be surprising to Americans?
It’s basically varied in almost every city I’ve been to in some way. For example, in the Balkans, in Slovenia, there were a lot of guys who turned up to my run, probably 10-15. So I just assumed let’s play full-court fives so every can can play, and they were like, “no one pays fives down here. No one plays full court, it’s all 3-on-3.” And I was like, “well, let’s play that, then,” and they were like, “no, it’s fine, you wanna play fives, let’s play fives.” I just want everyone to feel involved. If you come out to one of my runs, I want you to play. I don’t want anyone sitting on the bench. So we did play, but they were like, “no one ever plays [5-on-5], it’s all 3-on-3.”
What I noticed, especially about that run, was—when I play in America here, there’s a lot more iso. A lot more 1-on-1, guys just come down, maybe one pass, then it’s going up. There’s not a lot of ball movement. Well, in the Balkans, especially in Slovenia, that ball was zipping around all over the place. And I was, like, playing defense, and my man’s doing backdoor screens and cuts and I’m like “oh my God, what’s going on here? I’m gonna look as if I’m some guy who doesn’t play defense, this guy’s turned up to play basketball and he doesn’t play defense, doesn’t watch his man, he gets scored on every time.” So that was a real shock. I think I only scored one or two baskets in the hour that we played because it was like, the ball as well, on offense, it just moves around. If you pass it, another guy passes it, and another guy moves it, and so many times, it either got an open look or an easy layup. Like, wow, this is incredibly high-level basketball.
But then it did change a little bit, too, like in Croatia for example. In Zagreb, I played a game where you didn’t have to take the ball out on a miss. So if a guy shoots it, right? And the other team rebounds—now sometimes, if there’s an airball, you don’t have to take it out, you can put it straight back up—but this was like, live ball stuff. If the other team gets the rebound, it’s live ball, you can just put it back up and in. I was like, “oh, okay. Wasn’t expecting that.” Not only that, if you scored, you keep possession, but you wouldn’t start from the top of the key. You would have to pass it in, as if it’s like a normal end-of-the-basket play, where it would be out of court and you pass it in.
Then I played in Belgrade with some Russian guys. It wasn’t ‘make it, take it.’ So if you made a shot, the other team just gets the ball, the other team gets possession. Which is something I don’t think I’ve ever played at pickup, it’s always like “if you score, you keep possession.” So the whole time, you’re sort of adjusting to rules and scoring. You know, oftentimes it’s like “we’re playing to seven, dead.” Other times, it’s like, “seven, but you gotta win by two.” Sometimes it’s 10, sometimes it’s 12. 2s, 3s, all those variations.
Ultimately, it comes down to, you know, if you’re playing 2s or 3s, whatever it is, you very quickly form a bond with your teammates. You’re like, “okay, this guy likes to shoot, this guy likes to drive, this guy’s maybe not a good shooter, so I have to do a bit more of the heavy lifting on that end.” Things like that and all those little adjustments. But ultimately, you don’t need that verbal communication all the time. Sometimes, it can just be like “okay, well I can sorta read this guy. I know what he likes to do, I know how he likes to play.” And that, to me, is what makes it so fun. You don’t need to be like, “okay, I’m going to run this play, I want you to go here, you to go there.” The body language talks to you more than the verbal stuff.
Yeah, all that “knowing your teammates” and doing the passing and cutting stuff—is one reason why I like playing with my friends so much more than I like playing with strangers. The other reason is, I’m not very athletic, and neither are my friends. But that is a great lead-in to another question I had. This is going to sound like sucking up, but I promise you it’s not, I’m 100% serious: my favorite segment on The Starters was the Very Solid Play. It sounds like you’ve seen some VSPs, especially in the Balkans.
Well, the thing is, at our level, and I mean non-professional level, you don’t see much dunking. You don’t see that sort of athleticism. It’s so much more about playing smart basketball. Honestly, throughout my life, the most effective basketball has always been teamwork. When I play here on Wednesday nights, here in America, you sometimes come down, you might not touch the ball for four or five possessions in a row. Because a guy comes down, dun-dun-dun-dun-BOOM and shoots it. Whether it goes in or not doesn’t matter. That’s the way it’s sort of more played in this part of the world.
But in Europe, and I just find myself, that when you see that ball move around, that’s the best way to break down any defense. Because defense is always trying to catch up. It keeps everybody involved as well. And I just think that helps the chemistry of the team and it helps defensively as well, because guys know that “okay, I’ve gotta stay in tune here, because I know the ball’s coming to me. Might not come every possession, but if I move, and I’m going towards the basket, someone’s gonna find me.” I think, you know, the San Antonio Spurs, the Popovich-era Spurs, really exemplify that. Because they don’t have, you know, the sort of sexiest players, but the way they played basketball was really appealing to me. Look at how Boris Diaw—who was cut from the 9-73 Bobcats at the time—can be effective in the right system. You know, he’s not the greatest athlete by any means, you know, he’s a little bit chubbier, he can’t jump, things like that. But he understands, in that system: hey, move the ball, run towards the hoop, you’re gonna get easy opportunities to score. So that is absolutely what I saw in the Balkans, a lot more ball movement, a lot more teamwork. And it made, you know, really really fun basketball to be a part of.
Man, Boris Diaw’s one of my favorite players. Is there any chance you can yank him off whatever yacht he’s on in the French Riviera and bribe him with some red wine to play pickup with you?
That’s a great idea, I haven’t even considered that.
That’s my request. Mission: find Boris Diaw. I imagine he’s at sea somewhere.
Well, he always is either skiing on on his yacht, like you say, having a glass of wine. Looks like he’s enjoying his post-NBA career, whatever he’s doing. But he would be a fun guy to play with, I think, for those same reasons. He wouldn’t be out there trying to show everyone “hey look how good I am.” Instead he’d be passing, he’d be setting those basically immovable screens with his body out there. I think he would just be fun, he’d be like, “alright. Let’s play half an hour and go and sit in the pub and drink for three hours,” you know?
That’s perfect for the Leigh Ellis project.
Exactly! That’s actually what happened a couple times. Especially in Ljubljana, in Slovenia, where we were playing for about 45 minutes. Little bit of light drizzle came, and a few of the guys: “eh, dangerous, let’s go to the pub.” Which was literally 20 feet from the court. So we spent about 45 minutes on the court and about four hours in the pub afterwards, it was great.
That’s perfect urban planning, to have a basketball court and a pub within walking distance.
Absolutely it is, yeah.
You detailed this on Howard Beck’s podcast and some in The Washington Post, too, but I wanted to check in on what your vision for the project is. You know, when you first announced it, I was like, “is he gonna try to be basketball’s Bourdain?” That seems like what you’re kinda aiming for, is that still the goal? Or are you kinda letting the game come to you right now?
Well, a little bit of both. I mean, ultimately, I am trying to turn it into a career, and in order to do that, you know, I need to produce content that is appealing and that people are enjoying and engaging with. The first trip to the Balkans was really more about “just get there, shoot what you can, film what you can, and try to put it together as you can.” I got some good stuff. I know that what I’m ultimately going to do for the second trip—which is coming up here soon—is I’m going to hire local camera and production crews on the ground. Because I need higher-quality production and editorial gear. You know, I’m trying to sorta hack away at footage I shot on my phone, on my computer, putting it all together. It’s difficult to do all that. I knew that going in it was gonna be hard.
But I also knew that the whole idea with this project, once I decided I was going ahead with it—you’ve gotta just dive into these things. Because if you try to wait for the perfect moment where you’re gonna have, you know, maybe funding and sponsorships and branding and things like that, that could take—honestly, six months, 12 months, it might not happen at all. So it was more important for me to be like, “get out there and just experience it, see what you can get, and then learn, going forward, what you need to improve it.” That is still the plan, that is still the goal.
I also don’t think you make a decision like this and then decide after a month or three months, “well, didn’t work, I’m going to try something else.” I think you’ve gotta give yourself a good 12-18 months, and if you are starting to gain traction and gain interest, then it will hopefully lead to some help, basically. As far as potentially a production house coming on board full time, or a streaming service saying “hey, we like your idea. We’re gonna flesh it out there with you.” Because ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. I also understand that these sorts of things take time. You can’t expect everything to be a hit from day one. There’s been a few setbacks, obviously, there’s been obstacles along the way. But I came into this thinking big picture, long-term, and that’s where I am right now.
I was happy with the first project, but also, I knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, I knew it wasn’t going to be polished at the end. That was a real learning experience and an opportunity to, you know, put into practice for the second trip what I learned from the first one. That’s what I’m working on right now.
Man, I love that. You’re reminding me of when my kid was born, I didn’t have much of a writing career to speak of, and I was like, “well, do I wanna tell him that I’m a writer? Or do I wanna tell him I work in a warehouse at a bookstore?” Dive in and do it, I love that. It’s an inspiration to us all. I don’t have any trumpet music, but can I hit you with a few rapid fire questions?
Of course, please do! I love it.
What city you’ve visited so far has been your favorite place to hoop?
I knew a question, something like that was coming. Because I’ve actually been trying to compile some, almost, awards like that to give out on social media. But I’m like, how do I say this without offending the cities that didn’t win the award?
Yeah, how you compare between Luka’s dad and Drazen’s mom, you know?
Exactly! I went out for dinner with Luka’s dad, had a great time. But then I went out drinking with the guys in Belgrade, in Ljubljana, in Athens. It was like, no experience that I came away from going, “oh god, I’m never doing that one again.” They’re all different, they’re all unique, and so I think—to answer your question, Ljubljana really surprised me as an incredibly beautiful city. And I think it’s overlooked, I mean, a lot of people have visited Croatia and Serbia and of course Greece as well. I don’t know many people who have been to Slovenia.
Ljubljana was the first stop, well, technically the second stop, there was a flight delay that caused the Frankfurt stop there, but—I would just say, Ljubljana, I was just blown away by its beauty. It’s one of those cities, it’s almost like a bit of a secret right now. I’m sure in the next few years, it’s really gonna take off, once people start discovering it. It’s not like Italy, in the sense where Italy is very expensive, it’s crowded, there’s tons of people, just so many tourists there. I think people will go, “oh wow, Ljubljana is here, it’s right there, it’s a little bit cheaper, and it’s just as beautiful.” So that, to me, was probably the most surprisingly beautiful city that I wasn’t expecting.
What city that you’ve lived in so far—you’ve lived in a lot of places—is your favorite place to hoop?
This is another very, very difficult question, because all four of the cities I’ve lived in —Melbourne, London, Toronto, Atlanta—have had significant, but different aspects of my life. Born and raised in Melbourne, you know, it’s very hard to not feel that’s where still, kind of, not home necessarily, but you know, you’ve gotten an attachment there, to Melbourne. Then London was where I began my adult life, really, where I started living and traveling. Living by myself, looking after myself. So you know, that had a significant impact on just my whole growth as a person in my 20s. Toronto was where I met my wife, we had our first child, my career started there, we bought a house. You know, it’s not like I sort of think “oh, I’d never go back to Toronto again.” I had a beautiful time there. Then Atlanta was where my career really expanded and took off and we had another child and we bought another house down here.
I would probably, if I was to pick, sort of mold the best of each city, I think I would pick probably London as the location simply from the travel aspect. Europe and Asia and America are so much closer. I’d probably pick the weather in Melbourne, because that’s where I was born and raised and we have four seasons in Melbourne. Atlanta is nice, except it gets too damn hot in the summer, which is funny: Toronto’s beautiful, but gets too damn cold in the winter. So I think Melbourne’s kind of in the middle, there.
But again, each city, I always tell people: I live here voluntarily. I choose to live here. If you choose to live in a place and then say “oh man I can’t stand it here,” then move [laughs]. No city is perfect, but certainly no city has been a bad experience, either. Where I don’t have fond memories. In some ways, I’m homesick for all the cities I’ve lived in, because they all have special meaning to me.
On the court, what’s the most hurtful comparison you’ve ever gotten in pickup? Mine’s Brandon Bass, if it helps.
Oh, that’s not too bad. I guess when I say this guy’s name, it’s gonna be insulting.
It’s no shade to Brandon Bass, where I’m coming from.
No, no. The baseline bandit, there. Raef LaFrentz, I was called. I was playing with these Filipino guys, about 20 years ago it was now, and so I was the tallest one. I’m only 5’11”, but I was taller than the other guys and I was a white guy hitting threes when Raef LaFrentz was doing that for the Denver Nuggets. So they called me Raef LaFrentz. It sounds goofy, because no one thinks of Raef LaFrentz as like a cool or awesome player. He was a decent player. It was more because I was, relatively speaking, a tall white guy and knocking down threes. So yeah, Raef LaFrentz. I’ve had some better ones than that, I can tell ya.
Nah, that’s the best. That’s one of my favorite parts of pickup, is obscure players to compare your friends to. Last one: rank the best post-pickup game activities: the pub, a meal, or a nap?
[pauses, considers] Well, I mean…you know what? It’s the pub. It’s definitely the pub, because, I’ve just come off some really good experiences with that. You know, like I say, when you’re on the court—especially when the cameras are rolling—people are trying to put on moves. They’re putting on a bit of a show here, right? So when you go to the pub, the cameras aren’t rolling? People loosen up a little bit. They talk to you a little bit more. They tell you something about their life, you get to know them a little bit more, and you hear some funny stories.
That’s the other great thing: the basketball kinda breaks the ice, like “okay, now we’ve played together, so we can talk to each other.” Peolpe tell you some stories about their lives. Like this one guy in Belgrade, telling me about how he’s a piano player, and how that helps him play basketball. His description of it, you know, I was trying to sorta follow along. But it made sense to him and it was a really interesting story. So things like that, you hear after the game.
Then, if you’re in the pub and there’s local food, I think that’s always a big part of the experience. I don’t wanna go and have burgers and hot dogs after the game that you can have in the United States. I wanna have what the locals have. Because food, as well for me, is very much, it’s not just like, “well here’s some food to eat.” You learn a little bit more about the people, about the city, about the culture. So there’s all that.
Then, I think after all that, I think the best thing to do is go home and have a shower and then plonk! Go down and sleep it all off.
I like it, there’s an order to it.
Yeah, that’s the thing as you get a bit older. You probably want the meal before the drinks, because if you start drinking on an empty stomach there you could be wiped out before the food even comes.
The things we have to watch out for when we get older, for sure. Leigh, thank you so much for talking to me today. If you’re ever in Chicago, there’s a court two blocks away from my house, my pickup run is full of No Dunks fans, and I’ll cook you a meal afterwards.
Awesome, please do. Deep dish, that’s the Chicago pizza, isn’t it? That’s the tradition?
That’s the tourist pizza, the tavern cut is what the locals eat. The ol’ cracker-thin crust. I’ll get you some for sure.
Well, we were at that famous place in Chicago at the All-Star Weekend, starts with a P.
Yeah, where’d you guys go? Pizzeria Due?
No, Pequod’s? Something like that?
Oh, Pequod’s, that’s it. Like, I watched the show, I should know.
To be honest, I do wanna get to Chicago, because Kendall Gill, who I’ve had a couple shootouts with, he said to me, “come to Chicago,” and I said, “alright, let’s set it up.” So hopefully it’ll happen.
Check out Leigh Ellis on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris