Murray takes NBA HalfCourt Challenge
Originally published on 10/06/15
The world No.3, who spends three months of the year training in Miami, is often spotted supporting local team Miami Heat, but he was unable to find the net in five attempts from halfcourt distance.
“I enjoyed doing it, it’s frustrating because even when you feel like you’ve hit a good one it’s always coming up just a few inches to the left or a little bit short,” said Murray. “I tried my best and unfortunately couldn’t make one, but it was good fun.
“I never played when I was growing up, didn’t have any basketball in school where I was in Scotland, but when I started spending a lot of time over in America, when I was 19 or 20, I started to go along to a lot of the Miami Heat games. The first basketball game I went to was Golden State Warriors against the Chicago Bulls, one of my first coaches was a Warriors fan and I went along to watch them, so I’ve always followed the Warriors and the Heat for the last six or seven years.
“I spend three months a year in Miami so I try to go and watch the Heat as much as possible. I have an apartment that’s about three to five minutes’ drive from there; me and a couple of my friends got some season tickets. We actually got very lucky, we bought the season tickets the day before LeBron signed, which was perfect timing so we’ve been fans for the last few years.”
Asked to select a basketball dream team from his fellow tennis pros, Murray unsurprisingly picked the 6’11” Croatian Ivo Karlovic and American No.1 John Isner, who is 6’10” tall.
“Centre I would have Ivo Karlovic, he’s 6ft 11in so he’d obviously be good there, then John Isner would be power forward, he’s 6ft 10in so those two could take up the big guys positions,” he said. “Point guard is a tricky question, I’d need a short guy who’s extremely quick. [Rafael] Nadal would probably be good at that, he’s a pretty skilful, pretty fast guy.
"I’ve got to have Roger Federer in my team somewhere, he can be the shooting guard, just because…. He’d probably have a very nice looking shot, I would imagine. Small forward, I’ll put myself in there, I probably wouldn’t contribute much to the team, but I’ll stick myself in there, why not?”
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