Patty Mills is best known as an NBA player for the San Antonio Spurs. The Australian basketball player was instrumental in helping the Spurs win a 2014 NBA championship. He is also a member of the Australian national team, The Boomers.
The Australian athlete was selected in the 2009 NBA Draft with the 55th overall selection of the Portland Trail Blazers. However, he has been playing for the Spurs since 2012.
Patty Mills’ Bio
Patrick Sammy Mills was born on August 11, 1988, in Canberra, Australia. He started playing basketball at the age of four when he joined “The Shadows”, a local club founded by his parents.
Patty Mills attended Marist College in Canberra but had to leave in late 2004 to attend Lake Ginninderra College and the Australian Institute of Sport.
In addition to basketball, Patty Mills also played football under Australian rules for minors. In 2004 he competed in the Australian Schoolboys’ Australian Rules Tournament in Perth for the Australian Capital Territory when a Sydney Swans recruiter asked him to visit Sydney and play in the AFL (Australian Football League). He briefly considered taking up the Swans’ scholarship before turning it down to focus on basketball.
2006 became a momentous year in Patty Mills’ life; after competing and excelling in various competitions, including the Nike Hoop Summit Game, he signed up as a college basketball player for Saint Mary’s College of California at the beginning of the 2007-2008 season. In April 2009, he signed up for the NBA Draft after several successes, including winning the All-WCC First Team Honours and helping his college team reach a top 25 finish for the first time since the 1988-89 season.
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Career
When he signed up for the 2009 NBA draft, he had training sessions with the Golden State Warriors, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Detroit Pistons, and several other teams. On June 25, 2009, he was voted 55th overall by the Portland Trail Blazers. Shortly after joining his new team, he broke the fifth metatarsal in his right foot and retired from the NBA Summer League. He spent several months switching back and forth between the NBA Development League and the regular league.
Patty Mills not only appeared in two playoff games for the Trail Blazers but played in 64 games for the team in 2010-2011, averaging 5.5 points and 1.7 assists in 12.2 minutes.
In 2011, during the NBA lockout, he returned to Australia to play in the National Basketball League. Shortly thereafter he received an offer from a Chinese team, Xinjiang Flying Tiger, which he accepted, but in January 2012 he was released by Xinjiang. After the lockout ended, he returned to the United States and joined the San Antonio Spurs on March 27, 2012.
When he joined the Spurs in 2014, he helped the team return to the NBA finals to face the Miami Heat. In Game 5 of the finals, Patty Mills helped the Spurs win the championship after a 3-1 win in the series, after scoring 14 of his 17 points in the third quarter.
On August 4, 2017, the athlete again signed a four-year, $50 million contract with the Spurs. On December 18, 2017, in a 109-91 win over the Los Angeles Clippers, the Australian, together with Ginóbili and Malik Rose, was the only Spurs in the history of the franchise to score 3,000 points from the bank. On February 25, 2018, the athlete climbed to fourth place in the Spurs’ 3-point list against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Patty Mills played for Australia at the 2010 FIBA World Championship and the 2011 FIBA Oceania Championship before representing his country again at the 2012 London Olympics.
Patty Mills – Parents
Patty Mills is the only child of Benny and Yvonne Mills. His mother, Yvonne, is Aboriginal-Australian, while his father, Benny, is a Torres Strait Islander. His mother was a victim of the “Stolen Generations” – a dark period in Australian history during the early days of European settlement, which lasted until the 1960s. This period is characterized by the forced separation of indigenous children from their families.
His parents joined together to form The Shadows, a local basketball team, to create a sense of community in their neighborhood.
Wife, Girlfriend
Patty Mills met her long-time friend Alyssa Levesque, a former college basketball player, while they both attended Saint Mary’s College in California. In May 2018 Patty proposed to Alyssa and the couple are expected to marry soon.
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Net Worth
As a professional player for one of the top teams in the NBA, it is no surprise that Patty Mills would be worth a lot of money. Having recently signed a mega-contract for $65 million with the Spurs, the Aussie is worth $6 million with an average annual salary of $14 million.