LAWRENCE, Kan. — When Johnny Furphy was 14, a coach who would eventually give him his first break went to see him play. Ash Arnott has never forgotten his first impression: “skinny little surfer boy.”
It was mostly those long blonde locks and easygoing personality. But the persona fit. A good surfer is patient, waiting for that perfect wave to ride, and that’s sort of how Furphy has gone through life. He always knew he had the talent, but he was young for his grade. Often being the smallest, he’d get passed up for teams he wanted to make. It was frustrating, but his father would always tell him being the youngest would eventually pay off.
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He just had to wait for the right wave.
It arrived eight months ago at the NBA Academy Games in Atlanta. Furphy was playing for the Centre of Excellence, the Australian academy that has produced some of that country’s best pros, like Andrew Bogut, Patty Mills and Joe Ingles. “The golden ticket in Australia,” his father, Richard, says of the CoE. “You’re on your way.”
That’s where Furphy introduced himself to the basketball world. Here stood a 6-foot-9 wing who could shoot 3s with springy hops and a knack for making the right play. College coaches were flocking to see him. Before the trip, he had just one college scholarship offer, from Sacramento State, and he had planned to spend another year at the Centre of Excellence. But a couple of weeks before the event, coaches Robbie McKinlay and Arnott told Furphy and his parents that if he played the way they thought he could in Atlanta, his recruitment might really take off.
Which is why McKinlay didn’t love that Furphy — who was being watched by dozens of high-major coaches and NBA scouts — was just kind of floating against a team of European prospects on the tournament’s third day. This was his opportunity, and it was like he was resting in the water watching everyone else surf.
“Hey, man,” McKinlay said to Furphy. “Are you going to do something? Because you’re wasting my time and all these coaches’ time.”
Play resumed, and Furphy got the ball in the left corner and took off like a pinball. A defender waiting at the rim jumped, and Furphy soared past him in the air like he wasn’t there, cocked the ball in his right hand and dunked with so much force it knocked Furphy onto his backside.
The opposing coach called timeout.
“That’s an ‘eff-you dunk,’ isn’t it?” McKinlay said as Furphy got back to the huddle.
“What do you mean?” Furphy asked.
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“I just yelled at you, and that was basically, ‘Eff you, shut the f— up.’”
“He sort of smirked,” McKinlay remembers, “and went, ‘No, that wasn’t that,’ and then just ran off, knowing good and well that was exactly what it was.”
The Aussies won the tournament, and a week later, Furphy was just as good in an encore in Las Vegas. This time Kansas coach Bill Self was in attendance. The Jayhawks didn’t want Furphy in two years. They wanted him now.
Furphy didn’t know where Kansas was, and his dad assumed there were dusty streets with pickup trucks and tumbleweeds. “That’s how much we trusted Coach (Self),” Richard says. “We were willing to go there sight unseen.”
The freshman started slow but has been one of the breakout players over the second half of the season. Since becoming a starter on Jan. 13, he’s averaged 12.3 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, giving the No. 14 Jayhawks (22-8, 10-7 Big 12) a much-needed fifth option. He’s blown up so quickly that he recently appeared at No. 13 in Sam Vecenie’s 2024 mock draft.
AUSSIE GOT UP OMG 😱 pic.twitter.com/c2iqYBEA3r
— Kansas Men’s Basketball (@KUHoops) February 28, 2024
Furphy’s recruitment got so wild so quickly last summer that the CoE coaches asked NBA Academy staffers to assist. Furphy wasn’t sure he wanted to leave Australia yet.
“I didn’t think I was ready,” he says. “It wasn’t ever in my mind. I wasn’t mentally prepared to go. I got a lot of feedback that this was an opportunity that you might regret not taking.”
The Furphys also started to get a sense of how big a deal it was that Kansas was after him when the NBA Academy guys told them: “Kansas is probably the best program in the country, and Coach Self is probably the best coach in the country. And we’ve never seen him this keen on anyone.”
Self called Richard and asked, “What do I need to do to convince you?”
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The answer: a midseason trip to Kangaroo Island.
All of this had happened so fast, and Furphy’s mom, Liza Alpers, already had plans for Christmas. The family always spends that time camping at Kangaroo Island, a nature preserve and tourist destination off the southwest coast of Australia, near Adelaide. Johnny’s older brother, Joe, was about to sign with the Geelong Football Club, an Australian rules football professional team. Holly, the middle Furphy, had just finished her first year at Santa Clara, where she plays soccer. So this was possibly the last Christmas they’d all get to spend together.
“It was full-on charm to convince Liza from there,” Richard says. “I think at one stage, he said, ‘Liza, he will be like my son.’”
Self agreed to let Furphy go to Kangaroo Island even though it meant missing a Jayhawks game or two in December.
“I said it is probably best for him to go home, because he’s going to become so homesick because this happened so fast that he won’t be as good in January and February if he doesn’t come home,” Self says. “I thought he’d be better off long term.”
Self also told the family that Furphy would struggle early — laying out the details of why — but by midyear, he believed Furphy would play a major role for the Jayhawks.
“It’s bizarre,” Richard says. “It’s as if he wrote a script.”
Early on, Furphy felt overwhelmed. “Draining,” he called it.
“We’d speak to him on the phone, and he could hardly talk or smile because he was so tired and stressed,” Richard says. “Like, these guys are insane how good they are and the coach, the intensity, this is insane. We don’t even take drink breaks! Like, you just grab a drink from one of the guys and keep going”
Self says Furphy was just trying to fit in early and not step on anyone’s toes. “He wasn’t really a threat to anybody from a starting position or playing time standpoint,” Self says. Furphy did a good job blending and earning Self’s trust enough to put him in the rotation.
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Once the games started, there were glimpses — he scored 15 points and made three 3s in the second regular season game against Manhattan and made a game-shifting 3 in a win over UConn — but mostly Furphy just ate up minutes and hit the occasional spot-up jumper. He wasn’t affecting the game as much with his athleticism. Through his first 14 games, he had only one dunk. When McKinlay visited for the UConn game on Dec. 1, he asked if he’d forgotten how on the flight over.
Furphy was settling into the role as a sixth man, and with such a short bench, he knew he was going to get minutes every game. And right away, he wondered, could he really go home for Christmas?
“We realized how stupid it was and naive it was even to be considering it,” Richard says. “And also what a huge concession that was.”
But when the time came, Self insisted Furphy go, only asking for one tweak: Furphy would stay for the game at Indiana and then they’d put him right on a flight to Australia.
Furphy camped with his family for six days at their spot at Kangaroo Island, which is on a hill near a beach. Everyone unplugs. There’s no internet. Nights are spent by the fire. Days on the beach. “There’s nothing to do,” Richard says. “It’s why our kids love it and why we love it. I think it’s really grounding, just to know it’s there and always going to be there.”
Furphy says the time away felt like a “breather.” He missed one game — a 75-60 win over Yale — and when he returned, he says he was relaxed for the first time. “It was overwhelming (before),” he says, “and I felt more ready to get back into it.”
“After he got back from Christmas, he took a step where he was like, ‘Hey, I can play as well as anybody out here,’” Self says. “And I think his mindset changed.”
Self provided him even more confidence when he told him on Jan. 12 that he would start the next day against Oklahoma. He eased his way in, scoring seven points in 19 minutes. Then he took off.
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Fifteen points and seven boards at Oklahoma State, then 13 and seven at West Virginia with his parents in the stands for the first time, then 23 and 11 at home against Cincinnati with mom and dad catching their first game at Allen Fieldhouse.
“You sort of get emotional really,” his father says, his voice starting to break up, “seeing him succeeding like that.”
Furphy has been exactly what Kansas needed, a floor-spacer to give big men Hunter Dickinson and KJ Adams room to operate. He’s an elite cutter, always knowing to cut when a defender turns his head. Among KU’s top seven players, his rebounding rate ranks second, trailing only 7-foot-2 Dickinson, which has been a bit of a surprise. “He’s got an element of toughness,” Self says. “He’s not strong yet, but he certainly will put his nose in there. If there’s a ball halfway between you and me, there’s nothing soft about the way he goes after it.”
His athleticism finally made it over too. He has 10 dunks since becoming a starter.
“He’s good at doing what he does,” Self says. “He’s good at putting himself in positions to have success, because he does what he does well, as opposed to trying to do stuff that he doesn’t do quite as well.
Is that different from most freshmen?
“Yes,” Self says. “Because I think a lot of freshmen think they do everything well. Like, if we say, be a ball mover; he’s good with being a ball mover. If we say, hey, we’d rather him come off a ball screen than you, he’s good at deferring and letting somebody else come off the ball screen. A lot of young guys may be trying to prove that they can do things that they’re not really great at yet.”
Furphy’s mom asked her son recently if he thinks he can one day play in the NBA, which his parents are now realizing for the first time could be a reality.
“Yeah, of course,” he told her.
“What?” Alpers shot back, kind of surprised at his certainty. “You’ve always thought that?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Years ago Furphy decided he wanted to attend high school at Maribyrnong Sports Academy. His parents were skeptical because it was a good distance from their home in Melbourne and they weren’t sure about the academics. Furphy was convinced it was going to help him get into an American college to play basketball.
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He was 10.
Joe Furphy, the oldest of the Furphy children who is five years ahead of Johnny, was also a talented basketball player. Shawn King, a Canadian who played professionally in Australia in the 1990s and stayed to coach, says Joe was better. “Or could have been better.”
Joe started to get some looks from colleges when he was a teenager, but he didn’t have interest because he didn’t want the game to become his life. He didn’t want to play five hours a day.
“Joe,” young Johnny would tell him, “you’re a fool.”
Furphy has amazed his parents at his ability to always perform when it feels like the pressure is the highest, “to do it when it matters,” Richard says. Whether it was at the NBA Academy Games, a week later in Vegas when even more coaches showed up to see him or now starting for Kansas.
The hard part is usually what’s happening now. All the attention. The NBA talk. The distractions that come with that. Yet… none of it seems to matter to Furphy.
“I don’t really want it to impact me in any way,” he says. “I just try to keep level. Because then if it starts to become an expectation and if I don’t perform, it makes it harder. So really, I don’t really try to look into it that much. I don’t look on social media a bunch. It is cool having some attention. But I really don’t want it to affect me, because I’m just trying to focus.”“All he’s thinking about right now,” McKinlay says, “is how he can help Kansas win more games.”
It’s refreshing. A mature outlook beyond his years.
Arnott says he makes sure if he wants to talk to Furphy that he calls. Text messages will often go unanswered, because he doesn’t like to sit on his phone like most of his age group. Furphy does enjoy playing video games, and at least once a week he tries to line up a session with his sister and brother where they can play Minecraft or Mario Kart and talk. He says it’s one of the things he most looks forward to every week.
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“It’s fun,” Holly says. “Because it brings us back to when we all used to be back at home.”
Furphy feels settled finally, which his parents realize now when they see his face pop up on FaceTime.
“We can tell how he’s feeling just by how he smiles on the phone,” Richard says. “Because we know when he’s smiling, he’s so relaxed.”
That smile is also a sign on the court when things are going well. He’s become a fan favorite. Check the student section, and there are more Furphy signs than any other player. His coach is smitten too.
“He just tries so hard, and he’s competitive and plays with joy,” Self says. “I just think he’s fun to watch. I enjoy watching him play. As a coach sometimes, we enjoy when our team plays well. Well, he’s an individual that I actually enjoy watching play.”
Furphy is not the look-at-me type. He has never been one to celebrate, which is why his sister was surprised recently when she saw him hold up three fingers after burying a 3. They’d Americanized her brother!
But the Aussie in him continues to play an unselfish brand of basketball, where he’s always willing to move the ball and only shoots when he’s open.
Back at the CoE, sometimes they’d have to remind him to be aggressive and not be so polite. And that’s the next progression at Kansas.
With his talent, there are bigger waves to ride.
“There’s going to reach a point in time, for him to be as bad a boy as we want him to be, that he’s going to have to become a killer,” Self says. “And I actually think he’s gaining on it. I don’t think he’s got there with the mindset of being a killer yet, but that’s the one thing he can continue to get better at, is going for someone’s throat.”
(Top photo: Charlie Riedel / AP