Go behind the scenes of Lane Violation with myself and Luc Longley

Everyone makes mistakes — it's about how you learn from those mistakes and move on.

That's really what my story is about and probably what you can take out of the Lane Violation documentary I've done with another legend of Australian basketball, in Luc Longley, which premieres on ESPN tonight.

My route through life and basketball wasn't perfect, I wasn't one of those kids that was the household name through juniors and where everything went smoothly. I had numerous bits of adversity throughout my career and numerous bits of stuff I had to go through.

Some of it was my own doing but I just kept pushing forward.

I think what people take out of the documentary is in the eye of the beholder but I think that's the main message.

How this project came about what, Luke's got a relationship with Hahn, they've been working with him for a while. Then Total Sports Entertainment (TSE), who own part of the Kings, flagged with Luc to potentially look to do a series on influential Australian basketballers. I think Luc has a list of four or five people he wants to do and I was first.

He asked me to do something about nine months ago and it all came together pretty quickly after that. We basically then had shot it all in the first quarter of the year, I think it was around March or April. We basically had it filmed, produced, put together within two months. That's how the story went.

Obviously, a focus people are interested in is how mine and Luc's relationship has developed over the years. I think it's just part of the unique story.

We had never met each other when I made some comments about him, which has been well documented, hadn’t ever spoken and I just kind of made some brash comments. He went back at me publicly and that was about it for our relationship as far as that period went.

Then we obviously came into contact with the national team and and moving on we have a really good relationship from a working point of view, and we do a lot of stuff together, obviously with the Kings and the Boomers. Luc's a pretty influential member of basketball as well in Australia — not just the Kings, but has a pretty good pulse on what's going on and talking to people and has a pretty good network as well.

We've hung out in non-basketball forums as well, at his farm a few times, I think we went on a boat trip out to Cairns last year with a bunch of people from the Kings. So, we often do things together and we've been around each other a fair bit, which is pretty cool.

I obviously grew up watching the famous Chicago Bulls teams in the 90s, I was a big fan of the Bulls. I liked Tony Kukoc and MJ as well as Luc. That team was one of the greatest to ever play the game but Luc's the trailblazer. He's the one that, and I touch on this in the documentary, he was the only guy for 20-odd years that had a longstanding career in the NBA from Australia.

He was a trendsetter before it was, well now it's in vogue, right? You've got a lot of guys trying to make the NBA and those dreams are possible because of Luc. Then I followed a bit later on to double down and say, 'hey, you can take this route and actually achieve it, it's achievable'.

Whereas when I was younger, Luc was a trailblazer, but it was one out of 20 million people, right? It felt like it wasn't really as possible. So, that's where all of us have had our little part to play with showing Australian kids that you can get there.

Luc and I, yes we're both Australian basketball legends and all that kind of stuff but it was more doing this project with someone you trust.

You have heavy reservations if you're doing this with the mainstream media and not having production rights, which we had. So, that made me feel much more comfortable about things. That was probably more important than having, you know, two legends of the game in Australia do it together.

Apart from being part of the project with someone like Luc, the highlight for me of this whole thing was how cool it was just to go back to where I grew up and get that on film. Touch places that I haven't been to for a while.

My high school that's no longer there, we went to my primary school, went to the local basketball centre that I shot at or trained at when I was a young fella and made my first basket on — just going through all those different places. I think it just was pretty emotionally satisfying, just to know you come from that to where you are now.

That was probably the coolest point, just having that touch point. Even seeing a few people from the olden days as well and getting them involved as well, which was good.

For those people wondering, yes there is banter between Luc and I about the 1996 Bulls team, which went 72-10 and the Golden State Warriors team in 2015-16 that I was in that broke the record and went 73-9 but didn't end up winning the title. He reminds me of the three rings, you'll see that in different parts of the doco.

We had a premiere of the documentary last night at Hoyts in Sydney with a few hundred people and it was really enjoyable.

Lane Violation was a really cool project to be a part of and I hope basketball fans enjoy it!

The documentary airs at 8pm (AEST) on ESPN. It will then be available on-demand from Kayo and Disney+.

NBA Champion Andrew Bogut is a columnist and contributor for Basketball.com.au. He is part owner and assistant coach of the Sydney Kings.

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