Mateship driving force behind Maxy reaching 350

Featured image: Jack Foley, @jackfoleycreative

He'll forever be playing catch up to NBL1 West record holder Seb Salinas, but Reece Maxwell will be the 31st man to 350 games and he's forever thankful to his wife and mother of their two children to let do what he loves now at Eastern Suns.

Maxwell made his SBL debut with the Joondalup Wolves all the way back in 2008 as a 17-year-old and while he has spent a little bit of time away from the league along the way, not a whole lot.

Even still, he remains almost 10 years worth of games behind long-time teammate, and close mate, Salinas who will play his 557th game on Saturday night when Maxwell reaches his 350th when the Suns take on the Goldfields Giants in Kalgoorlie.

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While it's hard for Maxwell to get too excited about his games tally when he's in the car heading out to Ray Owen Sports Centre two, three or four nights a week with Salinas there with him along with 333-gamer Rob Huntington, he is proud of his longevity.

But what a milestone like this does is just provide a chance to be thankful for all the people he has shared the journey with along the way.

"I guess it is a good chance to reflect on all the people that you've met along the journey and all the teammates that you get to play with, but I don’t know exactly what it means," Maxwell said.

"I think when you're playing in the same team as Seb, 350 seems quite insignificant so I haven’t really put too much thought into it to be honest but I'm just happy to still be playing."

Playing now as a dad

While it's the teammates along the way that Maxwell will always cherish and sharing the journey at both the Wolves and Suns with Salinas and Huntington will mean plenty, it's the family that it now comes back to for Maxwell.

He and wife Jacqui Day now share two children together but Maxwell is happy to defer to his wife as the best athlete in the family for everything she's done on a hockey field including playing for the Australian Hockeyroos.

The fact that she is now getting back to playing hockey while having had two children and then tolerating a husband going off multiple nights a week with his two best mates multiple times a week is something he might never be able to make it up to her for.

"My eldest has just turned three and we had a game up there just the other week that she was able to come to when it wasn’t quite as late," Maxwell said.

"Our 8:30 starts are a bit late for her but if we have earlier starts they are able to come out and it was really cool. I think we lost, but they didn’t care and they just were happy to see dad on the court and they were excited about that and had an absolute ball.

"Particularly the older one, she just loves coming along but the juggling act is obviously a different ball game having two kids. That makes me very lucky that my wife Jacqui is incredible and I'm by bar far the second best athlete in the house.

"She was part of the Hockeyroos for many years and she's getting back into hockey again now being post-partum so being able to juggle that and let me still pursue basketball as an old man, I am very lucky and I couldn’t do it without her. She's incredible."

The three-man crew

The only thing that Maxwell hasn’t shared in a basketball sense with Salinas and Huntington is a championship.

While they played in five Grand Finals together with the Wolfpack, the 2011 and 2015 triumphs were when Maxwell was off on other ventures with Salinas part of both those championships and Huntington in the second.

That might always be the source of some banter between them, but when the Wolves decided to go in a different direction going back to the end of 2021, Maxwell couldn’t be happier with the home the trio have now built with the Eastern Suns since.

"Obviously I love my footy and I love that country footy club vibe in terms of the sense of community and all the faces around the club, and we really have that feel around the Suns so I absolutely love it. It's a great home that we've made for ourselves late in our careers," Maxwell said.

"It's crazy to think that I'd have to play close to another 10 years just to get to Seb's number and that's assuming he ever stops playing himself, but the three of us come on a one band contract and we're all connected at the hip really.

"It was good to get Robbie back out there last week and I think once one of us goes it might be all of us done, but it's obviously been special to share the whole journey together."

Building a culture with Eastern Suns

Maxwell might not have quite tasted championship glory at the Joondalup Wolves, but he did play in five Grand Finals and was part of a core group of players that ended up playing in seven Grand Finals across the last nine SBL seasons up to the end of 2019.

That's a remarkable run of success and it did include the 2011 and 2015 championships so Maxwell saw from the inside what it's like to create a culture that is set up for sustained success and to be a contender year on year.

The key to that was having the core group of local players showing the way and then to top up with the imports as need be, and now Maxwell is excited to see something similar coming together with the Eastern Suns.

"Particularly this year I've been super impressed with the people that have been able to join the team and (Aaron) Trahair and the club have done a great job in recruiting," Maxwell said.

"There's just a really nice vibe and it's always good when you're winning I guess, but there's just really good people around the club.

"I think the exciting thing for this group which probably hasn’t happened in the past is that a lot of these guys I think will hopefully be at the club for quite a few years. There's a real chance that the sustainability can really be there for the next two, three, four, five years.

"When you've got guys like Joe Cook-Green who are looking to set up shop in Perth and he wants to find a basketball home so hopefully he can stick around. Then there's someone like Joel Vaiangina who's doing his sparky apprenticeship and he's getting settled here and wanting to stay.

"Then there's Travy Fee who didn’t really get much chance at Willetton but he's grasped it up the hill and hopefully he'll stick around at the club so you have those sort of guys who will provide that core for a long time.

"That was a similar recipe to what we had at Joondalup for a long time with the core group of Aussie which you can then top up with a couple of imports or NBL players or whatever it might be."

Motivation to continue playing

While that elusive championship is part of the motivation behind Maxwell wanting to keep playing as a soon-to-be 36-year-old father of two, really it's more simple than that and playing basketball is a way to do things that you could not otherwise fit in.

When you're juggling full-time work and a young family, it's unlikely you're going to be able to find time to hang out with your best mates so the benefit of having something organised you're committed to like basketball is that it gives you the chance to do that.

"I think for me the biggest thing is that it's a social thing and getting to do it with Robbie and Seb as my two best mates is a big driving force," Maxwell said.

"Obviously it gives us a reason to hang out three, four times a week and particularly now that we've all get families, it's easier said than done trying to do that if it wasn’t for basketball.

"Then the whole team is just a really nice group of guys to be around up the hill this year and obviously you get that bit of white line fever and competitiveness that kicks in that makes you want to keep playing.

"Especially when you have Marley and these young fellas running around, it's a bit of competitive spirit there to see if you can keep up with these guys and obviously with Marley I can't, he's well past me."

Being teammate of emerging superstar

Speaking of Marley Sam, he was born the same year that Maxwell started his SBL career at the Wolfpack but continues to be doing some miraculous things as a 17-year-old with the Eastern Suns.

That was again on show last Saturday night when he had 37 points, seven rebounds and three assists in the dramatic overtime win over the Mandurah Magic.

Maxwell can't believe what he is seeing Sam do but he's sure happy to be along for the ride and can't wait to see where his career takes him.

"It's crazy and he's got absolutely no right to be as good as he is. He's four years old and four-foot tall, and we've got to put him to bed and everything after the game," Maxwell said.

"He just has absolutely no right to be doing what he's doing but he's just electric and we've got a little group chat between Robbie, Seb and I that's Marley's Fan Club and we're just in awe of him and wherever his career goes from here is in his hands.

"He's obviously going to go much further with his basketball than he is now and it's up to him. I really hope that he can make a life out of basketball and do really well with it so that would be really pleasing to see as I'm enjoying retirement down the track."