No clickbait this: Uploading YouTube videos of basketball can make you an India player

In 2012, Ambathi Prudhvishwar Reddy got a call from the European Basketball Academy after posting videos of his skill online. (Source: Ekalavyas Media Photo)

Is this real? The question keeps cropping up in Ambathi Prudhvishwar Reddy’s head. The latest is when you call him to know about his circuitous journey in basketball. He thinks it’s a prank that the press knows he’s off to his first serious international assignment with the Indian team at the FIBA World Cup qualifiers in Lebanon, an elaborate joke his buddies are playing on him. But he’s prone to doing double takes whenever good tidings in basketball come his way.

Like when he received a message on Facebook in 2012 inviting him to train at the European Basketball Academy in Barcelona. The then 16-year-old had shot videos of his skills (‘well, more of stunts back then’ he says), and posted them on Youtube. He was in Class 11 with the usual dilemmas of what college to pick in Hyderabad, when he started uploading several of his videos where the 6-footer’s fierce pace elicited wows like showmen’s do.

“They approached me on Facebook. When I got a call, I remember thinking why would someone call me! I was in the middle of deciding on what entrance exams to give when this happened and I wondered was this real,” he recalls.

He’d started out in cricket with his brother who wasn’t too shabby at the game. His mother – a PT teacher in his school – however told him frankly that he was quite wretchedly bad at it. She dragged the two fellows back home and told them that they needed to study, because they weren’t getting anywhere big in cricket. “I’m the sorts who’ll study for 1-2 months, score real well in exams, but forget everything I’ve studied the next day. I wanted to play, so I begged her to let me play basketball for half an hour after school,” he remembers.

He started out fairly tall in school, but then didn’t shoot up dramatically. Yet, he knew he could nail all the tricks and had impressive ball-control. The videos were sheer bravado – the sorts that make watchers whistle, acrobatic but displaying strong fundamentals. “I’d made up my mind when I got the call. But it would cost Rs 10 lakh, and in 2012, 10 lakh was still a very big deal. My brother convinced my dad though. When dad said Yes, I’d thought is this real!”

He would reach Barcelona and right upto the gates of the academy, all the while thinking he’d been lured into some devilish fraud – he’d paid up 2 lakh – and panicking about how big a mistake he’d made. Except he would see coaches and trainees like the ones that go up on online prospectus and feel reassured.

Still not believing his luck, he would work monstrously hard the first two months and earn himself a scholarship for the rest of the duration. “They never thought people from India could play at that level,” he recalls the mutual disbelief of his academy mates and coaches through 2013-4.

Prudhvi would also catch the eye of an American prep school coach in Barcelona where ex-NBA and D-Leaguers played the summers. “This US gig also started in Spain. The coach of Christian Life Centre, Houston, saw my game and liked it. It was all style and flashy,” he remembers how he crossed over the Atlantic in 2015. While Europe worked on his fundamentals, the Americans encouraged his flair. He would return in 2015 and head for the tryouts as IMG Reliance were scouting for that one promising talent that could be catapulted into the D League. Palpreet Singh would make the cut, but the judges including legend AC Greene would pull Prudhwi aside and tell him to also undergo strength-conditioning alongwith Palpreet.

“The tendency for anyone in the world is to pick a tall player and say ‘I can do something with this tall boy’. Every coach fancies his ability to make something out of a tall player. At 6 feet I knew I wasn’t going to catch anyone’s attention – there’s millions like me walking on the road. A 7-footer, even I’d drop everyone else and try and mould him, so don’t blame them. But they told me I should train as well,” he recalls his stint as a first-reserve.

He would miss India’s first league season, but begin to impress immediately after he debuted in the second with Mumbai Challengers. Having started as all-rounder (he really digs his fancy criss-crossing runs) and playing pivot in his younger years, Prudhvi had realised he’d end up a shooting point guard. But at 21, his self-awareness is admirable. He reckons it’ll take him 2-3 years to attain the desired IQ. “Coach Zoran likes how I push the ball and my quickness. But as guard, I’ll need to learn to control the whole offense and up my IQ,” he says.

At the Mumbai franchise, he would get to play with 2010 Asian Games star Jagdeep Singh. “His patience, confidence and poise is unbelievable. I learnt a lot from him including that whenever you get a chance don’t take it for granted,” he adds.

As someone who comes from a non-hub of basketball Telangana, he reckons it’s been a wild journey leading up to this selection, after he played the William Jones tournament. “Telangana is usually fighting in the second division at Nationals. But I’m happy I could crack the Indian team and I’ll do my best in whatever chances I get,” says the hoopster not quite a Starting Five material yet. “I can’t believe it’s real,” he ends.