Coach Bambury shoots free throws for a day

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This article was published 19/08/2022 (1284 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

James Bambury turns 40 years old standing at the free-throw line in an empty Healthy Living Centre. A Wilson Evolution basketball sits in his right hand, John Feinstein’s “A March to Madness” audiobook plays in his left ear and a dull pain increases in his forearm.

The clock strikes midnight on Sunday, Aug. 14 while an iPad is perched on a blue plastic chair in the middle of Henry Champ Gymnasium, plugged into an extension cord to record something as utterly mundane and repetitive as it is remarkable: 24 straight hours of free throws.

A 32-inch flatscreen is to Bambury’s right, on a table behind multiple notebooks and a half-eaten tub of grocery-store chocolate chip cookies.

He caught up on “Game of Thrones” during the first 12 hours of his birthday celebration/punishment. The Brandon University women’s basketball coach picked his goal a few months back and got clearance to stay on the court from noon last Saturday to noon on Sunday.

One question naturally arises: Why?

Reason No. 1: “Because it’s there”

The second-year Bobcats coach can’t help but smirk as he misattributes George Mallory’s famous quote on why he’d attempt to summit Mount Everest to Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first successful climbers.

“Because it’s there,” Bambury said, finally putting his feet up in his office after 24 hours and 19 seconds of shooting. (He had to end on a make.)

“As soon as you start losing those challenges in life when things get a little too easy, a little too comfortable, I tend to be not as driven or focused as I’d like to be.

“… Basketball has always been my refuge. Basketball was the one constant in a life of constant change. The sound of the bouncing ball, I’ve kind of led my life through it.”

Bambury moved 16 times before he turned 30. His father, Vince, was a military man and got posted in Halifax, Victoria and a handful of places in between, plus a stint at the Royal Naval Staff College near London, England.

“Jamie went all of those places and he pretty well had a basketball everywhere he went,” Vince said via phone interview.

“From the very beginning we wanted him to do certain things, all we had to do was mention basketball and he got all excited. He was only two or three at the time so we said ‘We’d build you a basketball net if you …’ He changed and did exactly what we wanted.”

That first net was a 4×4 of lumber attached to a rounded backboard and steel rim. They’d tie it to a tree at their house wherever they moved.

The net could be set at any height, but even when James was three, it was at the official 10 feet. The father and son cite different reasons for that.

“My dad, because he’s a military guy had it set at the proper height,” James recalled.

“He didn’t like it very much when we took it easy on him and made the net lower,” Vince said. “He wanted it up at 10 feet. Here’s this little guy, two-and-a-half feet tall, shooting it up to 10 feet. I guess that’s where he gets his three-point shot from.”

Vince also knew basketball would stay in his son’s life, and had a good idea coaching would be part of it too.

“He was always after the ball when he was on the floor and when he wasn’t on the floor … he was the best cheerleader of the bunch,” Vince said.

“… He started coaching early too. You could see him on the court even when he was in junior high, trying to get other kids to be better, showing them how to shoot.”

Reason No. 2: Routine

James played basketball every day growing up. He’d change schools and teams every year or two but kept almost the same game-day routine, which always featured free throws.

He’d shoot 100, or shoot until he made a set amount. He took hundreds of shots before practice and usually stayed late for more.

“Getting into the gym and shooting was the one place I felt at home,” Bambury said.

The 40-year-old did a few shorter shooting sessions with BU’s rebounding gun in the month leading up, much like a marathon runner’s training schedule. He took 500 shots, then more than 1,000 with short breaks and eventually 1,500 straight. He learned, ironically, that he’d have to shed his regular routine and stop dribbling before shots to conserve energy.

Bambury figured his legs would give out first, walking to retrieve the ball and back to the charity stripe over and over, but his right forearm flared up first.

He felt it just after the 4,000 mark. After 4,726 shots, he switched to an underhand motion, unable to lift the ball over his shoulders.

He knows the exact number because he recorded every miss in a log book. To that point, he knocked down more than 96 per cent of his shots. After 1,000 it was damn-near automatic.

The iPad recorded makes and misses as well.

“There were a few times I’d look back and go ‘Oh geez, I didn’t realize I made 50 in a row, or 60 in a row,” Bambury chuckled.

He hit 100 in a row on three occasions and set a new personal best of 190 straight.

By the end, he could only rest the ball in his hands and lift it towards the rim with topspin. When he switched, he added a goal of keeping his percentage over 90 and finished with 5,629 of 6,347, good for 89.9 per cent, without an understanding professor to plead to for that extra decimal point.

But he made it, completing a journey of 103,584 steps or 78.9 kilometres with just a handful of 10-minute breaks and one cold shower to push through.

Reason No. 3: Challenge

Bambury embraces obstacles but isn’t a fan of running. He had to trick himself into pushing his body to improve as an athlete.

“You know that runner’s high where you get like an hour in and start glowing?” Bambury asked. “No. Never in my life.”

While he jokes one of the hardest things he’s done is play the four on a university basketball court at six-foot-one, his true toughest challenge was walking Hadrian’s Wall in England with his wife, Kate.

There’s a pedestrian path and the actual wall, featuring more ups and downs and uneven terrain.

“We took the hard route because that’s who we are,” Bambury said. “If we’re going to do it, screw it, we’re going to do it all the way.”

They set out to complete the 117-km trek in four days, powered through when James broke his foot on the third day and pulled it off.

A journey like that could be a make-or-break moment for relationships.

“You learn whether or not you have a good partner in life, in general,” Bambury said. “It was perfect for us because I was great on the first day and last day and embarrassingly bad on the second and third day. My wife was the reverse. She was great on the second and third days and not as great on the first and fourth. You can kind of see it. I’ll easily say I wasn’t proud of how I acted and reacted throughout the course.

“It was sleep deprivation, fatigue, all that kind of stuff. But learning ‘Oh, my brain can do it,’ that’s why I love these challenges.”

Reason No. 4: Accountability

Bambury encourages anyone to chase a goal like his. His advice is to choose wisely, then tell four of your closest friends.

Had no one known about his crazy idea, it would have been easy to head home when his forearm seized up in the middle of the night and throw a bag of ice on it.

But the idea of being asked about it all week and having to reply with excuses?

“Not having that conversation,” Bambury said. “I’d have f—ing kicked the ball in, I don’t give a shit. But I’ve thought about these challenges in the past and hadn’t told anyone and that’s all they were, were thoughts.”

Knowing his team, family, Healthy Living Centre staff and a reporter were going to follow up on Sunday gave him that extra boost to power through.

Reason No. 5: For the kids

“There’s always a reflection on life when I’m shooting. I don’t think when I shoot, I feel.”

While basketball players can have a whirlwind of thoughts in the eight seconds they stand over a pressure-packed free throw, Bambury’s mind empties.

Then it fills up with thoughts of anything but basketball.

He stops for a while to consider the most profound revelation nearly two marathons of walking back and forth and swishing shots led to. He hesitates again, almost unsure if he means what he’s about to say.

“If I had to choose between my kids being a little over the top versus a little too passive, I’d far prefer them to be more obsessive like me,” Bambury says of his children, Ella and Wes.

“… We spent so much time on positive mental health with people and I agree with all that stuff. But there’s a little thing to it that there’s nothing positive about what I just did to myself, right? But that’s when you do great work.”

Bambury takes off his fourth pair of shoes, slips on some slides and heads for the door. He’ll probably fall asleep the minute he gets home but be back with the Bobcats for Motivation Monday, his weekly challenge for his team throughout the summer.

Then in a few weeks, some other strange, crazy goal will pop into his head.

He doesn’t regret this one.

“Sore and proud,” he said. “… How many more opportunities do I get to mentally and physically challenge myself that way?

“To be able to point to the kids or point to the team and say ‘You can do this. It doesn’t feel good, it’s OK. You’re not made of glass, let’s go.’”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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