Joey Puddister has played a lot of basketball.
The North Bay point guard is coming off a championship last spring with the Scarborough in the first season with the Canadian Basketball League.
Puddister is leaving North America to pursue a different brand of professional basketball as he agreed to a contract with Lease Rotterdam of the Dutch Basketball League.
The point guard says the opportunity came about after connecting with a Dutch coach in the spring at an Exposure Camp in Las Vegas.
“During that time I had a coach who was from Holland and they had a point guard go out,” said Puddister who jumped on a flight to the Netherlands on Thursday.
At only 5’11, Puddister has kept improving coming through the West Ferris Trojans high school program, Spartans club basketball, college at Algoma and Canadore and then continued to hone his skills with the Nipissing Lakers of the OUA.
“In high school this never even crossed my mind and it was just really nice to get on a college, I learned a lot from my coaches and from my friends and just how to work hard and be competitive, stick with it and eventually got opportunities so yeah,” said Puddister about his growth as a player.
Puddister credits Lakers basketball head coach Chris Cheng and local basketball coach Larry Tougas for helping him get to where he is today.
“Thinking how much time he invests as a volunteer is insane, he stuck with us,” said Puddister reflecting on his time playing for Tougas.
“He coached me in every sport since I was 10 years old and having that relationship, I had the same group of guys on my team, I think it was about six or seven guys, and he stuck with us and coached us since grade seven and having that relationship since then he was able to be really hard on us because we were basically a family together so it helped us.”
Now Puddister’s next challenge will be to adjust to the style of basketball in Europe.
“The game has a lot more flow in European Basketball it is not so much reliant on athleticism, it is more about team ball and making the right reads,” he said.
