JaVale McGee To Illawarra Might Make More Sense Then You Think

After a fifteen year NBA career, JaVale McGee has landed in Australia as the new starting center of the Illawarra Hawks. It's arguably the perfect move for the reigning NBL champions.

Written by Lachlan Sherriff

"I don’t believe in favorite moments. I live in the moment during the championships. You don’t know it's favorite until it happens. I have a lot of favorites."

Those were the words that came out of JaVale McGee's mouth in 2021, after he won an Olympic Gold medal.

It's something you can only say if you frequently win championships, which JaVale McGee did. Between 2017 to 2021, McGee won three NBA championships and an Olympic gold medal. With this resume, you could be forgiven for thinking McGee was one of the greatest players to touch a basketball court.

Now, aged 37, McGee has touched down in Australia to play for Illawarra, where you couldn't be blamed for not being fully sold on him. Despite being a part of great teams, McGee was never a great player by NBA standards. He never made an all-star team, and only averaged a modest 7.6 points and five rebounds a game over his NBA career.

Of course, the new thing NBL fans can't help but do when hearing about a new import is compare him to Montrezl Harrell.

McGee never hit the peak Harrell did. He never got close to having an individual season as good as Harell's in 2019-20, when he won sixth man of the year as a Los Angeles Clipper, averaging 18.6 points, 7.1 rebounds and 1.1 blocks a game off the bench.

But perhaps the best compliment you can give McGee isn't about his numbers, but instead his longetivity. McGee entered the NBA in 2008-09 and stayed in it until 2023-24, without missing a single season.

Compare that to Harrell, who - despite his brilliance - was out of the league only three years after winning Sixth Man of the Year, having played for four different teams in that time. As it stands, Harrell played his last NBA game at only 29.

For context, McGee played presumably his last NBA game at 36. But it wasn't supposed to be that way.

Taken with the eighteenth pick in the 2008 NBA draft, McGee found himself a member of the Wizards from 2008 to 2012, an era in D.C. remembered less for winning basketball and more for Gilbert Arenas' and Javaris Crittenton's locker room altercation involving guns.

McGee's stats weren't horrible, but they were empty. Over time, McGee would be criticized for a lack of work ethic and poor IQ, the latter only worsened by the infamous Shaqtin' A Fool segments.

For a little while, it looked like McGee had found a good fit in Denver. But injuries ruined his time as a Nugget, and Denver moved on midway through the 2014-15 season, trading him to Philadelphia.

If that wasn't bad enough, the 76ers, who had a record of 18-64 that season, also deemed McGee not good enough, waiving him after only six games.

And after a lacklustre season in Dallas the following year, it seemed like writing was on the wall. McGee wasn't a good NBA player. He was a meme. A laughing stock.

Then came the Golden State Warriors.

Following the departure of Aussie Andrew Bogut, and needing revenge on Cleveland after choking a 3-1 lead to the Cavs in the 2016 NBA Finals, the Warriors signed McGee. In many ways, it felt like his last chance in the NBA.

And he took it.

"JaVale has been fantastic for us, as a player, a teammate, fantastic guy. He's funny, he's fun to be around, he does his job. He's a total pro."

Warriors coach Steve Kerr on JaVale McGee, 2017

Coming off the bench for Zaza Pachulia, McGee played his role to perfection. There was no need for him to score 25 points a night, not on a team with Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson. He didn't even have to be the main guy on defense - that was Draymond Green.

All McGee had to do was finish his shots around the rim, play strong defense on the other rim, and be a good locker room guy, which he did. McGee shot a career high 65% from the field in 2016-17, and was praised for his effort on defense all throughout the season, as the Warriors went onto win the NBA Finals.

McGee was awarded with a contract extension the following season, and even got to start in more games.

When the Warriors went to the finals again, McGee started three out of the four games as Golden State swept Cleveland to win their second straight championship.

After 2018, McGee left the Warriors. But he'd still be living in California, and he'd still be playing with a 3x (soon to be 4x) NBA champion, as he joined LeBron James in Los Angeles and became a Laker.

2018-19 was a write off year for the Lakers due to LeBron being injured, but McGee averaged a career high twelve points a night. And he was rewarded for it the following season.

Despite the Lakers signing a former all-star and DPOY in Dwight Howard, it would be McGee who started for the Lakers at center, next to LeBron James and Anthony Davis, as the Lakers won the 2020 championship.

It may have been in a bubble, but it didn't matter. McGee, who only four years earlier was a laughing stock about to be out of the league, was now a 3x NBA champion.

McGee began to regress after the 2020 season, but he did still have one final memorable moment, though not in the NBA.

Instead, he was selected as a replacement for the injured Kevin Love, and was a part of the Team USA squad travelling to Tokyo for the postponed 2020 Olympics.

Of course, this was far from the USA's strongest ever basketball team. But in 2016, when the USA won gold in Rio, McGee was out of the league. If you had entertained the idea of McGee going to the next Olympics, people would have laughed at you.

Between 2016 and 2021, McGee had rebranded his image from the league's jester, to a role player who helped you win championships. And Gregg Popovich knew he could help Team USA win a gold medal as well.

"We decided that was the most logical and appropriate choice. Given the choices we had, he fit the best."

Gregg Popovich on JaVale McGee's inclusion in Team USA's 2020 Olympic roster

McGee didn't play much in Tokyo. He only averaged four minutes a game, recording two DNPs, including one in the gold medal game against France.

But even in the minimal time he had on the court, he made an impact, scoring ten of the thirteen shots he took in Tokyo.

He might not have played in the gold medal game, but USA prevailed 87-82 against France. And just like his mother Pamela, who was on the roster for the American women's basketball team that won in 1984, JaVale McGee became an Olympic gold medalist.

After leaving the Lakers in 2020 following his third NBA championship, McGee went to Cleveland, but was later traded to Denver halfway through the 2020-21 season.

McGee second stint in Denver was a brief one, as he left to join Phoenix in the 2021 off-season. And after two more seasons as a bench player for Dallas and Sacramento respectively, McGee was out of the league at the end of the 2023-24 season.

McGee's time in the NBA is complicated, at best. Despite the rennaisance he had in Golden State and Los Angeles, many still remember all the moments on Shaqtin' A Fool. People remember the missed free throw line dunk, the time he ran back on defense when his team still had the ball, and all the comically late blocks that were called goaltends. But one thing's for sure.

No one flukes their way to becoming 3x NBA champion with an Olympic gold medal.

Now aged 37, fans may understandably be weary about McGee's arrival in Australia. He wasn't used much in his final few seasons in the NBA, and he's clearly lost some of the athleticism he showed in his Washington days.

But he did still show his talent over the 2024-25 season, averaging 18.3 points, 8.7 rebounds, and just under two assists and blocks a game playing for Vaqueros de Bayamón in Puerto Rico.

But it may not be McGee's stats that help Illawarra next season, but rather his presence.

Repeating championships in the NBL isn't exactly a rarity. Sydney did it in 2022 and 2023, and also three-peated from 2003-2005. New Zealand had their own three-peat from 2011-2013. Adelaide went back-to-back in the nineties. Perth have won successive championships multiple times, and even the old St. Kilda and Canberra teams went back-to-back early in the NBL's existance.

But for Illawarra, a club who haven't known what it's like to go into a season as reigning champions since 2001, there's a lot of pressure to go out and win it again.

JaVale McGee has dealt with that pressure.

He dealt with it a Warrior, when he arrived in 2016-17 along with Kevin Durant. Frankly, if a team that went 73-9 the previous season added Kevin Durant and still couldn't win a ring, it would have been the greatest NBA failure of all time.

He dealt with it again as a Laker, when the 2019-20 team had a 49-14 record before the season got halted due to COVID-19. If they didn't win in the bubble, it would have all been for nothing.

And he dealt with it when he joined a Team USA team who had lost to Australia and Nigeria in exhibition matches right before the Olympics, leaving many to wonder if this was the year the USA repeated their failure in 2004 and failed to win gold.

The result? Three NBA championships and an Olympic gold medal.

And if what he brings is good enough for some of the greatest basketball players of all time in Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James, and some of the best coaches of all time in Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, then it's more then good enough for Illawarra.

It's very unlikely that JaVale McGee averages 25 points and wins the NBL MVP next season. He probably won't have better stats then Montrezl Harrell. He might not even have better stats then some of the Australian bigs in the league.

But when it comes to finding someone willing to do whatever they needed to do to win a championship, Illawarra would have been harder pressed to find a better fit then JaVale McGee.

Whether it was as a starting center for the Lakers, a backup center for the Warriors, or the last guy on the bench for Team USA, McGee always played his role to perfection, and it should be no different here.

With the departure of Lachlan Olbrich and Sam Froling still nursing an Achilles injury, McGee is the perfect fit for Illawarra at the five. Tyler Harvey is set to return for Illawarra, so McGee doesn't have to be the star. He just has to do what he's always done - play his role, both on the court and in the locker room.

And if he does that, he might just be able to list NBL champion in his stacked resume.