The All-EuroCup First Team center is aiming to lift the first continental trophy of his career
Johnathan Motley: From a near-death experience to dreaming of EuroCup glory with Hapoel Tel Aviv
Entrevistas
19 Min lectura
It all could have been so different for Johnathan Motley.
Back in high school, basketball was the last thing on the mind of the Hapoel Shlomo Tel Aviv center and 2024-25 All-EuroCup First Team selection. For a while, at least.
Prior to his junior year at high school, Motley’s appendix burst and he had to spend 18 days at the Texas Children's Hospital. For any aspiring athlete, a setback like that could be incredibly damaging.
“That was one of the weirdest moments in my life,” Motley tells Euroleague.net’s Geoff Gillingham. “It was a really crazy situation and I could have almost died.
“I had bacteria spreading through my body, that's why I stayed in the hospital so long. They had to connect a PICC line into arm so that the medicine can go straight to my heart. I was on medicine for like couple months or two – it was crazy. I just had to pump constant antibiotics just to kill all the germs because it had actually ruptured, so that was crazy. I wasn’t even worrying about pro at that moment, I was just worried about getting better.”
Naturally, Motley lost a lot of weight during that time. Suddenly, he was having to play catchup.
“I think I lost like 30 pounds, something crazy,” Motley says. “It was bad. I couldn’t eat for a while because you pump all that medicine into you; the medicine’s got side effects so I wasn’t eating.
“I couldn’t really move that much for a couple of weeks after I got out the hospital. And I had to take a medicine bag home so that the PICC line stayed in my body, so I had to keep it at home and I had to go to school like this and connect bags of antibiotics to me. It was wild.”
Knowing that he needed to put that weight back on once he was given the all-clear, Motley was on a mission. And he had the right people helping him along the way, starting with his mom, Willie.
“She’s always there, man, doing whatever, whatever she can to support me,” he says. “I always give a lot of credit to her. No matter what, she’s always there supporting. She’s actually coming here [to Bulgaria for Game 1] so she’s a rider for real, she’s a ride or die. She’s always doing whatever she can to help."
Different coaches and trainers have played an important role, too.
“I was always in the gym working out and I had a lot of different trainers," he continues. "Coach Byron Smith was one of my main ones at school, Chris Gaston was really big in my development growing up, too. There’s a lot of guys. Sheldon McClellan, he helped me a lot.
“Man, I had a lot of guys help me become the player I am today. I just had to put in the effort, but there were guys willing to get in the gym with me, for sure.”
Another setback came a few years later when the coaches at Baylor University said that they wanted Motley to redshirt for a year. But it was a decision that he understood, and it’s one that has helped his understanding at the professional level.
“For me it was just a weight thing, like I was really skinny,” he admits. “I was always a pretty good basketball player but what separates you from being really good or going up a level is size. I think that’s just the difference between all the levels of basketball.
“The higher the level you go, the more athletic the bigger guys are. Pretty much the skill and the talent are kind of the same. But instead of a 6-foot-1 guard in the EuroLeague that you’re playing against, or in the EuroCup, in the NBA this guy is doing the same thing but he’s 6-foot-6. Or the big man you’re playing against in the EuroCup is 6-foot-7 but in the NBA he’s 7-foot-2 and can run and can move. That, I think, is the difference.
“So I had to get in the weight room, gained like 30 pounds and then after that the game became easier for me. Shout out to coach Charlie Melton at Baylor, he put me through all the work I needed to do to get to where I am today. He helped me gain this weight, we were in the weight room grinding, so shout out coach Charlie Melton, that’s my guy.”
That year watching on from the sidelines paid dividends for Motley, too, as he dominated thereafter, being named an All-American in the 2016-17 season, winning the 2016-17 Karl Malone Trophy, given to the best power forward in the country, and leading Baylor to first place in the national rankings for the first time in January 2017.
“You definitely learn about the game [during a redshirt year], you definitely get an advantage because you’re watching,” he says. “You’re not just sitting out, you’re practicing every day, you’re doing all these things. I’m playing against pros every day, so I had no choice but to get better or I was going to get buried.”
On that successful Baylor team and a teammate of Motley’s for four years was Ish Wainright, his current teammate at Hapoel. When the opportunity came for Motley to reunite with his friend, he didn’t think twice about getting involved in the negotiations.
“That’s my guy. It was fire when he came in the summer,” he says. “I kind of helped because I was one of the first to sign for Hapoel. Then Coach Stef [Dedas] was like, ‘I also saw Ish.’ And I was like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s like my brother. I’ve known him since I was 17 years old.’ So it’s crazy that someone I knew for 10 years can also help me win a EuroCup championship, a European championship, make history with Hapoel. That’s so fire.
“I get to do it with somebody I’ve known for a long time, who I was rooting for. He had a crazy journey to get to where he is. It’s just awesome to be a part of it, and to say that we’re still playing and then able to play together and able to win a championship is even crazier. That’s really fire.”
Motley, now 29, is now in his fourth season in Europe, but his rookie campaign on the old continent with Lokomotiv Kuban in 2021-22 was key in getting him acclimatized.
“When I went to Loko, I started dominating right away, just doing what I do,” he says. “I had great vets, also European vets, like Errick McCollum, Darius Thompson, Stanton Kidd, Greg Whittington, Alan Williams. I had great vets.
“To walk into my first season in Europe with guys like this, it was amazing. Errick really helped me through the ups and downs of the European game and making sure I knew what it took and I knew what I was going to get into. Even when I was going to Fener, he told me, ‘The EuroLeague is a little bit different, you’ve got to be able to play in a role, be able to dominate in a specific setting.’ So I had a lot of knowledge about what I was walking in to.”
The past two years, Motley has been in the EuroLeague with Fenerbahce, which was key in preparing him for this current season at Hapoel as one of the favorites to lift the EuroCup trophy.
“The EuroLeague is a different monster,” he says. “Playing for a team like Fener, you always know you’re going to get everyone’s best shot, so we were used to having a target on our back. I think that also prepared me for being on a team like Hapoel.
“When [the Hapoel front office] put all these guys together, now you have a target on your back. Now everyone’s circling you from the beginning of the season, like, ‘Oh, we need to play good this game.’ I’m used to that, I know what it takes. I know what’s going to come and I know how to handle it, so I can also give guys knowledge who maybe haven’t been at that level before and help them prepare for being the team that everyone wants to be, because that’s a whole different monster.
“Then you start seeing guys playing way more aggressive, way harder, making way more shots against you, and you’ve got to be able to respond to that and be able to still win because they brought you here to win, so you’ve got to be able to respond. Everything at Fener helped me become the player that I am: Coach [Dimitris] Itoudis, Coach Saras. Coach Saras is a great coach, he also helped me become a better player. We won the Turkish Cup, the Turkish championship, got to the [EuroLeague] Final Four, so I had a lot of big-time experience and big-time games.”
Following a mid-season coaching change, Motley was reunited with Coach Itoudis at Hapoel and the Greek tactician’s impact has been telling. Hapoel went 6-5 through the first 11 games of the season, the last two of which saw the team go 1-1 with Itoudis at the helm, but the Israeli side is 9-2 since. For Motley, Hapoel is hitting top gear at the perfect time of the campaign.
“We had a lot of moving pieces in the beginning, so it’s kind of hard to get a rhythm,” he says. “Once you just settle down into it, get some chemistry going, you start learning what your teammates like, what they don’t like, how they react to different things on the court, mentally and physically, you just become closer and you’re also willing to play harder for each other. I think it just took a while for us to gain some clarity and some continuity.
“We have a lot of talent put together; sometimes it works right away, sometimes it doesn’t. Panathinaikos, for example, in the beginning they were not that good [last season] but then they won the [EuroLeague] championship. It takes time, it always does.
“Luckily we’ve turned it on at the right time. You don’t want to win all season and then have a slump at the end. I think this is the best way; we went through our bumps early and we were still good, and now we’re peaking. It’s all supposed to happen like this, I think this is the best way for it to happen for a team to be successful.”
Even though Hapoel is preparing for its 23rd EuroCup road game this season, given it plays its home games far away from Tel Aviv in Samokov, Bulgaria, the club boasts one of the most passionate fan groups on the old continent. That, as Motley attests, is a real motivating factor for the team.
“Our fans are amazing fans, they’re crazy,” he says. “They support us through everything – the losses, the wins.
“The celebrations after Game 2 of the semifinals were really for the fans. They gave us so much energy in Samokov, they came with so much energy and life that I think poured into us and allowed us to play a certain way. It also gave us the confidence to finish in Game 3.
“I just want to give credit to the Hapoel fans – I know they’re going to show out. They’re going to be loud and rowdy on Tuesday. Even in our games in Tel Aviv, home or away, they’re loud, they’re rowdy, they’re ready, and they always give us energy to play hard. If you can get any energy from any outside thing, you always appreciate it as a basketball player.”
Hapoel and Gran Canaria have already met twice this season, with the Israeli side winning both games in the regular season, yet the Spanish club has recent memories of lifting the 2023 EuroCup title. Still, Motley has respect for Gran Canaria but is confident in Hapoel’s chances.
“We have some guys with some experience, too,” he responds. “I’ve been to the Final Four, I’ve won the Turkish Cup, I’ve won the Turkish championship.
“I’ve been with Coach Saras who has been a high-level player himself, I took some gems from him. Coach Itoudis has won championships.
“I think it’s two great teams going head to head. You don’t make the Finals unless you’re a great team. I can’t wait to play them and see who wins.
“We’re just going to try to forget about what happened in the regular season and remember that this is a new series, so we’re going in with it 0-0. The team is on board with that and locked in with that. We’re going to see who is the best after the jump ball.”