Patty Mills Bears Flag for All
Patty Mills is a sporting legend, NBA champion and social justice advocate. In 2021 he became Australia’s first ever Indigenous flagbearer at an Olympic Games.
Mills played for multiple teams in the NBA - most recently the Brooklyn Nets and San Antonio Spurs. He has a long history of philanthropy and social justice advocacy. In 2020 he donated all of his San Antonio Spurs salary from the NBA season – around $1.5m – to the Black Lives Matter Australia movement and Black Deaths in Custody. Each year Mills celebrates Mabo Day, 3 June, with his teammates; Eddie Mabo is Mills’ great uncle.
Patty saw an important and powerful message in the moment that he carried the Australian flag alongside swimmer Cate Campbell at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games.
“That moment in time is so unifying that you can feel it,” said Patty. “Hairs stand up on your skin, because you can feel the whole country just come together as one in that particular moment.”
Dion Devow is the founder of an Indigenous basketball club in Canberra and also sees tremendous importance and power in that moment for young Indigenous Australians.
"This is the Cathy Freeman moment for another generation … it shows our kids you can be one of the very best," Devow told ABC News.
The inspiration for Devow’s club, the Winnunga Warriors, was the all-Indigenous team Mills played in, the Shadows, as a child in the same city. The Shadows was founded by Mills’ parents, Benny and Yvonne.
“You can’t be what you can’t see … and look what all our kids can see now.”