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If you ask most Australian basketball fans who was the first Australian drafted into the NBA, you would find a lot of them answering with Luc Longley (first round, seventh pick overall, 1991).
The more knowledgable would give credit for this feat to Ed Palubinskas (third round, 61st pick overall, 1974),
But if you answered this question with Longley or Palubinskas, you would be wrong. It’s not a big failing – you would hardly be alone. Even Basketball Australia incorrectly states that it was Ed Palubinskas in the Hall of Fame writeup on their website.
The correct answer, in fact, is Carl Rodwell. Rodwell was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in the 20th round of the 1969 NBA draft, with the 217th pick overall. That same draft brought us one of the greatest basketballers of all time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Contrary to today, Rodwell wasn’t always a great unknown in Australian basketball. He went to the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games alongside Lindsay Gaze and Bill Wyatt, who both find themselves in BA’s Hall of Fame, and he averaged 6.3 points per game as Australia finished a respectable ninth.
The six-foot-eight centre was also on Australia’s Mexico City team in 1968, though the team was unsuccessful in qualifying, and Rodwell was the team’s second option behind Gaze.
Rodwell played college basketball at UC Riverside for four seasons, where he finished his career as the school’s fourth-highest all-time scorer and rebounder. He was inducted into the UC Riverside Hall of Fame in 1991.
I hope to see Basketball Australia recognise Rodwell in the future, and even enshrine him in the BA Hall of Fame. Such a big feat and pioneering act deserves some accolade from the governing body of basketball in this country.
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