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WORLD GAME
WORDS. Andrew Greif PHOTO. Wears My Shirt
Patty Mills
Patty Mills took a t-shirt and his popularity with Portland’s fans and turned them into a way to benefi t those aff ected by December’s massive fl ooding in his homeland of Australia. As is usual for Mills, his hard work is bringing people together, but in a role he never thought he’d have.
As his more than 20,000 Twitter followers and 10,000 Facebook friends can attest, Patty Mills is good at making connections.
A noted fan favorite in the Northwest as much because of his off-court likeability (those tweets) as his enthusiasm on it (a co-creator of the omnipresent “Three Goggles”), Mills is having something of a dream season this year when you consider he was one of the last players kept on Portland’s roster in October after breaking his foot as a rookie.
At fi rst he was the 12th man, a guy counted on to bring the team together off the court “to build camaraderie.” Then, Mills’ role became a serious contributor – and his minutes spiked from av- eraging four as a rookie to nearly 13 now – as Brandon Roy’s knee injuries kept him out almost half the season.
“Although I play 10-to-15 minutes a night, those are crucial min- utes that I have to leave everything out on the fl oor,” says Mills.
And yet his best assist has come from an ocean away.
Seasonal fl ooding hit record highs in Eastern Australia in De- cember and January, followed by Cyclone Yasi in early February, causing billions in reported damages and creating, according to the Queensland state government, inland fl ooding the size of France.
Mills, who grew up in Canberra, Queensland, seized the chance to lend a hand Down Under by turning his connections into do- nations.
Teaming up with WearsMyShirt.com, an online platform to help charities and causes spread their messages, Mills got UNDRCRWN to design “Assist Australia” t-shirts. At $20 a pop, with the goal of raising $50,000, Mills said in March that $20,000 was raised in the fi rst fi ve weeks. All proceeds are donated to the Queensland Flood Relief Fund, which had 12,000 applicants signup for relief payments in the fi rst two weeks.
“Being over in the States, I just felt helpless,” says Mills. “We couldn’t do a whole lot being over here with ways I could help out. Being in the position that I am in Portland with the Trail Blazers, we kind of came up with the shirt idea.
“Basically, (Queensland) starts from scratch all over again. I think $20 for a shirt can start that.”
Mills credits his teammates for jump-starting the publicity, lead- ing to the shirts’ early success.
“All the guys have purchased shirts or put up their hands to being involved with appearances,” says Mills. “The guys have been un- believable, they’ve pushed this project on. We wouldn’t be raising this much money this quickly without them.”
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While Portland’s playoff run will most likely keep him in Portland through May, and national team tournaments begin in June and end in August, Mills won’t get a chance to see the fl ood’s effects until late August. In the meantime, he’s already seeing signs of how his campaign is helping. Each shirt comes with a code that, when put entered on the website, links contributors to each other. The goal is creating a dialogue that goes deeper than thread or assist counts.
“That’s the whole point of the shirts really,” says Mills, “to get people talking about the shirts and asking questions and go on to talk about the disaster, to talk about what has happened. In a way, it brought me closer to fans here. The support in Oregon has been unbelievable.”
Much like his role in Portland’s playoff run, Mills’ helping hand in disaster relief has been unexpected. But for him, it’s the perfect way to use his energy. His newest crossover of sorts. Just one more connection in his ever-expanding web.
For more information or to purchase a shirt, visit www.wearsmyshirt.com/pattymills.
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