WHAT started as a brotherly rivalry has now turned into a career and passion for Fiji men’s basketball power forward, Joshua Fox.
Basketball was a second-choice sport for the 29-year-old who wanted to play rugby when his family moved to the US when he was four.
His elder brother Conrad, who has also represented Fiji, was the reason Joshua got into basketball.
“My elder brother was actually the first one so being the younger brother I just followed in his footsteps, so it kind of became a little rivalry and that’s the whole reason I kept chasing it because I wanted to be better than him. That happened and I just got a little bit better, grew, and made a career out of it.
“Conrad played with me in the last Pacific Games in Samoa, he was a little out of shape at the time,” he joked.
The former Cheshire Phoenix player who has family in Veisari, Lami will be making his third Pacific Games appearance for Fiji in the Solomon Islands.
He shared the pride associated with being a national representative.
“It’s just me now four years later but I’ve known most of these boys for maybe eight to 10 years now. We’ve all built pretty strong relationships and there are only a few new boys but it’s easy, everyone is very welcoming and it doesn’t feel uncomfortable like it did the first time I came to play, it’s like seeing relatives again.
“When you play basketball for your country, family is excited for you, everyone is watching you, it means a little more pride, you take things a little more to heart, these losses hang in there a lot more and I think about it a lot more than I should probably. It means that much to us, it’s that sense of pride, we love where we are from and we just want to make everyone proud and when we don’t, we get really upset with ourselves.”
The Fox brothers were part of the national men’s team in the 2019 Games in Samoa where they had to settle for bronze after losing to Tahiti in the semifinals.
To date, Joshua is still hurting from that loss.
“It was disappointing, to be honest, we were pretty upset, we won bronze but the goal was to win gold. We have high expectations for ourselves and we want to set that example for the younger players coming up because we want them to do better than us and if we just keep winning bronze we’re not setting a standard.
“This year we know what we need to do, we’ve worked on it and we’ve brought in a lot of guys that worked hard and coaches coming in to help us as well and we trust in them and we see what the future holds which is great for everybody coming up.
“We were watching the Tahiti game which we lost and everybody didn’t sleep very well because we were pretty upset, I didn’t think
I would be as mad as I was but we are still pretty upset about it.”
Joshua and the Fiji men’s basketball will get their revenge on Saturday, November 18 when they square off with Tahiti in their opening pool match at Friendship Hall in Honiara.
