Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Australia’s NBA champion and Olympic ‘rose gold’ hero Patty Mills and wife Alyssa have announced they are expecting their first child together.
The pair have been together since 2009 when both on the basketball teams at Saint Mary’s College of California.
But relationship milestones took a back seat to their careers with their wedding only taking place in 2019.
The pregnancy announcement included a gender reveal, with the couple looking forward to sharing Mills’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage with their daughter.
“ We were living in Utah at the time up in Park City, and we found out together,” Alyssa told Sports Illustrated.
“We took a test and it was positive. Both of us knew that it was gonna be positive … I was super excited, but still shocked.
“I knew it was gonna be positive, but I think I was still just shocked because I was so happy.”
Mills, 36, was traded by the Utah Jazz to the Los Angeles Clippers soon afterwards.
“We have been together for so long and we’ve grown as a couple and we truly are each other’s best friends, so doing this with him is really exciting for me,” Alyssa, 34, said.
“I already feel like we’re gonna be the best parents because we have fun together, but I just feel like we know who we are, both Patty and I, and so raising our daughter will be super fun for us.
“Our values are so instilled in us that it (will) just be easy to bring her up with the same values.”
The pregnancy comes with Mills, who has a permanent home with Alyssa in Hawaii, weighing up his next move in basketball.
He is now a free agent and, after suiting up for four different NBA teams in the past two years, has been linked with a return home to Australia to play in the NBL.
Mills last featured in the league for the Melbourne Tigers in 2011 during the NBA lockout.
But an NBA future is not out of the question, still having considerable pull as a locker-room figure for younger players.
Mills won an NBA championship with the San Antonio Spurs in 2014.
He led the Australian Boomers to a breakthrough international medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, scoring 42 points in the medal game and celebrating bronze as ‘rose gold’.
