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LIHoosier

Will Sheehey - FC Porto (Portugal)

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Looks like we need a thread title change to "Retired"....

Credit: Jon Blau

As former Indiana basketball player Will Sheehey mentally scrolled through his list of competitors, he did it with unchained honesty.

“Derek Elston is going to be terrible. Cody (Zeller), if he plays, he’ll be terrible,” Sheehey said.

But this wasn’t Sheehey putting others down to pump himself up. The 28-year-old, recently retired hooper was actually talking about an upcoming NBA 2K tournament, which he’s organizing purely as a fun weekend for gamers and basketball fans alike.

Called “The Bounty,” the May 23 contest of button-pushing and virtual dunk-slamming will not necessarily be Sheehey’s moment to shine.

“I’ve never owned a video game system in my life, N64, GameCube. I can’t even name them all,” Sheehey said. “I’m absolutely going to be terrible.”

This is the teammate Hoosiers came to know, reckless on the floor, and equally unafraid to share his thoughts, positive or negative, when the cameras weren’t rolling. When they were, Sheehey was often blunt in his approach, just eager to say his piece and move on. His senior speech clocked in at just under a minute, very on-brand for IU’s rebel baller.

Sheehey the Event Organizer is somewhat of a sharp turn, especially considering his relative absence from IU’s basketball scene of late. Once he left campus and headed overseas for a pro career, he wasn’t calling former teammates a ton. He wasn’t on social media. He just wanted to get away from everything Indiana for a while.

When he approached former IU players and other basketball friends about “The Bounty,” a 2K contest pitting fans against hoopers, with their competitive banter live-streamed on Twitch, it was a confusing proposition.

“I think my friends know I’m just not that kind of guy, I don’t want to be in front of the camera and do all that kind of stuff. It was fun to contact them and they were like ‘You seriously want to do this? You, Will, want to do something for the fans?’” Sheehey said. “I was just missing it. I miss being around them. I think it took a pandemic for me to realize how much I missed them.”

These are strange times. Sheehey, who recently took a sales job with a tech startup, moved into his New York City apartment with his wife in March. Right before COVID-19 put “The City That Never Sleeps” on lockdown.

Even if Sheehey had a place to play pick-up basketball, he couldn’t. A groin injury he’s had surgically repaired just won’t heal properly. Sheehey was set to play this past season in Germany alongside IU classmate Jordan Hulls for s.Oliver Würzburg. That never happened. He gave his body a few more months to rest and returned in December to his former team in Portugal, Porto. He didn’t see the floor there, either.

“The way I played, sacrificing my body, it caught up to me. I was a reckless player,” Sheehey said. “You can’t be a reckless player and play until you’re 35. It ended, and I’m sad about it, but life goes on.”

Right now, life for most is moving at a tedious pace. In early April, Sheehey got to talking with one of his IU friends, Josh Hodgens, about what they could do to make things interesting. They liked the idea of Esports tournaments, starting with basketball because of Sheehey’s connections.

IU’s Elston, Hulls, Christian Watford, James Blackmon Jr., and Jonny Marlin have all signed on. Zeller has agreed to commentate, but the 7-foot-1 novice gamer is flirting with the idea of actually playing. Sheehey will have a controller in-hand, but he expects to be giving his two cents and answering fans’ questions the majority of the time, once he’s very quickly and decisively eliminated from the field.

A player’s demise, in this case, is good. The tournament is called “The Bounty” because a victory over a pro is worth $250. Of that money, the winner keeps $125, while the other half goes to a charity for COVID-19 relief efforts.

There will be both an XBox and a PlayStation tournament, and the winner of each will receive a grand prize of $500.

Of the IU-affiliated pros, Hulls would appear to be one of the stronger contenders, because he was an avid gamer in college. But he hasn’t had much free time the past couple years raising two kids.

“I did buy an (XBox) during this pandemic, because I do have a little bit of time in the middle of the night or whatever,” Hulls said. “I will say, I’m going to be practicing nonstop until that day comes so I won’t look so terrible.”

Hulls hopes there will be a lot of IU fans watching, and hopefully playing.

Sheehey purposefully kept the entry fee low at $5, just to attract more contenders. There will be at least one bountied pro in each bracket, with 24 currently committed from across the overseas ranks, as well as the G-League and NBA. The field includes ex-Pacer/Warrior Brandon Rush, the Raptors’ Malcolm Miller, Louisville’s Kevin Ware, Iowa’s Peter Jok, and Kansas’ Isaiah Moss, to name a few.

When participants register for the event on The Gaming Stadium’s site, they are also encouraged to enter a pro’s name as a referral. Doing so kicks back money to whatever charity the pro is representing. Sheehey is hoping to lure in sponsors, as well, who will have their names mentioned or their logos displayed during the livestream.

It’s been an effort to put all of this together, but Sheehey doesn’t expect Esports to become his full-time job any time soon. He just needed this tournament, at this time in his life. Being without a team is quite an adjustment.

“For a lot of people, it ends in high school and they get over it in college. They join a frat,” Sheehey said. “I’ve been doing this for 28 years. It’s weird to transfer to this next step. This tournament, it brings my friends together. Maybe I’m not playing in a real game, but I’m getting ready to play in this little tournament and it brings me joy.”

The interaction between gamers on the Twitch livestream should be one of the more entertaining aspects of the tourney, giving fans the opportunity to learn some more about their favorite IU alums as people. As someone who tends to speak in brutally honest fashion, or not much at all, Sheehey wasn’t always longwinded in response to pre- and postgame questions.

It just wasn’t his scene.

“You always had to give this nice, clean answer about your opponent, when half the time we knew we were going to beat the (crap) out of the other team,” Sheehey said. “My freshman year at IU, we got our teeth kicked in every single game and no one was trying to be nice to us. And then we’re good and I’m supposed to be nice to everyone?

“Being a young kid, feeling what I really felt, and what was really in my mind, it would have gotten me in a lot of trouble with coaches and teammates and friends. It was better if I could just shut up and go away.”

With his teammates at IU, though, he didn’t need to maintain that filter at practice. Especially with Zeller and Hulls, they were able to motivate each other with honesty.

“Everyone thinks I was yelling at guys, like ‘Hey, you suck.’ That’s part of it, but half of it was ‘Hey, you are (frigging) amazing,’” Sheehey said. “Every bad thing I would do or Jordan would do in practice, there are three good things we’d be clapping hands and loving each other about.

“There is no person I hyped up more than my teammates. And there’s no person I hated on more than my teammates.”

Now, he has no issue honestly assessing the field in The Bounty. Even though he didn’t play with Blackmon, Sheehey would consider the Hoosier sharpshooter a favorite because of all the time he’s spent overseas.

“The overseas guys, they get really bored,” Sheehey said. “You don’t speak the language, your teammates aren’t American. I think James has had a lot of time on his hands.”

While Hulls will talk about his lack of recent 2K experience, Sheehey isn’t completely buying that. The guy can hit 3s both right- and left-handed for a reason.

“That’s a very Jordan way to go about it. ‘Oh, woe is me, I’m going to be terrible.’ I’m sure Jordan is in his room, practicing an hour a day,” Sheehey said.

There is only one thing Sheehey feels completely confident about. He’s not good.

And neither is Elston.

“Derek, he’s going to suck,” Sheehey said. “I know Derek is going to suck.”

***

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