A Northern Territory professional basketball player is attracting international attention after deciding to test his skills against killer crocodiles, dingoes and even an ostrich – all in the name of helping children.
Freddy Webb is a professional basketball player who most recently played for the Eastern Mavericks in NBL One, the second-tier Australian basketball competition below the NBL, after previous seasons with Wollongong and Mackay.
He is the son of Grahame Webb, a renowned scientist and founder of Crocodylus Park, a crocodile conservation and research center in Darwin.
Freddie grew up in a unique environment, influenced by his father’s passion for wildlife and crocodile conservation and his own love of basketball and his desire to pursue a career in the sport.
Now you’ve found a way to merge the two.
Freddy regularly shares training videos on his Instagram account featuring skills sessions to promote his children’s training business, Adapt Basketball.
Professional basketball player Freddy Webb (pictured) was looking for a unique way to promote his training clinics for children in the Northern Territory.
Going 1 on 1 with giant saltwater crocodiles is not a training exercise for the faint of heart
Recently, he took the term “adapt” literally and showed videos of himself performing basketball drills with a series of deadly animals at Crocodylus Park.
Footage shows him dribbling past man-eating saltwater crocodiles, practicing defensive moves against deadly native dingoes and even simulating a counterattack with an ostrich in pursuit.
“Ostriches always scare the hell out of me. The fact that you are in the same room terrifies me,’ a follower commented on the video.
His video has sparked a lot of interest among basketball fans around the world, impressed by his skills and bravery.
“This is how Matthew Dellavedova learned to cover Curry in that NBA finals,” one posted.
“This is what Space Jam could have been,” said another amazed viewer.
“This gives me the ‘if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball’ feeling,” another posted, referencing the comedy classic Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
While saltwater crocodiles are deadly, attacks in Australia are rare, with an average of one or two deaths a year and 30 deaths recorded in the last 25 years.
Instead of cones, Webb uses live saltwater crocodiles to practice plowing through opponents (pictured).
The territorial was also tested against dingoes in the exciting video
Webb practices his counterattack by moving it away from an ostrich in one of the least life-threatening segments of the clip.
Most attacks occur in Queensland and the Northern Territory, often in areas with warning signs or during the rainy season when crocodiles are most active.
Dingo attacks in Australia are also relatively rare, with 279 incidents reported, including 39 major attacks and one catastrophic attack, between 1996 and 2001.
Most attacks occur in popular tourist areas such as Fraser Island (K’gari) in Queensland, where dingoes can become more aggressive if they associate humans with food.
The last fatal dingo attack on a human occurred in 2001, when nine-year-old Clinton Gage was killed by a dingo near Waddy Point in K’Gari.
Most of the reasons there have been so few deaths in recent years is because there have been pronounced educational and awareness campaigns to prevent tourists from getting close to the beasts.
But Webb said he had no problem putting himself directly in danger.
“I started my own basketball coaching and tutoring business called Adapt Basketball and I was never really on social media or anything like that,” he said. news corporation.
‘Really the idea was a bit of Christmas fun for all the kids who have been training with me all year, or for the last few months, trying really hard, just to make them laugh a little.
“It was a lot of fun… I had people around me to make sure nothing was going to go wrong, but probably one thing with the bigger crocodiles, like Speckles, is that you are so programmed when you see this big thing coming out in When you’re in the water’s edge, you just think, ‘I’ve got to get out,'” he continued.
“It was a little bit like, what are you doing? Why are you dribbling a basketball? Go away now, go away, so your heart rate goes up a little bit when you see them so close, you realize they’re there.” You’re so big, so powerful, but I wasn’t really thinking, ‘one slip and that’s it’, it wasn’t like that.
Webb’s unorthodox training methods come with a big warning: Don’t try this at home.
“I think for me, in a funny way, it’s like the same thing that when you see Max Verstappen go 300 kilometers per hour on a track, I’m not going to do the same thing as him,” he said. .
“I grew up around these animals, I’m pretty familiar with how they work and I had people there ready in the background if something went wrong, so I was a lot safer than I probably appear in the picture.” video.’
Webb also said he would have the advantage in a true 1-on-1 fight with a crocodile, as long as it was on land.
“They get tired too quickly,” he said.
“But anything in the water, they have me.”