Johnny Furphy<\/a> has sports\u00a0in his blood. His dad, Richard Furphy, was an Australian rules football beast before trading the field for the sidelines as a full-time basketball dad. His mom, Liza Alpers? Oh, just a national-level diver who used to launch backflips into pools like it was nothing. With genes like that, sitting on the couch was never an option.<\/p>\nADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
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The Furphy household ran on two things: Vegemite toast and the family motto\u2014\u201cPlay hard or go home.\u201d\u00a0Growing up in Melbourne as the youngest of three, Johnny was sandwiched between Joe, a pro Aussie football player, and Holly, a rising star on Australia\u2019s youth soccer team. So yeah, if you\u2019re wondering where the kid\u2019s talent came from, look no further\u2014his family tree might as well be a sports Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
Who is Johnny Furphy\u2019s father, Richard?<\/p>\n
Now, Richard Furphy isn\u2019t just some dad\u2014he\u2019s a former professional Australian rules football player and the architect of the Furphy family\u2019s all-star sports dynasty.<\/p>\n
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Born and raised in Australia (like his famous son), Richard didn\u2019t just pass down his athletic genes\u2014he\u00a0actively shaped\u00a0Johnny\u2019s career, from backyard training sessions to high-stakes decisions like moving to the U.S. for college basketball. Coaches and scouts didn\u2019t just deal with Johnny\u2014they\u00a0called Richard to talk about potential.<\/p>\n
Who is Johnny Furphy\u2019s mother, Alpers?<\/p>\n
If Richard Furphy was the sports strategist,\u00a0Liza Alpers\u00a0was the high-flying (literally) balance to the equation. A\u00a0former national-level diver, she didn\u2019t just cheer from the sidelines\u2014she\u00a0knew\u00a0the grind of elite athletics firsthand.<\/p>\n
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Like her husband, Liza is\u00a0100% Australian, and together, they turned their Melbourne home into a\u00a0full-blown sports academy. While Richard handled the playbooks, Liza brought the mental toughness\u2014after all, diving off platforms takes nerves of steel, something she clearly passed down to Johnny.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t just a mom in the stands, either. When Johnny made the leap to\u00a0Kansas basketball\u00a0<\/a>and later the NBA, Liza was there, crossing oceans for games, draft nights, and everything in between. And let\u2019s not forget: She\u00a0also raised two other pro-athlete kids. So no, she\u2019s not\u00a0just\u00a0a basketball mom\u2014she\u2019s the reason the Furphy kids were basically born with a competitive switch flipped to\u00a0\u201cON.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some athletes are self-made. Johnny Furphy? He came with a built-in training staff. Growing up in Melbourne, basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,113,126,3866,6,3512,114],"class_list":{"0":"post-195667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indiana-pacers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-indiana","10":"tag-indiana-pacers","11":"tag-indianapacers","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-npstrans","14":"tag-pacers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114919700244088592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}