THEY SAY YOU shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Not to bet it all on one roll of the dice. And that it pays to be a jack of all trades. Pick your idiom on the subject—there’s plenty of them—but they all share the same message: it’s vastly beneficial to spread your time, money and skills across different pursuits. Isaac Humphries has clearly been heeding that advice. In addition to his day job as the Adelaide 36ers starting centre, the 25-year-old is now moonlighting as a singer.
Humphries has been revealed as a headline act at Adelaide Fringe 2023, the largest arts festival in the Southern hemisphere. Each year, Fringe brings together more than 7,000 artists, the latest of which being Humphries, who will perform a pair of 75-minute shows at the Wonderland Spiegeltent. 36ers fans can rest easy though; their hooper promises the side gig won’t disrupt his basketball career, and that a comprehensive check of his schedule was conducted before he committed to the festival.
“For about ten years now I’ve been trying to convince everybody that I can do both and music can work in my basketball life,” Humphries said. “After a lot of convincing I think I’m like so close to people thinking that you know, okay, he can play very high-level basketball and also do very high-level music as well.”
Performing has always been a passion for Humphries, who grew up delivering on-stage shows in Sydney. An adolescent growth spurt disrupted his musical endeavours, though, and when he abruptly “grew really tall”, basketball became the obvious career path. As is so often the case, the allure of a lucrative pro basketball contract is hard to dismiss when you’re 211cm tall, just an inch shy of seven feet.
Humphries’ on-court talent has taken him across the globe. He spent two years playing college basketball for the University of Kentucky, before spending time in Australia’s NBL, trekking to Serbia for a brief stint, and even making his mark with the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA. Humphries has since found a home with the 36ers as one of the NBL’s premier big men.
While his basketball career took off, Humphries interest in music never waned. Releasing a debut single earlier this year, Humphries has found a way to embrace his passions. “I just kept missing that side of my life,” he said. “I would privately be singing and privately be teaching myself instruments and stuff because I had no other outlet.”
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Humphries’ musical renaissance is the latest continuation of his reinvention. Last year, Humphries publicly announced that he was gay, becoming not only the first player in the NBL to do so, but the first professional basketballer in the world. At the time of the announcement, Humphries revealed that he had endured struggles with his mental health, and went through what he described as “extremely dark times”. With his upcoming show, he hopes to be more open about his life.
“It’s the first show I’m having since coming out, I’ll be more open and there’ll be a lot more themes of my real life,” he said. “I feel like I’ve hidden a lot of my life for so long, whereas this show is called Unearthed and I will quite literally be unearthing phases of my life.”
This doesn’t mean that Humphries is giving up on his hoops career, though. Still only 25, the star centre has shaken off an injury-riddled past to find consistent form. Now, Humphries could have another shot at the NBA, but he’s not counting on it. “I would love to get back to the US and give that another go, however, if that’s not on my cards, I love my time in the NBL and I love what we’re doing in Australia.”
Instagram | @isaachumphries7
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