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Luc Longley gets meme treatment from US basketball fans

Kevin Kaduk

No matter how much you like basketball, it’s probably been a while since you’ve thought about Luc Longley.

The 7-foot-2 Australian was a key part of Michael Jordan’s second three-peat team, but his Q rating went down a bit after Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf disbanded that bunch in 1998.

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Luc Longely sits on the bench with the Australian men's basketball team in Rio.


Imagine most of the internet’s surprise, then, to see the affable Longley sitting on the Australian bench during Wednesday’s matchup with the Dream Team. Now 47 years old and an assistant coach with Team Australia, Longley’s long locks give him a bit of a different look than his playing days.

Most of Twitter seemed to agree that new Luc Longley didn’t look like old Luc Longley and that he looked like someone else. Only problem was that they couldn’t quite agree who Longley looked like.

Let’s start off with a compare and contract of old Luc and new Luc:

And now let’s look at who people think he now resembles:

Blake Shelton? Yep, definitely see that.

Russell Crowe? Yep, him too. A brother from another mother.

A guy from LOTR? This guy just angered all of New Zealand with just one tweet. (But yeah, we see that too.)

Whatever the case, at least one person was onto Longley’s new look.

Longley was the first Australian to play in the NBA, where he stayed for 10 seasons.

Sports break – Aug 11