After sitting on the sidelines in 2022, Ma’alo Hicks is making the most of his NBL1 opportunity after “five years” of pain. He speaks on his return to the court.
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“The pains in my ankle probably start five years ago,” he said.
“Growing up I never really took care of my sprained ankles whenever I did roll them, and it just started to catch up on me. I just thought it was a pain I was always going to have, just play the game and take care of it after.”.
But when his ankle started to lock in place from merely walking around the house, Hicks finally had it looked at, and the scans revealed the cause of his pain.
“There was a bunch of bone spurs in the there that had built up over time and were restricting my movements, and I’ve got really severe arthritis in there as well,” he said.
“The doc was able to get me in to shave my bone spurs, clear it out, get a little bit more flexibility in my ankle.”
Sitting out the 2022 season through his surgery and recovery period, Hicks has returned to the Geelong United Supercats in 2023 and found a new lease on his basketball playing career, averaging 5.5 points and 6.6 rebounds with the team in the NBL1 season so far – his best game coming against Diamond Valley with 18 points and 13 rebounds.
Ma’alo Hicks in action for the Supercats. Photo: In2Action Photography.
“Coming back, I just wanted to impact the game differently – I don’t have to be scorer, but be an anchor there for any offence and especially on the defence,” he said.
“The way I try to insert myself in this team is to do little things on defence, and hopefully that rubs off on my teammates.”
With the team still likely to be missing star player George Blagojevic, who went down with a rolled ankle against Hobart last Friday, defence will be the focus for the Supercats this Saturday night.
“We’re not worried about our offence, we know where we can get scorers. We’re more focused on the defensive end, over the weekend in Tassie we did an awesome job on defence and we want to keep that up.”
Geelong will be taking on a familiar opponent for Hicks, the Nunawading Spectres being the team where he began his SEABL career in 2010.
Although holding fond memories of his time at Nunawading, where he won an All-SEABL championship in 2011, Hicks is showing no mercy against his former club.
“I love that club, but I love it even more when we beat them,” he said.