Heaps Good South Aussies | Adelaide basketball coach Abraham Shuken is striving to ‘make little kids smile’

Ready with “tragic” dad jokes, he’s the man on a mission to help give young basketballers the opportunity he never had.

Basketball coach Abraham Shuken at the Golden Grove Recreation Centre. Picture: Ben Clark

Abraham Shuken grew up doing chores instead of playing the sport he loved. Now, as a coach, he wants to give young basketballers the opportunity he never had.

The 2024 Ford Aussie Hoops Coach of the Year, who hails from the Adelaide Community Basketball Association, is on a mission to “make little kids smile” throughout the state.

Over the past eight years, Mr Shuken, 48, has been “giving back” to the community – teaching Adelaide’s next rising stars the tricks of the round ball.

“It’s always been my favourite sport,” the Highbury father said. “With my parents, weekends were for jobs around the house and they weren’t very affluent so there wasn’t time to go play sport. It wasn’t time for fun, it was time for mowing lawns.

“My goal is to make children love the game, and if they can smile and go, ‘yeah I want to do this more’, then I’ve done my job – and that’s a pretty rewarding feeling.

“The world can be pretty rough, and to make little kids smile … well, that’s better than having to deal with life all the time.”

Basketball coach Abraham Shuken at the Golden Grove Recreation Centre. Picture: Ben Clark

Mr Shuken and some of South Australia’s next big stars during a training session. Picture: Ben Clark

While coaching – and to some degree teaching – has always been a passion of his, Mr Shuken strives to provide kids the childhood he so desperately craved: after-school training and Saturday morning games.

But nothing compares with witnessing those “light-bulb moments” out on the court.

“When I show kids how to dribble a basketball through their legs and their face lights up and they look over at mum and say: ‘look what I can do’ … that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?” Mr Shuken said.

“The little ones you can have the most fun with – they’ve got the biggest smiles. When they get older they start to think they know everything about you but when they’re like five, they think you’re bulletproof.

“I tell them all my tragic dad jokes. They are so bad but I tell them because I can see they’re nervous and apprehensive when they first come in and it just relaxes them a little bit.”

Junior ballers Ruby O’Loughlin, Declan Jose and Jake Schneider. Picture: Ben Clark

Basketball has always been a passion for Mr Shuken. Picture: Ben Clark

For the owner of Sweep Scrub – an industrial cleaning service in Adelaide – coaching came by accident. A career pivot, he says, is a dream he never even realised was possible.

“It’s just surreal to me, because I’m so far away from where I was in life a few years ago,” Mr Shuken said.

“I don’t know how I got here but I love it – and I’m now in a position where I have this opportunity to go and do these things and give back.

“When I saw the opportunity for my own kids, I got them involved immediately – and then I got involved with the Wings Basketball Academy.”

Participation numbers in children’s basketball has long been overshadowed by soccer and football, but Mr Shuken is on a mission to flip the script and make basketball “bigger and better”.

“I want to steal kids away from footy and cricket,” he said.

“I do enjoy it so much. It’s no more than a hobby – like going fishing or something.

“I always say to the kids, ‘when you go play for Australia in the Olympics you have to give me free tickets’. I don’t want nosebleed tickets, I want the corporate box.”

The ACBA runs 19 Aussie Hoops programs each week for kids aged between five and 10 on behalf of Basketball Australia – akin to the AFL’s Auskick program.

Registrations for term 1 of the 2025 season are now open for $112.20 – with trainings taking place at Golden Grove, Ingle Farm, Angle Vale, Turramurra, Mawson Lakes, the ARC and the John McVeity Centre.

Originally published as Heaps Good South Aussies | Adelaide basketball coach Abraham Shuken is striving to ‘make little kids smile’