‘I’ve got to get out’: Freddy Webb takes on apex predators in wild basketball match

Crocodiles, dingoes and even an ostrich, one NT sports star takes on deadly animals on the basketball court.

Mixing crocodiles and basketball might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for one NT sportsman, he’s risked it all and got the video to prove it.

Freddy Webb is a professional basketballer and coach, and happens to be the son of the croc king himself, Grahame Webb, a scientist and founder of Crocodylus Park.

Taking on a basketball coaching camp in Darwin has been a recent project of Mr Webb’s, and in an attempt to bring a smile to some of his young students, he posted a video on social media of him practising his basketball skills surrounded by crocodiles and other animals.

Dribbling around dingoes and testing his speed against an ostrich, Mr Webb said it was all a bit of fun.

“I started my own basketball coaching and mentoring business called Adapt Basketball and I was never really on social media or anything like that,” he said.

Freddy Webb shows off his basketball skills with monster croc, Speckles, at Crocodylus Park. Picture: Sam Lowe

“Really the idea was a bit of Christmas fun for all the kids that have been training with me all year, or over the last couple of months, really trying hard, just to give them a bit of a laugh.”

Having grown up in and around Crocodylus Park, Mr Webb said he was mostly confident with the animals, but there were a few moments of heightened stress.

“It was good fun… I had people around me to make sure nothing was going to go wrong, but probably something with the bigger crocs, like Speckles, is that you’re so hard wired, when you see this big thing coming out at you at the water’s edge, you just think ‘I’ve got to get out’,” he said.

“It was a bit like, what are you doing, why are you dribbling a basketball… leave now, get the f--k out, so the heart rate does go up a bit when you see them so close, you realise they’re so big, so powerful, but I wasn’t really thinking, ‘one slip and you’re done’, it wasn’t like that.”

Despite it all being a bit of fun for Mr Webb, he didn’t encourage anyone to try the same or put themselves at risk for a bit of basketball training.

Freddy Webb shows off his basketball skills with monster croc, Speckles, at Crocodylus Park. Picture: Sam Lowe

“I think for me, in a funny way it’s like the same sort of thing as when you watch Max Verstappen go 300km an hour around a track, I’m not going to go and do the same thing as him,” he said.

“I’ve grown up around these animals, I’m pretty well attuned to how they work, and I did have people there ready in the background if something went wrong, so I was a lot more safe than probably what it appears in the video.”

Mr Webb said if the game was on land, he would have the advantage against a croc on the basketball court.

“They get tired too quick,” he said.

“But anything in the water, they’ve got me.”