The biggest waste of talent in Australian sport in the 21st century

Australia has a very uncomfortable truth to address after watching an era of sporting talent go to waste in a way we’ve never seen before.

Andre Agassi as an athlete - and as a person - is as unique as they come. And his wisdom is something every athlete on the planet needs to hear.

“It’s your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you’re not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyse you more than a bad back.”

For generational talents like Nick Kyrgios, Bernard Tomic and Ben Simmons, that haunting feeling of regret must already be chewing away at them.

To celebrate the launch of the new news.com.au app, we’re celebrating the people, places and events we’ll never forget from the first quarter of the 21st century by asking for Australia’s view. Our 25@25 series will finally put to bed the debates you’ve been having at the pub and around dinner tables for years – and some that are just too much fun not to include.

The answer to the poll below might seem simple on face value, but the correct answer may be far more uncomfortable than you think.

Here is the rub of why a generation of Australian athletes have been wiped out from achieving the success we know they were capable of.

Labelling anyone the biggest waste of talent in Australian sport is harsh.

But a nation that has built its identity on green and gold, Anzac spirit-wielding pride has high expectations on how our sporting representatives do battle - and maximise their gifts.

Nick Kyrgios never wanted it to begin with

The year is 2017, and Nick Kyrgios is two-sets to love up against Italian Andrea Seppi in the second round at the Australian Open. Then comes the crash.

Seppi comes from nowhere to win 1-6 6-7 (7-1) 6-4 6-2 10-8 and John McEnroe questions if Kyrgios, 21 at the time, is even trying.

It is hardly a noteworthy moment in Kyrgios’ career, which included a Wimbledon final appearance, an Australian Open doubles championship and a career high ranking of No. 13 in the world.

Nick Kyrgios wanted to be playing on a different kind of court. Pic: Michael Klein

His lack of effort, lack of conditioning, lack of interest, lack of coach — it was all bewildering. And rather than a road bump on his way to greatness, that night against Seppi too often proved the norm.

“That’s how it’s been my whole career really. I put my head down, want it. But things happen,” he said.

“It’s just me not being able to be consistent, not really wanting it. Stuff like that happens.”

He went on to say: “I just like being comfortable.”

Nobody, even Kyrgios’ sports psychologist, will ever know what goes on in his head.

We can only judge from surface level and from this vantage point there is at least one thing we know that is running rampant rent free in that noggin. Regret.

We are talking about a special, complex character. We are talking about someone who openly said he would have retired on the spot if he’d have won the 2023 Wimbledon final against Novak Djokovic. He was two sets away. He’ll never get closer.

Twelve-year-old Tomic says it all

Tomic must also be getting regular visits from the same demons.

Yep. Countin’ his millions. Dropping dolla billz. Playboy lifestyle, Bernie.

Another of our uber-talented athletes that we all got wrong.

Re-visiting the past, just as Kyrgios and Tomic have done themselves in tell-all TV interviews, doesn’t make you feel angry. It just makes you feel sad.

Sad to think about the bright, bouncy, innocent souls that were about to get sucked in and spat out by the reality of life as a professional athlete.

Sad to think about 18-year-old Tomic who became the second youngest male player to reach the quarter-finals at Wimbledon.

Tomic’s interview with a TV network at the age of 12 says it all.

When asked how much he loved tennis, he responded with a beaming grin: “I love it from the ground to the sky. It’s my soul.”

When asked in 2017 what advice he would give to a young Bernard Tomic, he responds: “Don’t play tennis”.

Sport, man, what a b*tch.

The tennis bad boys are the obvious pick of the bunch when it comes to this sadly wide-open debate, but they have plenty of challengers.

Ben Simmons loses everything in three seconds

Ben Simmons says g’day. No. 1 draft pick. NBA Rookie of the Year. The triple-double stats sheet-filler that had Magic Johnson fawning all over him. The teen prodigy that signed with LeBron James’ management company. A $20 million contract with Nike in his first year out of Louisiana State University (LSU).

This hack reporter might well be starting to lose your attention prattling on about attitude like Allen Iverson being asked about practice, but if you are thinking about voting for Ben Simmons, here is your smoking gun.

“You have an opportunity to be better than me,” James said to Simmons in 2017.

“But you can’t skip steps. You have to do the work.”

As a three-time All-Star who helped the Sixers to reach the Eastern Conference semi-finals three times, you can’t say Ben Simmons didn’t do the work.

It is for other reasons that he is a leading contender to be considered our greatest waste of talent this century.

Imagine reading that sentence as an Aussie fan on June 21, 2021, with the top-seeded Sixers battling it out in Game 7 of their fateful play-off series against the Atlanta Hawks with 3:30 left on the clock in the fourth quarter. The 76ers trail 88-86. Simmons receives the ball in the post.

It was there for the taking. Photo: ESPN.

Seconds later, his career is in pieces.

We all know what happened. The point guard works his way towards a juicy, wide open dunk. He launches himself towards the basket. You could almost taste that rim-rattling slam he surely was about to thunder down. Then he dishes off to teammate Matisse Thybulle. Chaos reigns.

There have been countless theories what was really going through Simmons’ head in that moment, but the most popular one is a player so petrified of even the potential of being sent to the free throw line passes up his time to shine. A free-throw percentage of 34.2 per cent in the 2021 post-season was evidence enough to paint a picture of a player rattled by fear and self doubt.

Just four field goals attempted in the entire match.

It all unfolds quickly from there.

The apoplectic look MVP teammate Joel Embiid gives Simmons says it all.

The daggers are pointed at Simmons the moment the final hooter sounds.

Simmons tries to take some ownership: “Offensively, I wasn’t there. I didn’t do enough for my teammates,” he says. But it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough.

With emotions running high, Sixers coach Doc Rivers can’t muster the words needed to protect Simmons from the wolves. When asked if he believes Simmons could ever be a championship-winning point guard, Rivers is too tired and hurt to shield Simmons yet again.

“I don’t know the answer to that right now,” he says, pushing the detonate button on ‘The Process’.

Ben Simmons became a punchline. Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images/AFP.

Simmons, by all accounts, desperately needed to be cuddled in his moment of despair and comments made by Rivers and Embiid cut deep.

Three days later, his powerful agent starts working away to get him out of Philly — despite three seasons and $147 million remaining on his client’s max contract.

It shows all the signs of a textbook case of an extrinsically motivated athlete desperately seeking external validation to save himself from the tapes playing over in his head saying he’s not good enough.

Instead of putting his head down and getting his hands dirty on the court, Simmons has had enough and it comes out in the form of rebellion.

Between back injuries, surgeries and mental health leave, Simmons misses 189 out of a potential 246 games over three seasons when traded to Brooklyn.

It is a career that never recovered from those three seconds when the Hawks left the rim unprotected.

Sad. Just very, very sad.

Cold truth Barty devastated us like never before

Now we get to the most divisive name on this list. Ashleigh Barty. Before you grab your pitchforks and torches, think about the criteria for this conversation we’re having.

Her retirement two months after winning the 2022 Australian Open devastated us. Just ask Matildas star Katrina Gorry.

Gorry describes Barty as Australia’s greatest sporting export of the past 25 years.

“What she did for female sport in Australia was incredible. Her career’s been incredible,” she said on Andrew Bucklow’s From The Newsroom podcast.

“To win a title like she did and then retire was pretty heartbreaking for most Aussies, but now she’s started a family. I just think she was an incredible athlete and an incredible human and very humble through it all.”

When asked about Barty’s farewell, Gorry responds: “Honestly, I was like so heartbroken. (I thought) surely this has got to be a prank. And for months I just scrolled hoping she was kidding (and would announce) she was coming back. Yeah, still waiting for that.”

Walking away at the age of 25 at the peak of her powers seemed impossible. Barty’s career captivated us. She made us as proud as any athlete has in recent memory. Three grand slam titles, all won with the same grace and class Rocket Rod Laver gifted the tennis world.

But it could have been more. It could have been so much more.

Think about Barty watching Wimbledon on the telly in 2023. Picture the image of Marketa Vondrousova becoming the first unseeded woman to win the tournament. A woman Barty just happened to have a perfect 4-0 record against.

Leading Aussie sports journalist Robert Craddock has done the picturing for us.

We all know Ash Barty had more to give. AAP Image/Dave Hunt.

“I just wonder… what she (Barty) is thinking of that, because she played her four times and didn’t lose a set,” Craddock said on Fox Sports’ The Back Page at the time.

“She was just a better player. I just wonder whether she’s thinking, ‘There’s still some slams out there for me’.”

There could have been.

The other contenders:

There’s not enough hours in the day to mount a proper case for the other athletes in our poll, so I’ll be blunt. Brutally so.

— Israel Folau: A spectacular two-try performance for the Wallabies in the opening Test against the British and Irish Lions in 2013 showed he could have been the next big thing in global rugby. Imagine the question coming from your kids or grandkids in 20 years’ time: ‘Dad, Mum, who was Israel Folau?’

Your response, ‘Oh, he was that guy that put that Instagram post up. You won’t believe me, but he actually tried to play for the Giants as well’.

— There are serious issues at play in the sad fall of Brendan Fevola. But let’s just briefly think about Fevola as a footballer. A three-time All Australian and a two-time Coleman medalist that booted 575 goals despite playing in another underwhelming era for the Carlton Football Club. Yep, before the 2009 Brownlow medal after-party and before Chris Judd was made aware of movements inside his Carlton teammate’s trousers, Fevola could seriously play.

Brendan Fevola could kick ‘em from anywhere.

Liz Cambage walked away from wearing the green and gold. Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images.

His raw talents were enough for the Brisbane Lions to offer him a career lifeline despite the overwhelming evidence it was going to end badly. And end badly it did.

He is now one of the most-loved figures in Australian radio. A larrikin with a big heart. But let’s not forget how different his story could have been if not for off-field behavioural issues, contract breaches, Lara Bingle and Crown Casino’s Club 23. Only six players have kicked 1000 goals - it could have been seven.

— When Jarryd Hayne was hot, he was hotter than molten. Two Dally M medals and two separate seasons where he earned six consecutive man of the match awards. His 2009 finals series in carrying the Eels to the Grand Final will be remembered as arguably the greatest month of football ever played.

He was awarded his second Dally M in 2014 and then dropped one of the biggest bombshells the game has known when he slapped a snap back cap on his head and said he wanted to be a ‘fourty niner’.

Chasing his dream in the NFL made him Australia’s biggest sporting star, but it also cost him a genuine chance of being rugby league’s next immortal. We don’t have time to get into every dream and disaster after that, but fair to say it wasn’t good.

— Todd Carney. Bubbler. ‘Nuff said.

— When an athletic career ends with an Only Fans profile it tells you something has gone awry along the journey. Liz Cambage was a force on the court, but by all reports the only thing more dangerous than her babyhook was her ego. Just ask her ex-teammates.

— When you talk about decisions that haunt you, Daniel Ricciardo has one of the big ones. The only driver to match Max Verstappen at Red Bull made the decision to take a fat payday from Renault instead of holding his ground at the energy drink outfit.

Christian Horner suggested Ricciardo was running from a fight. Ricciardo, however, could see the power dynamic in the Red Bull garage shifting towards the Dutchman. So the man we know as Danny Ricc walked out and cost himself a very real chance at competing for a world championship while Verstappen roared to four consecutive titles.

Not just a sports nut? Take the rest of our 25@25 polls below

Originally published as The biggest waste of talent in Australian sport in the 21st century