GettyWorthy de Jong
NOS Sport•vandaag, 06:04
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Ronald van Dam
editor and commentator NOS Sport
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Ronald van Dam
editor and commentator NOS Sport
2024 is coming to an end. Time to look back on an eventful year in our traditional end-of-year series. Today: Worthy de Jong.
“This is where it happened! You don’t really recognize it, yet this is the place where it all happened. Unbelievable to be standing here again.”
Worthy de Jong is back in Paris. Back at the Place de la Concorde, the site of his golden shot with which he decided the Olympic final and gave the Netherlands a historic basketball medal.
Everything is gone
Nothing reminds us of the Olympic Games anymore, everything is gone. Buses, cars, scooters and cyclists now drive over the vowels on which the 3×3 basketball players De Jong, Arvin Slagter, Dimeo van der Horst and Jan Driessen wrote sports history. As if nothing ever happened.
But since the fifth of August, everything has changed in the life of De Jong, who became the great hero of Paris thanks to his winning shot in the last second. “That shot made so much sense,” says the 36-year-old basketball player. An understatement. Basketball is extremely popular, the sport is growing, clubs are struggling with waiting lists, children want to be Worthy de Jong.
With Worthy de Jong back to Paris and the Bijlmer: ‘I want to inspire youth’
“I see kids wiping their hands across the floor and then under their shirt,” he notes, referring to his own ritual before entering the playing floor. “From left to right and not the other way around. I then wipe away the dirt, as it were, and I can handle anything.”
A basketball court in Amsterdam South East was named: ‘Worthy Legacy 3×3 Court’. De Jong has become a well-known Dutchman and is approached for all kinds of things.
“I was asked to attend the presentation of the Golden Televizierring. I had no idea what I was doing there. All those TV personalities, I didn’t know most of them, it is such a different world. The Worthy de Jong before the Games would were never asked to do so.”
ANPJan Driessen, Dimeo van der Horst, Arvin Slagter and Worthy de Jong with their gold medal
Talk show Bar Let introduced De Jong as the man “who saved the summer”. He was a jury member on a TV program Red Bull Stalen Roswas a guest at Carrie on Friday. There are invitations for game shows such as The Traitors, the Code of Coppens and also for Expedition Robinson.
“So far I haven’t come across anything I don’t like,” says de Jong. “You make commercial deals. I embrace it, also for basketball, that this one exposure has never seen before. I see it as the payoff for everything I’ve ever invested in my sport. Very honestly – and I would never have said this before the Games – it is now time to take the cake.”
In front of the NOS Sport camera, dressed in a trendy checked trench coat, a white scarf around his neck and with hip glasses and a hat on his head, he repeats his golden shot. A passing cyclist looks to the side in surprise.
NOSThe shot, but now in December, without the Olympic decor
“The shot I made in the Olympic final is a difficult shot, but one that I do more often,” De Jong explains his feat that he repeated last month at the World Tour final. “It’s confidence in myself, in the work I’ve put in. It’s rehearsal, repetition. I knew I wanted to get to that place, I could see the clock and I knew how long I had left.”
Asked what he is most proud of, De Jong says: “That after switching to 3×3, I achieved the things I wanted to achieve. High on that list was that I wanted my mother to see me play at the Olympic Games She has cancer and there isn’t much that can be done about it, just postpone the end. But it worked, she saw me.”
He is also proud of his ex, with whom he has two children. “It is not easy to break up and then have to deal with a basketball player who is out of the country non-stop. She had to deal with everything with the children. That was not easy, she does not have enough credits for that A piece of that medal is also for her.”
Loves sweets
He doesn’t know yet whether he wants to be there again in Los Angeles in four years. His fit, muscular body is not the problem. “I never have any injuries, I feel good.” And yet, with his idiosyncratic approach, he is the terror of every physiotherapist and nutritionist. “I love sweets. I never do much in the warm-up, I feel best when I start playing straight away.”
But Los Angeles is far away. “In time, I mean. I already lost the love for the sport in five-on-five basketball, I found it again in 3×3 and I will continue to work on that until it is no longer there.”
ANPWorthy de Jong kisses his girlfriend Janis Ndiba Boonstra
It doesn’t get better than this, De Jong realizes. He talked about it with his girlfriend, 3×3 international Janis Boonstra. “So many wonderful things have happened this year, it has been such an unlikely film.”
He stops for a moment. “Now I’m getting emotional.” De Jong is referring to his mother. “I have had the feeling for a while now that I am saying goodbye to my mother. I have made it very clear in my head that there is a chance that she will die next year. Somehow I am afraid that it was too good, that one next year reality check comes and the balance is equalized.”
