The Big Interview: Irish basketball star Jordan Blount bringing it all back home

A decade on from being the youngest Irish player to go abroad to carve out a career, he’s returned home to tend to his terminally-ill brother while trying to elevate Irish basketball to new heights

IN CONTROL: Jordan Blount, Neptune and Irish international basketball player, outside Neptune Stadium. Pic: Denis Minihane.

We meet at his suggestion outside the GPO of his hometown on a drizzly midweek afternoon.

An Echo boy calls out that famous refrain, only now without its familiar prefix, as Jordan Blount with a broad grin extends his hand before guiding you to a favourite dining spot of his. He strides the streets, enters the establishment’s door, greets its staff and takes his seat with the air of a man at ease in his own skin and 6’7” frame and being back in a city he purposefully left a decade ago when he was only 15.