Thomas: 'I Will Give My Son The World'

Family is everything to Perth import TaShawn Thomas, and after growing up in Texas feeling financial burdens he’s looking to provide his one-year-old son with the best life he possibly can.

Perth is the latest stop on the globe-trotting journey Thomas has embarked upon since turning professional. First, he found himself in Germany straight out of college, before he spent a year in Italy. Three trophy-laden seasons in Israel followed – before finally heading to France, the country in which is son was born.

“That’s my little man right there, a little twin,” Thomas said in the latest episode of One-On-One. “We had him in France. Like that was a big, big, difference. I never thought of having my first child in another country, a country that I'm not used to.

“I need to give him the best. I want him to have everything I didn't have.  That's really my job now - to give him the world.

“In the year that he's been here [he’s] changed my life tremendously. Man, you know he helps me look at life at a different perspective. He just brings joy to everybody."

The eldest of five children, Thomas was born in Las Vegas when his parents were just 17 years old. A move to a military town in Texas followed – where the family put down roots.

Those financial burdens of growing up in a large family with young parents have left their impression on the now 29-year-old Thomas, who wanted to move to Virginia at a young age to progress his basketball career – a move his family didn’t want him to complete.

“We grew up was in a military town. So, a lot of kids were privileged in a sense so they kind of just were laughing at the fact that I didn't have what they had,” he reflected.

“My mom and dad had me 17 and my sisters not too far behind. With that and young parents, it was kind of tough. Growing up things financially weren't really lined up.

“My mom might go school shopping and come back home and [say] ‘hey TaShawn, we coudn’t find you anything’, and I'm like, ‘you can't tell me you didn't find anything in the whole store’. It was tough.

“I have family in Virginia, my grandma and I have an uncle that's kind of close in age with me,” he said.

“I always wanted to go stay with them just to give some pressure off my family. But it was more of chasing what I wanted. I felt like being in Virginia, I could probably have a better chance of getting more looks in basketball.

“My family kind of felt disrespected in a sense. I don't think they really understood my view of things at the time, they kind of thought I was too young to make a call like that.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">TaShawn Thomas shares his Inspiring Story of how he first got into basketball. ??<br><br>??????? ??? ?????? ?????? ??? ??????????. <a href="https://t.co/CK6ckvbRTJ">pic.twitter.com/CK6ckvbRTJ</a></p>&mdash; Perth Wildcats (@PerthWildcats) <a href="https://twitter.com/PerthWildcats/status/1589865337331519488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>