“What do you think your best quality is?,” Renae Ingles asked her husband, Joe.
“How good looking I am,” the Aussie Utah Jazz wing cheekily replied.
Now that the pair are in their Utah home for the foreseeable future after the COVID-19 outbreak suspended the NBA season, they decided to start a podcast, called The Ingles Insight Podcast. Along with host Aaron Falk, a writer for UtahJazz.com, the Ingleses talk about their lives behind the scenes in the first episode, released Friday.
Yes, that the NBA schedule is on pause means full-time parenting duties, which is something that the couple says they’re really enjoying and also find somewhat exhausting.
“We go insane with the kids in the house because it’s been trying to entertain two 3-year-olds for a long time in the day,” Joe Ingles said.
But Renae said she’d learned a lesson: “If I’m looking at this entire situation, hopefully what this does teach all of us is to reconnect with all of the people in our lives, because at the moment that has been taken away from us.”
That they’re in Utah for now would have been a major surprise to both at the beginning of the decade, the pair say.
“It really does feel like home now. I never thought six years ago we would be calling Utah home. But we bought a house and we are very comfortable and yeah, and there’s no better place to bring our family,” Renae Ingles said.
“I think those first couple of years we barely left the house ... So life is obviously a lot different now that we have the kiddos,” Renae continued. “But I think now we just get out and experience where we actually are living now, which has made Salt Lake City so much fun and such a wonderful place to bring up a young family.”
Another major topic of discussion: how Joe Ingles’ motivation changed after having kids, Jacob and Milla.
“Post-kids the motivation is to be a great father. ... What drives me to go to practice and to be who I am, is that I’m obviously representing you and them and to be the best dad and husband," Ingles said. "I want my kids to be obviously have a happy lifestyle, a nice lifestyle — obviously with the position we were in, they could probably get spoiled a little bit. But yeah, just having them in a position that they feel safe at home.”
Before the pair had children, Joe’s motivations were different.
“I wanted to be, I guess, the best basketball player I could be, I knew, as probably silly as it sounds, I knew I was never going to be the best player on any team. I knew my role and what I was good at, what I wasn’t good at. I was very, I guess, in touch with reality — I wasn’t Donovan Mitchell, I didn’t have that scoring or Rudy’s defense or stuff like that. I was just kind of the middle man. And so the motivation was to play as well as I could individually in a good situation to get to a better team.”
That change in motivation was also familiar to Renae: she was a professional netballer back in Australia — Joe frequently points out that she is more famous than he is in some communities on the continent. She retired once when she was pregnant, but was briefly asked to return before retiring a second time.
“2019 was a really successful year for both of us. I enjoyed netball I think the most I’ve ever enjoyed it, even though off the court was probably the hardest year I’ve ever been through,” Renae said. “But I think that just gives you perspective and I think I enjoyed it more knowing that it was my last year.”
They say they plan to have a coronavirus expert on the next podcast to answer listener questions about the virus and how it will impact their lives. Among other topics planned: making the best of 3-year-old Jacob’s autism diagnosis.
The three hosts plan to release episodes approximately weekly, including after the Jazz return to play.
