$195million NBA megastar is humbled by the success of his father who has turned around the fortunes of a regional Australian basketball side

NBA superstar Jayson Tatum recently signed a massive $195 million contract extension with the Boston Celtics, but he remains humble and speaks highly of his father’s success in Australia’s NBL.

Wollongong, a regional city of about 300,000 people per hour south of Sydney, is a long way from the bright lights of the NBA.

It’s where Justin Tatum calls home and is creating his own basketball legacy in a region without the NBA’s big paychecks in a modest gym called the ‘Sandpit’ that normally only seats about 4,000 loyal Illawarra Hawks fans.

While his son chases an NBA championship ring and rakes in an eye-watering amount of money, Justin started the year for a team that was struggling to make ends meet as an assistant coach.

The Hawks were motherless four months ago and their coach Jacob Jackomas was unceremoniously fired.

The father and son have always had a close relationship, as seen when Jayson was drafted into the NBA in 2017

Since then, Tatum has turned things around significantly, taking the Hawks all the way to the NBL play-offs, a fourth-place finish on the ladder, a real chance at a championship and a nomination for Coach of the Year at the same time.

Tatum, in his first professional head coaching job, inherited a team that had won just two of its first nine games but finished the season in fourth place on the ladder.

The Hawks have posted a 12-7 record under Tatum and will face Tasmania JackJumpers in a fairytale final on Wednesday.

While his hard work at the regional Australian club pales in comparison to what his son achieved in Boston, Jayson was genuinely humbled when asked about his father’s season with Wollongong.

“I got to talk to him right before the (NBA All-Star) game started, you know the time difference is a little crazy,” Jayson said.

“He’s a finalist for Coach of the Year, started as an assistant coach and, you know, the head coach was fired in the middle of the season.

“They were in the 10th or 11th seed and now he’s turned it all around. They are in the fourth seed going into the playoffs.

‘Extremely happy for him, of course. Happy with what he was able to do there and change that organization a bit.’

Tatum was thrown into the deep end at the Illawarra Hawks when the head coach was sacked after a horror start to the season

Tatum has since guided the Hawks to the NBL finals, been nominated for Coach of the Year and earned a three-year contact extension

And Jayson said his father had no plans to return to the United States for good anytime soon.

“He loves it, he loves it there, he loves being in Australia,” he said.

“He says the matches are extremely competitive and the atmosphere is crazy, so hopefully they can keep going and push it to the limit.

“It was great to see him turn that thing around and have a lot of success there.”

In a boost for the Hawks, Justin Tatum has signed a three-year extension to remain as head coach.

“I am grateful to the team, my assistant coaches and the Illawarra Hawks management team who have placed their faith in me since I took over in November,” he said.

Tatum will continue to weaponize Illawarra’s underdog status to inspire his players in their finals tournament.

“People just don’t give us the respect we’ve worked for – I’m not going to say (the respect) we deserve, we’ve worked for this,” he told AAP.

“We were at the bottom and we figured out a way for the guys who were all on different pages to find a way to solve it and become one of the top four teams.

‘We still feel slighted. But at the end of the day, we’re okay with that because we have our self-respect.”