The EuroCup rookie has big goals, on and off the court
Cluj’s animal-loving big man Zach Hankins dreams of own safari park
Player Spotlight
8 Mins read
Many players in the BKT EuroCup own a pet – maybe a dog or a cat they go back to after a game. And while Zach Hankins is one of those players as well, living with his wife and dog, the U-BT Cluj-Napoca big man’s love of animals goes much, much deeper than most. In fact, Hankins’ post-playing career dream is to own a safari park.
The 28-year-old admits that he has put a lot of thought into his big plan, which is basically a zoo without fences.
“That's a huge motivation for me,” Hankins tells David Hein. “I have studied a lot and gotten much more knowledgeable of the different animals that I would like to have: how to get them, how to fence them, how to care for them properly, how to give them a good life and make something really, really natural and beautiful. I've done a lot of work in understanding that.”
Hankins’ hometown of Charlevoix in northern Michigan has 2,500 people and the Cluj center grew up with horses, chicken and sheep, while he would explore the woods. He went on to receive a degree in environmental biology from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, central Michigan.
While there, Hankins not only helped the Ferris State Bulldogs win the NCAA Division II title in 2018, but he also studied hawks and looked at butterflies and bear hair snare – the latter being a barbed-wire corral around trees with a bait in the center to help study bears’ behavior.
His professional basketball career took him to Czechia and Israel in 2019-20 and then after missing the 2020-21 season due to a torn ACL, he played in the NBA G League and Puerto Rico in 2021-22.
The 2022-23 season was by far Hankins’ most successful, helping Hapoel Bank Yahav Jerusalem reach the final of the Basketball Champions League and guiding the team to the Israeli Cup, with Jerusalem beating Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv in the final. He also was named the 2022-23 Israeli League’s MVP.
Despite all that success, maybe the thing that Hankins will remember most long term about his nearly two seasons with Jerusalem was last season, when he spent his off days volunteering at the Biblical Zoo in the city.
“That was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” Hankins says. “I'm still in their group chat on WhatsApp. I get updates from the guys. I got to see they just got their second rhino. They brought in one rhino while I was there and I got to work with him. They just brought in their second one. So now they're figuring out how to have two rhinos together, along with having these rhinos in a mixed exhibit with giraffes and other antelope species and ostriches. And it's a really, really unique zoo.”
Since his wife had returned to the United States due to the Israel-Hamas war last season, Hankins had free time on his own. He visited the zoo and started talking to the head keeper for the grass eaters.
“I was just asking him a bunch of questions, like really, really in-depth questions about these animals,” Hankins continues. “And he's like, ‘Do you want to come and volunteer with us?’ I was like, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ So from then on, I spent almost all of my off days dressing up like a zookeeper and going there and learning how to take care of these animals and work with them and also develop some really, really great relationships with the keepers there as well.”
During his time there, Hankins was training a rhino and working with giraffes and studying zebras.
“The number one thing would be working with a rhino,” Hankins recalls. “Rhinos are like dogs. They are really like dogs. He loves getting scratched. He comes when you call him and you give him some food. He gets scared of loud noises and jogs away from you. But having an animal that large, that close to you, like just petting him on his face and his horn, it's a really surreal experience.”
Hankins also talked about the zookeepers asking him what animal he would be and he came up with an oryx, which is a really unique antelope species – very strong body, very agile and has some deadly horns when you get too close to them.
“It's a very underestimated animal. It's a very deadly animal. They actually named one after me, which is really cool,” he says of an oryx named Zachy.
All that experience in the Biblical Zoo also helped him deal with the emotional burden of the political situation in Israel and everything involved with it.
“I definitely had to use it as a tool last year to allow myself to decompress away from the situations that were around me,” he comments. “It was a very difficult year in Israel, very difficult travel, very difficult playing. It was tough. And so to have that as a tool that I could use to separate myself from basketball was important. The guys I worked with didn't care too much about basketball. They cared more about me as a person and having great conversations. So that was great.”
That experience also gave him a lot of information and motivation to pursue his big dream.
“Some of the understanding was basically my little internship at the zoo, actually getting hands-on work with some of these animals that I want to own someday,” he adds. “And that was one of the coolest things I've gotten to do. And I really want to do that a lot more in my life. So definitely is still a number one goal for me.”
Hankins also has a location for that – in Oklahoma, where his wife is from.
“I’m now an Oklahoman. Love it there,” he says. “They got beautiful spaces, beautiful land. Yeah, it's a great place.”
Hankins’ future dream will have to be put on hold as he is trying to lead Cluj to big things in the EuroCup.
“When we play the right way, man, we're a really, really good team and we can do a lot of things later on in the season,” Hankins says.
Until then, Hankins will have more time to think about his future safari park.