Hoops

Brett Brown confirmed as Boomers coach

It will be interesting to see how you all react if Brown gets exactly the same results as Brian. Lets just face it, internationally we are just not that good. We dont have superstars who light it up on the international stage. Bogut is our stud and he is only an average to middle player in the NBA. Then some say Neilsen is our next stud and he only averages 10ppg and 6 rpg in Spain at the moment. Hardly massive numbers.

Everyone can harp on here as much as they want about medals etc but we just dont have the cattle to medal. If we didnt directly qualify out of oceania every year (and we will continue to as NZ is in a downturn) we would struggle in the Olympic qualifying tournament. We had good wins in the olympics over Russia and Lithuania but we hit every shot we threw up and hit from everywhere. That just doenst happen every game. For us to medal we would have to shoot at 60% etc etc a bit like Croatia did to us in game 1 of the Olympic tournament but we saw it didnt end to well for them in the finish.

The announcement is the leading news story on FIBA.com

Link: http://linky.com.au/hphod

He has three kids to an Australian wife...does that mean his kids are Australian? If they are any good do we get to claim them as "our's"?

I like this appointment and think Brown will be good.

As mentioned before he was a boomers assistant previously and involved in the 2000 campaign and in that era which is probably the most successfull in boomers history, largely due to A. Gaze i think but still, he knows australian basketball and assuming he is keeping in touch with the new bread of players from the states he would know all about the current crop and has coached guys like Nielsen in the past, who will probably be a important player for the Boomers over the next 2-4 years.

He has NBA experience which i think is good as he has seen how things are done outside of the NBL and also may give the boomers access to some of there training facilities, it also may have an extra incentive for players to show up for all tournaments not just the majors, as a good showing for the boomers under brown may lead you to a Spurs training camp/summer league invite and if more Aussies make the NBA due to this avenue thats also a good thing for BA, and its promotion and the boomers. Not sure how much pull brown would have, but having one of the assistant coaches in Popps ear all year about how good say a Mills, or a Worthington is aint gonna hurt there chances and would only help IMO.

Another Positive is he is NOT a current NBL coach, which takes away all the accusations of bias in selection as they play for the kings/dragons like goorj copped and also it is better for the nbl as the boomers coach wont be (or being accuesd of) using the boomers as leveredge to recruit australias top talent.

His NBL career hasnt lead to as many titles as say Goorj but his record is still above 50% wins and i think most people would have considered him to be atleast in the average to above average coaches in the league during his time, he is also very good at speaking and prmoting his team as he showed at the kings which i thikn is good for BA and the boomers profile.

I personally would like to see Georide McLeod invovled as an assistant, as i think he is one of the top coaches without a NBL club and he doesnt seem to be a control freak who couldnt work well with someone else. Then one of the better NBL coaches such as a Gleeson or Beveredge as 2nd assistant.

Not stacker for Christs sake

I'd like to see Bevo as assistant...

I think this is a slap in the face to Goorjian & another error of judgement from BA. Just as Goorjian was getting the right players together & putting the systems in place, someone else is given the head job. If Goorjian takes a lucrative job OS, BA will be to blame for giving him reason to leave Australia.

Thanks for the link Avv - I didn't know about Bobbinhead but now I think I might have to check it out next time I make it to NSW.

I'm hopeful for the Broomers era of basketball. Brown has had the opportunity to learn from the best at the Spurs for the last 6 years. You'd think that would give him some good ideas about how to mesh our NBA talent with local players and develop some effective team play on both ends of the court (this was sadly lacking in Beijing and I think the main limiting factor on why we didn't go deeper in the tournament).

Article on what Brown likes about Australia

http://www.nba.com/spurs/features/090210_brown.html

PS: Pity they have not yet updated their website!

Good news IMO.

My only concern is that we just don't get the Boomers together as a team to play in thsi country very often. I'd love to see them play more frequently and wuith a coach based OS, this is unlikely to change any time soon.