Hoops

Brett Brown's coaching strategies

Last season Kirk Penney was injured, CJ hadn't had a good off season with injury ect and Storey turned out to be a lemon.
Who wouldn't have signed a guy who had played that many NBA games? Unfortunately he had no heart and only showed small flashes of what he was capable of, I don't blame Lemanis for that, although he could have drop kicked him a bit quicker. Despite that, NZ came agonizingly close to the playoffs and were in hot form and the end of the season.
Sure they have a solid roster but so do a lot of other teams, it's a good league, look how close things were for most of last season.

Anon, how is Lemanis a failure as a coach? Please elaborate?

Peter - the Socceroos qualified for the 2006 World Cup by defeating Uruguay. Australia topped Asia, having to win quite a few games, so not just an easy path. The results for the 2010 World Cup first round were the same in 2010 as 2006, ie won 1, drew 1, lost 1. The only difference was that they did not proceed due to inferior goal difference.

Australia over achieved their ranking at the 2006 World Cup and did around expectations for their ranking at the 2010 World Cup. However I too would have liked to see them do better but was realistic with several top players carrying injuries or had a poor preparation due to injury.

What has Australian Mens Basketball Teams achieved since the 2000 Olympics - won a Gold Medal at the commonwealth Games.

Where was James Harvey?
Guy might act like a loony, but he can shoot the hell out of it!

Perhaps it is time that Basketball Australia recognised that the powerhouses of international basketball are in Europe and took a leaf out of FFA and looked at an experienced European coach.

Since FFA have done this, the Socceroos have twice qualified for the World Cup and their ranking has improved. It would be a radical change of thinking but worth investigating. Current NZ head Coach Nenad Vucinic has had a number of years coaching experience in Europe and all things considered, NZ achieved the same results in 3-3 as Australia.

Going into the Championships I was happy with the defensive effort and transition scoring Brown was getting out of the Boomers.

With that style of play, I could understand the decision to start Gibbo and include Martin in the team: we were going for speed and aggressive pressure defence to play to our biggest offensive strength - Mills in transition, ably supported by Ingles and Newley.

Problem is, we got to the championships and the team slowed down, only trapping and playing really aggressively in short spurts. I don't know if it was because they were trying to conserve energy for the next game, or because they thought the refs were calling it too tight, but it didn't happen often enough for us to get away with playing guys like Gibbo or Martin at SG.

With the way we played, we would have been better off going with Newley and Barlow a lot more and sitting Gibson down.

Speaking of which I thought Newley was really out of sorts in this tournament, and yet his 2PT% was 61% !!

Similarly: Ingles 2PT% 62.5% ; Mills 47.2% ; Nielsen 54.3% ; Maric 56.1%; Ando 46.2%.

Like all of our key players apart from Ando, it was their horrible 3PT% that killed us.

IMO we were okay, but without Bogut and Bruton, I think most of us would have been pretty happy if they made the top 8.

To me, this is a team with some talented players, but it needs a different mix to be successful. The Boomers have to find a shooting guard who can... well... you know... shoot!

In the absence of that, Brown needs to dream up an offence that will get Newley and Ingles shots closer to the basket and gets Maric the ball close to the basket so he doesn't have to put the ball on the floor more than once. The big fella is a very good scorer, but he was a TO waiting to happen with 17 in 6 games!

Other than that, we need to improve our rebounding a little bit. Ando was good tho with 7.5 rpg and Nielsen was ok (but excellent defensively and leadership wise) but Maric was very poor for his size. Newley was good, but Ingles and the other guards needed to do a better job of snaffling those long boards.

Turnovers were huge for us too. To be expected with a young PG like Mills, who is more comfortable scoring than running an offence. I do think Mills will continue to learn and improve in this area though.

So to sum up:
- cut out the turnovers
- improve rebounding a little
- find an offence that plays to our strengths more (Hint: 3pt bombs are no longer a strength!)
- find a SG who can shoot
- get one A Bogut back into the lineup

Heal may have been a great servant as a player for Australian basketball, but he has never been a great coach, and therefore does not deserve a coaching stint.

I would still have had Maric in the side - he was All-Euroleague First team for heaven's sake.

My two changes to the final team barring injuury would have been to have Bogut in for Baynes and Bruton in for Markovic.

I'm with you Juror 12 - I look at the top eight teams and ask who could we realistically expect to regularly beat? Its a pretty short list. Doesn't mean we can't beat them but we have to do things to ensure we never have a bad day if we are to move from our current 9-12 position to the 5-8 bracket (an enormous leap if you look at some of the personnel on those teams).

I've never been a Brown fan but I watched the Germany game and thought we are making strides. I had to turn off the Slovenia game. I don't think Brown is the guy but I don't have a better solution. (Was Goorj on the Chinese staff for this tournament?). If for our next outing Brown can have 75% Germany/Argentina games and only 25% Slovenia games then we persist - if not, I think we've got to look overseas for a genuinely competitive World-game coach.

One of our problems is that our next outing is pretty much London isn't it?

Shane Heal being a Boomers assistant coach for mine is a joke. The guy has little head coaching experience, and his one and only chance at the NBL level was a dismal failure.

Beveridge would have been the No.1 candidate in front of Lemanis with Heal not even entering consideration.

Whatever we do, PLEASE NO MORE SHANE HEAL!

I'm with Paul on this. We need to give Brown a chance to learn from his mistakes. If we fail in the Oceania qualifiers, then his time has come.

The next coach we have in any case needs to be a local IMO. Our coaches know our style of game and play to those strengths that lie within.