Hoops

Boti's full length Opals post-mortem

What is his coaching record like as the Opals coach? How does his W/L ratio compare to other national coaches or Lemanis for example? Or previous Opals coaches?

Joyce should not be anywhere near a national team or state team.
A complete overhaul is required.

Joyce just needs decent support - he needs great assistants and the COE needs more investment - it is run on the smell of an oily rag at best.

Have you seen the head coach ad for the COE - $100k including super. Who the hell are they going to attract for that?

Back to the real issue, I agree with Boti's view - Stirling is a bad appointment and a big step backwards for women's basketball. Wrong person, wrong time, wrong role.

^ haha

No I'm not him

I am very old https://t.co/tlkUtslNgN

— Boti Nagy (@boti_nagy) September 13, 2016

_Strungout_

No I'm not him, I'm probably just as old, but I was a considerably better player and a far more successful coach :) LOL

But I'll always read his columns

One of the difficulty with Boti, is that while he (mostly) has fair grips about BA and "authority", he is too often no more that a populist rabble-rouser ideologue - best suited to tabloid journalism than reasoned commentary.

His own house re providing quality and impartial sports administration and coaching is on quite shaky foundations as well, although that does not in any way automatically disqualify his opinions. I doubt Bart Cummings ever rode a horse well in a race either

I thought Very Old was Boti for some reason.

Guessing from above that is incorrect.

Boti's rant against Stirling re Clarke is both hypocritical and wrong. Clarke came to the job being lauded by all ( including Boti) as an almost certain masterstroke.

The error was in allowing Clarke to have "poison pill" clauses in his contract without a balancing performance goal, which essentially signed him up until the end of the contract. That's on management being too optimistic

He's also railing against reality, Stirling will chair the review, but she is exceptionally unlikely to be the only voice heard.

If Stirling gives the OK for Joyce to keep his job, then frankly she needs to loose hers.
Neither actually should stay in their respective positions, she may well have been a decent coach, but she sucks big time in her ability to select others

One solitary analyst sang the side’s praises, endorsing Joyce’s “game-plan” requiring certain types of players. As it turned out, those “certain types of players” weren’t such especially good ones.

I can't make up my mind which one of you "The Comic Book Guy" is based on

fstos, fascinating story. The common belief around the NBL was Joyce and Goorjian were great at preparing teams but not very good at making adjustments. We saw that in Rio and that story certainly backs it up.

Cheers for that detailed response Luuuc, I do appreciate it. I think there are some points I was trying to make in the article which perhaps you took differently.

France game - The article wasn't about looking at that game in isolation, it was about seeing why the 2016 team played so differently to the 2014 team when it had most of the same players.

The biggest reason I could find was the combinations of players used. The first half of the French game and part of the third quarter of the Serbian game was where combos from 2014 were used in notable stretches and they again performed very well.

It is inexcusable they weren't used more often. As the article says, the Tolo-Hodges-Taylor-Phillips combo that was so good in 2014 and so good against France was only used for 30 seconds in the game against Serbia. WTF?

Defensive length - The point wasn't that a lack of length caused our defensive issues (you nailed a number of reasons) it was that the 2014 team was picked so they could defend a certain way, and they did it very well.

That ability to generate offence from defence covered up the fact we didn't have a lot of players who could create their own shot.

With most of the same team picked, we needed to again use combos that could defend that way. If we weren't going to use those line-ups we needed to pick players who could defend differently. More experienced, high IQ players.

If we weren't going to generate offence from our defence, we needed players who could generate defence from our offence, that is put the ball in the hole.

Selection - The article wasn't saying certain selections were flat out right or wrong, but that players picked had to fit the way we played.

The Boomers could have taken the same squad to Rio, but had they run horn sets with wings just standing in the corner like Brett Brown did in 2010 they certainly wouldn't have been the impressive offensive unit they were under Lemanis' system.

Slovenia on the other hand, with less overall talent, can run horn sets and be very effective, because it suits the talents of their players (most notably the Dragics).

I guess the overall point is Joyce didn't find a way to mesh having Cambage into the squad and utilise her strengths while using the strengths of the 2014 team. He certainly stuffed up a potentially very good thing.

Sure. They have to remember their role in whatever defensive system they use. I am sure most good teams have quite a few ways to deal with on balls. They might change that up a few times a game or from game to game.

To switch it up depending on players the only thing they need to remember on top of that is which system they will adopt for the individual player/s. Surely that is much easier than remembering and executing the system itself.

Of course as you say some players will never get it and even if you keep things simple they will struggle. To understand that all you need to do is watch DJ on D for the 6ers.

I'm saying that everyone has a limited cognitive capacity ("smart" is too simplistic - much like BJ). There are plenty of examples of players that could execute that scouting report, and much more. There are also many, many players that struggle with remembering a basic scouting report, let alone executing it.

Contemporary pick and roll defenses don't just concern the two primarily involved: it's a 5-man job. As such, if one breaks down because they couldn't execute their role in the scheme in a time-sensitive environment, the entire defense breaks down. Coaches need to account for that.

Dumb players just don't get any smarter regardless of how long they play, how much they train, or what level they play at.

I've been watching my kids work through junior ball and now playing senior and world championship basketball. The ones who had no clue at u12 are still the ones who get lost on D or can't execute an offensive set.

You don't get it, you don't get it.

Which is why a smart player is so rare and valuable.

So Playmaker you are saying if I was coaching a team against United I couldn't after a week of training and watching tape drill them to go under on balls on CJ, switch on Goulding and Majok on balls and double Thomlinson using an on ball for example. (not saying the examples are the correct tactics but surely a pro player could execute that type of stuff).

"because players were not smart enough to execute different methods based on who the individual player using the screen was at the time"

While a little condescending, this is a fairly accurate statement.

BJ does have reasonable basketball knowledge - that isn't what has prevented him from achieving sustained success at the highest levels.

When the current Opals coach was with the Hawks I remember a conversation we had about the various ways to defend sceens.

I was interested in his advice because a friend of mine missed out on a rep job (BJ was director of coaching for the junior program)and my friends feedback was that part of the reason for missing out was that he failed to answer the question "tell me about the options for defending screens" to the required standard.

I was only a scrub coach but I loved to learn about the game so when I bumped into BJ at the Snakepit I asked him about the options. He was always generous with his time to talk basketball. (maybe with the emphasis on talking about himself)

After outlining about 4- or so of his preferred ways to defend I decided to ask more about which of the options the Hawks would use against certain NBL players. I did so because I have always had a great interest in individual players strengths and weaknesses. As a young player many years ago I was taught be my junior coach to scout opponents and have a memory bank of their tendencies.

We started on the poorer shooting PG's of the time and while I cant recall the player I suggested other than he was the type who was a reluctant shooter who liked to get to the rim (think C Jackson type)I said that you would send his defender behind the screen and then started talking options on the great shooters such as Shane Heal etc. When talking about the non shooting types I said " you would go behind the screens like some teams do with Damon Lowery". Watching most Hawks NBL games at the time Lowery was a poorish shooter and many teams did go behind the screens on Damon. BJ said "no they don't because he is such a good shooter"

BJ's answer to how the Hawks defended screens was they defended all screens in the same manner that they were using at that time,rather than using some/all options based on who the player was. Of course they used different methods at various stages of the game or in different games. His reasoning for the one method per possession decision was "because players were not smart enough to execute different methods based on who the individual player using the screen was at the time". WTF

Bit hard to explain fully but I clearly remember walking away shaking my head in amazement.

Personally I think it misses the mark on some things. Our defence was a shambles all tournament but IMO that had nothing to do with length and everything to do with instruction, cohesion and plain ol' effort/intensity - which was sadly lacking compared to Opals teams of the past.

"Marianna Tolo should have been the starting power forward"

:O
I believe that's the first concession I've ever seen about FIBA.com's favourite long mobile defensive stopping rebound machine!

"Abby Bishop should have been coming off the bench"

I wouldn't have had her in my 12 personally. That's one selection/omission I have been fine with from the start.
Anyway, the 12 we brought should still have been a far more effective team than they were, and at the very least reached the semi finals. All the talent needed was there regardless of people's preferences/hindsight/backtracking about Bishop, Batkovic, Allen, O'Hea, etc.

I think it's also dangerous to focus too much on the France game. That's a normally solid team who lost their best player and floor leader right on the eve of the Olympics, and they had a poor tournament as a result. That's akin to the '96 Opals losing Michele Timms. Penny played a blinder and we had one killer (25-10) quarter against them. The other 3 quarters we won 64-61 which is nothing to brag about IMO.
Despite Cambage's foul trouble and resulting limited (15) minutes she was still +9 and was our top rebounder for the game. Penny playing SF was second in that category. We gave up 14 O-boards to France and lost the rebounding battle to them by 5, despite 2 of their starting front court players being crippled by foul trouble, so I don't know that I'd use that game as too much of a blueprint for our front court setup.
We also coughed up 17 turnovers. So while it probably was our most complete game of the tournament as the article says, it's clearing a very low bar to achieve that honour. When someone does what Penny did that game, it can be easy to gloss over a lot of other issues.


Looking forward to Jan getting back, and I'm hoping that the fallout results in some changes to the Opals head coach requirements to open up the field to more candidates.


Throwback Thunday to when our current coach was appointed:
http://www.hoops.com.au/forum/31680-joyce-to-be-announced-as-opals-coach/
:/

Luuuc, it doesn't take aim at any players, it takes aim at Brendan Joyce for using a starting five that was at complete odds with the philosophy he had constantly spruiked. With the style they played in Rio, which was inexplicably very different to Turkey, Marianna Tolo should have been the starting power forward and Abby Bishop should have been coming off the bench.

For those interested, the article looks at quotes from Joyce post WCs about what made the team so successful in 2014 and then points out how his actions in Rio were completely different, including the limited use of players and combinations that were keys in Turkey, and even keys against France at the Olympics, which was the Opals only complete performance.

Joyce was incredibly proud of the way his team performed and the success of his style, and rightfully so, starting at the defensive end.

Except in Rio, they didn't play defence.... Joyce and his "international style players" theory

"Joyce will now almost certainly lose his job. The sad part for him is he will fall because he departed from what he believed in, the style that had worked, the combinations that had worked and the reason for his controversial selections in the first place."

He didn't depart from anything, he still had the same players, except for adding Cambage, and running Burton in the starters, BA should be glad to see the back of this fool

Another Opals post-mortem, this time from the FIBA website:

http://www.fiba.com/en/news/opals-rio-roller-coaster

I find it quite interesting that in terms of the starting 5 it takes aim at Mitchell & Phillips for being undersized as defenders, Taylor for being a player that is supposedly "targeted defensively", and Cambage for having poor lateral quickness. It seems to miss one of the starters. Oh wait, no it doesn't. It claims that Burton was "mobile" but "unable to cover the inadequacies of others at this level"

L.M.F.A.O.

Mitchell/Phillips
Taylor/Ohea/Madgen
Allen/Jarry
Blicavs/Batkovic/George
Cambage/Tolo

that's out with

Katie-Rae Ebzery
Stephanie Talbot
Natalie Burton
Laura Hodges
Tessa Lavey

changed his tune from Mar, 2016 http://botinagy.com/blog/polishing-opals-for-rio/

apparently Lavey, Hodges and Talbot are all off his "have" list from back then

"In my team, I’d have Madge, Bec Allen and Steph Talbot battling it out for two spots, and may the best players win."

"My Opals team for Rio, in no particular order:

Erin Phillips
Rachel Jarry
Penny Taylor
Suzy Batkovic
Elizabeth Cambage
Leilani Mitchell
Stephanie Talbot
Rebecca Allen
Cayla George
*Marianna Tolo
Tessa Lavey
Laura Hodges
(*If passed fully fit)"

HC: Seebohm
Assistants: Goriss, York

Get rid of all players older than 28 currently.

Introduce young prospects to opals as quick as possible.
Those about to take next step from junior representation.

Wallace, Wehrung, Tupaea, Sharp, Horvat, Froling, Smith, Magbegor, Scherf.
And other players from college...

Boti's final (?) word on the opals

"And if we were fair dinkum about challenging the USA for a Gold Medal, the Opals would have been

Erin Phillips
Rachel Jarry
Penny Taylor
Suzy Batkovic
Liz Cambage

Leilani Mitchell
Rebecca Allen
Jenna O’Hea
Abby Bishop
Marianna Tolo
Tess Madgen
Cayla George

But they weren’t."

http://www.botinagy.com/blog/a-dream-existed---farewell-to-rio/

Brondello in Phoenix has never shown an ability to develop young talent. She's traded away almost all her young players for end of career veterans, and Griner has shown little-to-no progress under her. I don't want her in charge of a young, build-up Opals squad.

Jackson and Taylor have no coaching experience, and Taylor doesn't even live in Australia anymore.

Gorris with seebottom as assistant or good female former Aussie player as coach, someone like Jackson , Taylor , Brodello, definitely not any of the former coaches like Maher or Molloy, ( can't even believe some suggested him)
Some new younger blood that can take the program forward and understands women's basketball ( it's a very different game to mens)

Seebohm or gorris.

So given we need to rebuild from zero, who should lead it?

The real winner out of all of this was Batkovic and Abby Bishop's 'Hangover-style' Bender in Vegas during the Olympics Campaign


....not at the table Carlos....

Speed and quickness.

http://www.fiba.com/news/joyce-we-want-to-beat-the-best

He really did sound like a racehorse trainer quite often when he spoke about players.

The "international player" thing was a way to pick the players he liked and cut the players he didn't like.

One other thing that may have cost us is not chasing (or looking to overturn) the ruling on Leilani Mitchell being a naturalised player. I think this ruling suited Joyce as he didn't have to deal with Griffin who would have taken minutes or competed for a spot with Burton. Classifying Leilani (an indigenous athlete) as naturalised never felt right to me.

Luuuc: 'Yes, I'm still angry about this campaign being wasted, a legend being denied a decent farewell'...

Me too, Luuuc, me too. I read a recent interview with Penny in Phoenix, she said she's still devastated a week out and she still feels personally guilty about the game/the results. The only worse way for a legend to go out is with an injury.

Makes me wonder what Brendan said to the women after the campaign. If he took on any of the blame or is letting them beat themselves up.

^ Brendon's home lol

Great post Luuc, and absolutely right, this thing Joyce has about " international potential" I'd ridiculous, it was his inability to coach and understand what he had that was his down fall,

People BAGGING out Daniel Joyce - haters/ idiots. He has played for multiple clubs DOMINATED at some levels, what have you ever done ??? nothing smh. Probably can't even dunk. Daniel is a hit on and off the court, can drain the trey, trash talk with the best of them and throw up the goggles. Daniel Joyce is the man should still be with the kings. So he is a bit old now who cares, he is better than any of you.

Really good post Luuuc. I think the other important point is the things Joyce emphasised - length and speed - that worked inTurkey weren't really a part of the way the Opals played in Rio. This was effectively a team without a defined plan or style and it showed.

I don't really believe that there is a particular "international style" you ever need to play anyway. No two teams on the court are the same, so the essence of winning is to have more of the differences work in your favour than in the opponent's. The main thing that the international level brings is an increase in the quality of your opponents, so whatever weaknesses you have are potentially going to be exploited more.

If your opponent is huge, it doesn't mean you need to focus on fielding your biggest lineup as well. That might not play to your strengths. You might be better off finding a smaller lineup that can at least make life difficult for your opponent at one end even if it's not quite a fair fight, but be much harder for them to stop at the other end.
Look at what Japan did to us for 90% of that game. They didn't try to match up with us player-for-player, they played to their strengths.

When Paul Westhead - the "Guru of Go" - first took over from Carrie Graf as head coach of the Phoenix Mercury, they were about the slowest, whitest team in the WNBA and overnight he tried to turn them into 2016 Japan. It really did not go well at first. Over time he compromised, changed and refined his game plan, and eventually won the franchise their first title, but that process took 2 seasons and some significant personnel changes. He won that with Tangela Smith and Penny Taylor as his starting C & PF, by making more out of his team's strengths than his opponents could exploit out of its weaknesses.

Joyce seemed to be fixated on this idea of beating the USA with athleticism, which is inherently silly IMO when you consider some of the athletes running around for the USA. There's no way we can physically top that, so it's crazy to put all the eggs into that basket. (In reality the one single advantage we potentially had over the USA was Cambage, and that was due to the opposite of athleticism. It was because Cambage's size and touch could be a handful for the more athletic Griner & Fowles duo). More to the point, as I've been saying for a long time it's dumb to even focus on beating the USA as our goal in the first place. How about first making sure we even get that far. The infatuation with the USA (and by extension, our "speed") is the No.1 thing I would point to as our downfall, as it seems to be at the heart of most other things that transpired as well.

The "speed" philosophy was further brought undone by the idea that people's straight-line running speed would somehow translate into superior basketball. Those infamous metrics ... ughh... We're dealing with established basketballers here, not an AFL pre-draft camp for 17 year olds.
Where did we actually use our speed in the tournament anyway? Credit where it's due to Tessa Lavey. She's got the ball into the front court in the blink of an eye. Then what? Then nothing because she's not a finisher so she has to wait for everyone else to catch up, and then we fall into our usual offence. Defensively we can certainly harass the ball-handlers, but set one pick on us and everything turns to utter chaos. One-on-one D isn't everything, as even Martin & Lisch found out in Rio. The Boomers struggled with D at times, but the Opals struggled the entire tournament.
The other player that Joyce made a song and dance about discovering was Bec Allen, and she didn't even make the cut despite being our only young player in the last couple of years to impact the WNBA. A lot gets made of the Batkovic omission, but really I think Allen's had more impact. (I also think that the 12 we selected could still have won a silver, so the selection controversies are far from the whole problem)

Anon a couple of posts up reckons that in the absence of a suitable PF, we would have been better off playing small ball. And I think they have a fair point, too. Players like Allen & Blicavs aren't traditional international 4's, but they're both skilled and versatile players whose plusses could outweigh their minuses at that spot if used correctly. Even Jarry can play there in a pinch. Penny won a WNBA title playing there by exploiting her ability to penetrate at the other end. I'm surprised that Joyce of all people, with his focus on speed, didn't explore those avenues more.

All of that, only to discover that the whole "speed" thing was a bit of a fallacy anyway, as most of the game our offence consisted of finding ways to get Liz the ball in the paint, and was otherwise rather stagnant and lacking in purpose.

(Yes, I'm still angry about this campaign being wasted, a legend being denied a decent farewell, our ranking falling, our funding likely suffering ... these women work their arses off for very little money, so they at least deserve fair results to show for their efforts)

I still maintain no team will be successful with Cambage part of it. Not that I expect her to play again. Rumour is she is taking a year off.

Joyce always bangs on about his idea of what equates an ínternational'level, often dismissing players because he feels they are not ínternational'potential....well his ínternational level defenders sucked big time....looks like as every one presumed and rightly so Joyce hasnt got a clue when it comes to international level basketball and certainly NOT what equates to good defence

small ball with no legit pf would have been the better option.

Allen, Talbot or Blicavs at the 4 spot stretching the floor, allowing more room for Lizzy to work inside and adding perimeter shooting and more mobility.

Reading through this thread, and I'm just still astonished at the disconnect between what Joyce says he wanted with his team and what happened on the court. He said he wanted a fast team, uptempo transition based. Hence, in his mind, Burton at the 4.

But his centre piece to this whole thing was Liz Cambage.

My gran is nearly as fast as Liz. No knock on her overall game, she had a hell of a tournament and was dominant, but Liz and an uptempo gameplay don't naturally go hand in hand.

Add in Joyce's desired to have a fast team that was always on the move, yet his offence had four perimeter players who had the only purpose of throwing it down to Liz, who got the whole paint to work, or shooting a quick 3. It was slow, stagnant and ugly. Where were the cuts? Where were the lanes? How do you have Penny Taylor on your team and not clear out a lane for her ever? We saw it in the France game; give Penny the lane and Penny will still score and get to the line.

Not to even mention our defending issues. All these women are professionals, yet looked completely unaware of how to guard a pick and roll. Did anyone on his staff even bother to do a proper scout?

If that coaching group is reappointed Australian women's basketball will continue to fall, they need to go

The Cotter position as assistant coach, who also has no experience with women's basketball (as far as I'm aware) and was also the last NBL coach to hand out a contract Daniel Joyce could also be looked at as part of the BA review.

"To only say that a better selection of players was available is damning both the coach and the existing selected players, implying that the failure was one of selection only, and once selected the outcome was doomed irrespective of the coaching performance at the tournament.

It was both. We definetly need a better Opals coaching group."

^This.

Correct: bronze, not silver in 2014. Wishful thinking on my part!

"must be confident of recontracting"

Does BJ still hire himself out through his own coaching company 'B & J Management Group Pty Ltd'?

http://www.hoops.com.au/forum/9691-brendan-joyce/

Good Review Luuuc

I think you have acurately pointed out that both popular reasons are in face contributing to the bad result.

1) Player selection

not all of the best players were selected that arguably should have been. Irrespective of the coaches "team philosophy" one or more of

Jenna O'Hea
Rebecca Allen
Abby Bishop
Suzy Batkovic

should have been selected, if only to replace one of George,Hodges or Burton.


2) Coaching

The players that were selected still formed a player group that were/are capable of knocking off the teams they won against in a far easier and more convincing a fashion than the struggle each game turned out to be. They should ahve been able to compete in a far closer fashion than they did against a team that had already lost more games than they had won in the other group.


To only say that a better selection of players was available is damning both the coach and the existing selected players, implying that the failure was one of selection only, and once selected the outcome was doomed irrespective of the coaching performance at the tournament.

It was both. We definetly need a better Opals coaching group.


On a separate point

I was uncertain of merits of the men taking essentially 4 potential point guards in delly, mills, martin and lisch ( with Bubbles on the bench) .

But with watching the mens games, and their very succesful defence in the groupo games, perhaps we needed another euro and WMBL Finals MVP point guard like Hurst sitting on the bench just in case.