Brett Brown the logical choice for Boomers Olympic gold medal campaign
Outgoing Boomers coach Andrej Lemanis’ decision to step aside and hand the reigns to 76ers coach Brett Brown was one of the most selfless acts I’ve ever witnessed in my long professional career.
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If you start to think your time is up, more than likely it is.
Andrej Lemanis had felt it was time to move on from the Australian Boomers national team, and did one of those most selfless things I have been a part of in my long professional career. He helped hire the man set out to replace him.
I believe Andrej did a fantastic job coaching the Boomers. We played a selfless, team first style of basketball.
The ball moved, everyone was involved, but unfortunately we came up just short of a medal in two bitter campaigns.
I don’t think people realise the gravity of the distractions which plagued our team leading into a World Cup. Some have been noted publicly, but many have not. Perhaps a discussion for another day.
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Nonetheless Andrej and his coaching staff should be commended on how professional they handled the situation. I for one must say I would not have handled everything that went down the way Andrej and his coaching staff did.
It is now old news that Brett Brown has taken the reigns of the Australian Boomers.
What you might not know is Andrej and his coaching staff were instrumental in bridging the gap to have Brett even consider the position.
Something I don’t think I could have done if I was in a similar position.
This was Andrej’s way of making sure the national team continued its progress to our hopeful goal of a long awaited gold medal.
I believe Andrej had started debating the idea of walking away from the national team within hours of our bronze medal loss to France. I flew back to Australia from lovely China with our assistant coach Luc Longley.
We had a long discussion and he had flagged that Andrej would most likely move on from the national team. This was quite a shock after what has arguably been our most successful 4 year era in the history of the program.
My first thought was can we change his mind? This was a no. Andrej felt he had taken the program as far as he could and that he was not getting as much cut through as he would like from the entire squad.
After hearing this the next question was who was out there and available? This was a huge concern considering we are less than a year away from the 2020 Olympic Games. A coach who is not familiar with the group, the players, the style of play and culture would take more than a few months to figure out.
This was when Brett Brown was mentioned. To me it was no brainer as he has been part of the program before. He had even lived in Australia many moons ago while coaching in the NBL.
Brett has worked with many of our current Boomers and is coaching one of the best teams in the NBA, the Philadelphia 76ers.
And a small bonus, he is coaching the best Australian player in the world, Ben Simmons. This should improve our chances of having Ben dress in the green and gold once again.
I think the relationship between Ben and Andrej was almost over before it started when Andrej had made the difficult decision of cutting Ben from the 2014 World Championship squad while Ben was still in high school. It is an unfortunate reality of professional sport. I would be lying if I said I didn’t hold grudges against certain coaches throughout my playing career for certain decisions they made. That is life. That is human nature. That is sport!
So, after my conversation with Luc, the elephant in the room for me was clear. Has anyone reached out to Brett? Would he even be interested in taking the Boomers coaching role? Would the Philadelphia 76ers allow him to coach in the NBA off season?
To be honest if he would have said no, I don’t know what the plan B would have been.
Thankfully Brett has committed to coaching the Boomers moving forward and the rest is history.
I think being part of an Olympics is a good enough sell for any coach. I think 10-plus years ago, it would be much more tricky for national teams to be coached by an NBA coach.
Firstly, NBA teams did not like the idea of someone they are paying a lot of money to taking off for the whole off season to coach elsewhere. Secondly, national team camps would historically start two to three months prior to that year’s tournament, which obviously would not be do-able today, especially if an NBA coach goes deep into the playoffs.
From what I can guess, I feel as though Brett will most likely bring his coaching staff from the 76ers over with him for the Boomers. I just can’t see their being enough time to run a formal process to interview for vacant assistant coaching positions. It would be great to keep current Sydney Kings Head Coach Will Weaver on board with the Boomers, but this would be a decision for both Brett and Will to figure out.
I believe Andrej has left the Boomers in a great place. It also cannot be understated the job he did throughout the tricky qualification process with predominantly NBL players. Rosters were all over the place from tournament to tournament but the players and coaches should be absolutely proud of the job they did to get us qualified to the 2019 World Cup and now the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
I am excited for the 2020 Olympics. We have not had all of our best talent available at the same time for a what seems like decades. We do have to remember though, that talent alone does not win games. A small concern we have to understand is that in a squad of 12 talented players representing their country, three to four of those players will see very limited minutes, if at all. On some teams this can cause problems. I feel our culture is strong enough to iron out those kinks, but it is a challenge that we have not had to deal with historically. We just have to make sure that we keep things professional and follow the line to our goal of a gold medal. For some of us, this could be our very last Olympics, why not make it special?
Originally published as Brett Brown the logical choice for Boomers Olympic gold medal campaign