Andrew Bogut: Sydney Kings needed to make tough calls to become more professional
The Sydney Kings made big decisions in the off-season to guarantee the NBL club’s long-term success, writes Andrew Bogut, and they are heading in the right direction.
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Over the off-season a lot of tough decisions had to be made for the long-term success of the Sydney Kings.
The level of professionalism across multiple parts of the Kings’ organisation, in my opinion, needed improving.
When I made the decision to continue my career with the Sydney Kings, plenty of people told me this is not the NBA when referencing some of my concerns.
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Obviously, there is a big difference financially, you can’t compete with chartered jets or the luxury hotels, I understand that, but I’m not stupid.
There is a lot of organisational qualities that every business needs to have if they want to be successful, and they don’t cost money.
And we weren’t getting those things right both on and off the court.
That was a line in the sand for me.
Pro sports can be uncompromising, and we made a lot of changes both coaching and personnel-wise along with parts of the front office.
A lot was said and written about the Kings’ team culture and harmony last season, but no team is going to be perfect.
The Golden State Warriors has created the best team environment and culture I have ever been involved in when it comes to professional sports.
That didn’t stop some negative issues developing within the team, it’s always going to happen in a highly competitive environment.
It’s about how you handle that adversity that separates the strong teams from the weak.
We did have some rumblings around our team culture at the Kings last season, unfortunately.
That’s not a knock on last season’s coach Andrew Gaze, but his strong point was not being an authoritative figure.
Drewy is a really nice guy and an awesome bloke to chat with but he, at times, struggled making tough decisions and that impacted on the team.
The reality of being a head coach in professional sport is that tough decisions have to be almost made daily.
There are going to be things that you say or do which will hurt or effect one player, but not the other.
Our team culture last season wasn’t phenomenal, but I don’t think it was as bad as some people think. It was average compared to some teams I’ve been on.
In saying that, there was a lot of room for improvement.
One of the harder things for a lot of the guys was just knowing where they fit in and what they needed to do to get better as a player.
If a player wasn’t getting minutes, I don’t think he knew exactly why he was not getting minutes, and there was no real development plan on what the player needed to do to get minutes. (extra reps, more video sessions, better understanding role etc etc).
A frustrating thing when you look at the Sydney Kings over the last decade or so, there has been no emphasis on player development.
Getting our younger guys to go from being the 11th or 12th man on the team to being the 7th or 8th player in the rotation in a few years, and then hopefully one day a starter for this great club was not a priority.
If you want to grow as a team you have to invest in your younger players. You want to see them develop as players and people and aspire to become starter calibre players for the Sydney Kings, not to mention being proud of the fact.
We haven’t had a Sydney Kings developed player make it big for a very long time. The last I can remember is Matt Nielsen.
A few examples of losing home grown talent:
Craig Moller (who is now back with the Sydney Kigns) was poached by Melbourne United
The Kings also lost Isaac Humphries way too early followed by numerous other examples.
That’s where new coach Will Weaver has been a breath of fresh air in the fact that he’s really opened the doors for a lot of young Sydney-based players with bright futures.
They are coming to our training sessions to see what it’s like to be a professional athlete and what they need to do to take their game to that level and become a future King or even an NBA player.
It’s always great to sign star players with big names, but a lot of the time your club’s long-term success and longevity comes down to how well you can develop young local talent.
We are addressing the problems that weren’t financial issues. We have bettered our organisational culture and we now have some phenomenal people working within the Kings on every level.
Harvey Lister did a phenomenal job getting the Kings back on track after the massive hole they were in a number of years ago, but being a Brisbane-based businessman, I think he took the organisation as far as he could.
New owner Paul Smith came on board and he was exactly what the Sydney Kings needed.
After building a hugely successful business he was looking to transition into a new challenge.
Paul didn’t know a whole lot about basketball at the time, but one thing I can tell you he knows a lot about: The business of sport.
The other thing about Paul, he adores Sydney and will tell you all about it at every opportunity, passionately! The Sydney Kings are in good hands.
Going into my second season with the Kings I’m confident the sport is going places and a lot of credit goes to the NBL’s majority owner Larry Kestleman and commissioner Jeremy Loeliger for really thinking outside the box and getting a lot of stuff done that people said they couldn’t.
The NBL hasn’t hit a home run with everything, but some initiatives such as the NBA Next Stars program have been phenomenal.
The likes of Lamelo Ball and RJ Hampton – both projected to be top 10 NBA draft picks - has already attracted record ratings for the league in the first round.
If we get more guys like them coming in there’s only going to be more eyeballs on the NBL.
They are trying different things and the league needs to be commended for that.
Without tooting my own horn too much, I think leaving the NBA to join the Kings and NBL last season, playing a year and then getting picked up again by the Golden State Warriors has really woken up a lot of people.
Outside of Australia people really didn’t know too much about the league but to come back to the NBA in pretty good shape at the age of 34-35 and then be involved in a long NBA playoffs run, people were like ‘holy s... the NBL must be pretty good’.
It’s not at the level of the NBA, and probably not the Euro League, but I think it’s getting up there.
It’s very competitive now to get a roster spot on an NBL team, so naturally the competition level is at an all-time high.
Hopefully the league can continue to expand and get a team in Tasmania in the next few years, and ideally for me a good number would be to have 12 clubs competing in the NBL one day!
Originally published as Andrew Bogut: Sydney Kings needed to make tough calls to become more professional
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