Basketball Australia has dropped the ball on Andrej Lemanis saga
Basketball journalists across Australia were met with a press release this morning that should have been about the inevitable Lemanis/Brown swap. It wasn’t. And it proves Basketball Australia is battling, writes Greg Davis.
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IF you ever needed proof that Basketball Australia was a bit of a basket case, it came through at 8.59am AEST on Thursday.
The basketball world knows that Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown will replace Andrej Lemanis as the Australian Boomers head coach for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
It was big news either side of the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday after ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted that Basketball Australia was in the last throes of negotiating with Brown.
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Basketball Australia refused to confirm or deny what they stupidly called “speculation”. That was once you rang the central landline at the State Basketball Centre in Melbourne that is advertised on the BA website.
Your call is answered by a machine that asks you to “Press 1 “ for Basketball Australia (or Press 2 for Basketball Victoria).
A receptionist puts you through to BA where another staff member read out the official “no comment” statement before hanging up.
Hopeless (and a bit rude).
Then at 8.59am on Thursday, a press release is emailed out with the heading “Basketball Australia Media Release”.
Here we go, finally, more than 24 hours after we all heard about Brown replacing Lemanis, here is the confirmation.
However, the headline reads, “Basketball Australia and Spalding continue to play ball”.
It goes on.
“Basketball Australia is pleased to announce it has signed a new multi-year partnership agreement with premium sporting goods brand Spalding’’.
Really? Of all the days, you send that out?
So as it stands BA will not officially confirm the Boomers coaching swap until early next week as both Brown and Lemanis have commitments with the 76ers and Brisbane Bullets respectively over the weekend.
They will be asked repeatedly about the Boomers job and they will bat away the questions, even though they are both more than ready to talk about the transition that has been more than a year in the making.
BA has put them in an unfair position.
The way they have handled the Boomers coaching situation reeks of a Ma and Pa show.
It’s been amateur hour.
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And that’s why it has been a little unfair on Lemanis to suggest he had poor relationships with some of Australia’s NBA players.
BA and the NBA players have a tense relationship because BA’s shoestring budget for the national team isn’t overly flash and certainly not what the NBA players have become accustomed to with their club teams in the US.
Lemanis was stuck in the middle of that. By staying so tight-lipped for days on end, BA has fuelled the speculation about his relationship with the NBA players. Again, unfair.
What a shambles.
But please pretend to act surprised on Monday when BA finally hold the press conference and unveil the worst-kept secret in Australian sport for the week.
Originally published as Basketball Australia has dropped the ball on Andrej Lemanis saga