First interview: Boomers coach Brian Goorjian bares all on FIBA World Cup disappointment, calls for his resignation, what’s next for Paris Olympic campaign
The Boomers’ failed World Cup campaign could have been very different if not for a crucial — and decisive — refereeing call against Germany. MICHAEL RANDALL sits down with Brian Goorjian to unpack the tournament.
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Brian Goorjian has hit out at the “nasty” reaction from online “cowards” to the premature end to the Boomers’ World Cup campaign and revealed he has already begun work on preparing for his fourth Olympic campaign.
As bullish as ever, the 70-year-old coaching legend acknowledged the Boomers deserved to “get a smack” after they missed the quarterfinals but said those calling for his head and labelling his team’s effort a “disaster” had got it wrong.
After he was emphatically backed by Basketball Australia as the man to lead the Boomers to Paris next year, Goorjian, in a wide-ranging interview spanning more than two hours, defended his players and said he was going nowhere, adamant his team could win back-to-back Olympic medals.
“We failed (at the World Cup), and, you know, you deserve criticism when you fail,” Goorjian, speaking from his Melbourne home, told Code Sports.
“After the Slovenia game I’ve got people trying to comfort me which says it must be really bad.
“Then, I get all the feedback and people are calling it a ‘disaster’, ‘devastating’, ‘a total bust’ and ‘Goorj’s gotta f***ing go’.
“I’m sorry, I’m not on the same page with this. The whole thing was over the top.
“Devastating is you lose the Japan game and New Zealand beats Greece and we don’t get out of the group and we don’t qualify for Paris and we have to go through a pre-Olympic tournament.
“I’m sorry, no. We won three games, we lost two.
“We played Slovenia — you can throw a few boots on the defensive scheme but I went down the same path (defending Luka Doncic) as I did in Tokyo (Olympic bronze medal game).
“We regressed, statistically, on the defensive end. I thought we were going to be a better defensive team than the last one. That was disappointing.
“But we pushed Germany to one basket and they’re now playing for the gold medal.”
NO EXCUSES, JUST FACTS
Goorjian was at pains to stress he didn’t want to make excuses, saying the Boomers fell short after embracing the expectation of winning a medal. But he wanted to set the record straight on some of the criticism that had been directed at he and his team in the wake of the tournament.
“I’m telling the basketball community this is not an extension of rose gold (Tokyo Olympic bronze medal team),” Goorjian said.
“We’re taking these guys another step.
“We’re a new team with a higher ceiling than that old team but there’s a process to this and part of the process is going to be frustration.
“There are imperfections and, constantly with the group, I would say to them ‘this isn’t going to be perfect, you’ve got to play through frustration’.
“You come together a month before the tournament and we’ve got to grow real quickly together.”
The six-time NBL championship-winning coach addressed criticism of his squad selection, lamenting Jock Landale’s ankle injury on the eve of the tournament as “the one player you can’t replace”.
It meant both Duop Reath and Joe Ingles were forced to play out of their natural positions and a shift in strategy to “small ball”.
Injuries to Chris Goulding and Josh Green throughout the prep and tournament proper meant the Melbourne United sharpshooter was underdone and the young Dallas Maverick had a delayed start.
CG, SHOOTING AND THE KID
The Boomers struggled from the three-point line as Goulding, one of the nation’s best shooters, sat on the bench for all but 10 minutes of the tournament.
“Goulding is one we reflect on to the point of when it finished he’s got a towel over his head because he loves the Boomers and thinks he’s done,” Goorjian said.
“We spoke all the way through the tournament. I said ‘hey, I need your leadership’ and he was incredible.
“He was a step off, we needed to get (Matisse) Thybulle going, we needed to get Joe going.
“Should I have pulled them out and flipped him (Goulding) in there?
“When it finished I grabbed Chris and said ‘you’re not done’.”
Some, including this writer, felt 20-year-old Dyson Daniels should have been given more minutes in the final game against Georgia, given the Boomers’ medal hopes had already been dashed.
But Goorjian said the young gun was under no illusion about his role at the tournament and he wanted to maintain a ruthless edge on the court.
“I sat down with Dyson right at the start and said ‘for Tokyo, I cut (Josh) Giddey and kept Delly (Matthew Dellavedova),” Goorjian said.
“I said you’ve got to come into this and you’ve got to watch everything, touch everything because you’ve got to grow from this experience
“He knew from the start that he was going over there to get a taste of what it’s like and he did that, he was special.
“As far as that game goes, do we change the rotations and play 12 guys and risk disrupting the group and potentially losing?
“No.
“This is how I coach the game, to win, and these are winning behaviours.”
REFS FUMBLE IN GERMANY BLOOD RULE DEBACLE
Giddey had scored the last five Boomers’ points and nine for the period and Goorjian had drawn up the play for Giddey to operate out of the pick and roll — a move that had proven highly successful against Die Manschafft.
“The Germans are pointing at Giddey, ‘he’s got blood on him’ and the refs come over and say ‘you got to get him off’,” Goorjian, who scrambled to call a different play out of the time-out said.
“So I call time-out, The refs come over and I go ‘can he go back into the game?’. The refs say ‘no, no, time’s got to come off the clock’.
“So he’s got to come out, we turn it over.
“We find out afterwards that, after a time-out, you can go back into the game.
“That was a costly mistake by the referees.”
Current FIBA basketball rules state:
5.6 During the game, any player who is bleeding or has an open wound must be substituted. He/she may return to the court only after the bleeding has stopped and the affected area or open wound has been completely and securely covered.
5.7 If the injured player or any player who is bleeding or has an open wound, recovers during a time-out taken by either team, before the timer’s signal for the substitution, that player may continue to play.
Tough break.
For the record, Goorjian said he believed Giddey was fouled on the full court heave as time expired — a non-call that would have given the young gun a chance to tie the scores.
“To be truthful, I wasn’t happy with the officiating in the game and I thought Giddey got fouled,” he said.
“I thought it was a stupid play for him (Germany’s Daniel Theis) to go across his body. It was right in front of us.
“But, when I think of the game and why we lost, that’s not a part of it. I mean, we went 9-16 from the free throw line and we lost by three.”
GIDDEY’S GREATNESS
The emerging Oklahoma City Thunder star led the Boomers in scoring (19.6ppg) and assists (6apg), was third in rebounding, and became Goorjian’s go-to guy late in games.
“His feel is incredible, stuff that we can’t teach,” Goorjian said.
“The other thing that amazed me when it got to the crunch and we needed a basket, he became that guy in the pick and roll every time.
“It’s like slow motion. They’re different players, but kind of like Andrew Gaze, in a way.”
This journalist wrote Giddey should be considered for the captaincy in Paris, a show of faith and a reflection of how he handled the press conference following the Slovenia game after the Boomers were bundled out. It was the young gun, not Mills or Ingles, who took questions from the media.
“We lose to Slovenia and Josh walked in and I thought ‘he’s our best player, he’s the future and he’s good at fronting the media’,” Goorjian said.
“My thought was ‘totally normal’.
“He came in, did that one well and the last one after the whole thing finished, Joe came in and spoke.
“The captaincy, you’ve got to develop. We’ve got a leadership team, we have two captains and, as we move forward, we discuss guys who we can add to that leadership team.”
PRESSURE OFF JOE AND PATTY
Veteran great Ingles was criticised after a scoreless 26 minutes against Slovenia and he struggled to impact throughout the tournament (6.6 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3 assists).
Goorjian assured both he and Mills still had vital leadership roles as elder statesmen in the lead up to the Olympics.
Ingles embraced a sixth man role in Okinawa but Goorjian flagged both he and Mills could see their roles change again in Paris.
“We’re evolving and there’s two guys left from that senior group and you’re at the last hurdle and it’s roles,” Goorjian said.
“I think it’ll become clearer with Joe. He’s to do at Orlando pretty much what he needs to do with the Boomers, be that elder statesman who comes in and adds to what they do and helps develop the young players. If he can do it at that level, he can do it with us.
“With Patty, it is clear. He is a huge part of this.”
Mills played more minutes than any other Australian at the tournament and saved them a number of times with his scoring outbursts. He’s still the best Boomer at creating buckets for himself but his influence often faded in second halves as his 35-year-old body was a target for opposing defences.
BRYCE V MATISSE AND HOW THE BOOMERS GET BETTER
Goorjian expects the majority of the improvement in both offensive gravity and shooting to come from within, with 22-year-old Josh Green earmarked as the man to step up and take the scoring pressure off Mills.
Green has shown steady improvement from deep, Giddey continues to get better and Goorjian expects Daniels, Dante Exum and Thybulle to be a part of that.
Set to suit up in Dallas alongside Green, Exum has rejuvenated his career in Europe and showed a poise and control not seen from the 28-year-old on the international stage, despite entering the tournament with the emotional shock of losing his father, Cecil.
What about the calls for Bryce Cotton to replace Thybulle as the Boomers’ naturalised player?
Goorjian said he’d penned a letter to the Federal Government in support of the Perth scoring machine’s drawn out bid to naturalise but the reality was the 31-year-old American-born guard cannot be selected.
“I’ve got nothing but 100 per cent support for Bryce because I would like to deal with that issue of here’s Bryce Cotton, here’s Matisse Thybulle, let’s make a decision,” Goorjian said.
“They’re both very good players, they’re both totally different.
“But it’s wasted conversation until he gets his citizenship.”
BEN STILL WELCOME AS PARIS CALLS
With some of the World Cup frustration off his chest, work begins now for Goorjian, who has not ruled out taking on a club head coaching role after he was left out of a job when his East Asia Super League team Bay Area Dragons folded.
As BA reviews the World Cup campaign to identify what went wrong and where it can improve, Goorjian said he’ll follow up with every member of the squad to ensure they’re abreast of the Olympic vision.
“When it finished, everyone in the locker room was aware this isn’t ‘now we’ve got to wait four years’ — It’s 10 months and we’re back,” he said.
“We’ve been in the trenches together, we’ve come out the other side with a vision, there’s a reflection but I’m not devastated, I’m excited.
“We’ve unearthed some great stuff, we know what we’ve got to get better at.
“We’ll make sure we stay in touch with the players, watch as much of them as we can and now we’ve got an opportunity to put a playbook together.
“I haven’t ruled out taking a (club) job if something comes but, right now, I’m totally locked into this.”
Goorjian confirmed the open invitation to Ben Simmons remains. He’s maintained for some months he sees a mutual benefit, should the maligned Brooklyn Net finally commit to the Boomers — as he alluded to again, last month.
The Boomers are almost certain to prepare for the Olympics overseas, with a view to a pre-tournament Olympic camp that would be followed by games against high-quality opposition and then another training block to iron out any issues unearthed.
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Originally published as First interview: Boomers coach Brian Goorjian bares all on FIBA World Cup disappointment, calls for his resignation, what’s next for Paris Olympic campaign
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