Former Test captain Tim Paine and NRL coaching legend Craig Bellamy have helped Scott Roth make the Tasmania JackJumpers an NBL powerhouse
Scott Roth was told coaching Tasmania’s new NBL team would be ‘a dead-end job’. Lessons from an Australian Test captain and a legendary NRL coach have helped him prove the doubters wrong.
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A former Test cricketer and one of rugby league’s most successful mentors aren’t usually on your radar when you’re building a basketball team, but it’s who Tasmania coach Scott Roth has confided in to transform the JackJumpers into a perennial NBL powerhouse.
Ex-Australian wicket keeper Tim Paine and Melbourne Storm NRL coach Craig Bellamy are successful in their own fields, but they also possess crucial knowledge and experience of setback and failure.
Hobart-born Paine had to deal with a sexting scandal that prompted him to step down as the Australian Test captain in late 2021.
In 2010, Bellamy was coaching when a salary cap drama resulted in the Storm being stripped of its 2007 and 2009 premierships. The man nicknamed ‘Bellyache’ has also helped Melbourne become one of the most successful expansion clubs in Australian sport, all in an AFL-obsessed heartland.
Both Paine and Bellamy have both risen above adversity to learn, grow and become better.
It’s why Roth reached out to the pair in the weeks after he accepted the JackJumpers’ job in 2021.
The American-born mentor knew to make a new basketball franchise in Tasmania hum in every aspect, he had to extend his reach beyond hoops.
So when Roth received the chance to sit down with Paine and Bellamy, he jumped at the opportunity to pick their brains on all things success in sport.
“With Paine I got to understand what it means to be Tasmanian and being in the limelight that he was,” Roth told Code Sports.
“He is also very passionate about his state and it’s important I understood that. Craig Bellamy is very similar.
“Our CEO Christine Finnegan worked with him at the Melbourne Storm and when I heard about Craig’s story, I went and met him in Melbourne and had some conversations and picked his brain.
“Craig was very open and honest and gave me a lot of good ideas.”
Roth learnt plenty from Bellamy – a three-time premiership winner – but there was one idea he fell in love with.
The Storm mentor started a tradition of his players working on job sites during the pre-season to gain a greater appreciation for the people they are playing for.
It’s a concept Roth emulated in Tasmania’s first pre-season training session when he ordered the players to work with one of the JackJumpers’ sponsors Andrew Smith Apples – a well-known and respected apple grower.
“The guys worked in the orchard and in the restaurant to understand what it means to be Tasmanian,” he said.
“What it means to these people who are working hard every single day to have a team and what they are looking for when they turn on the TV to see us play.
“That way the players get a feel for the people they are going to be playing for.
“It also gives you a chance to have some humble pie and do a job and this is what an 8am to 5pm job really looks like.
“We’ve continued the tradition in the last three years and I think it is a good indoctrination, especially when we get new players in the market every year.”
DEFYING THE DOUBTS
Roth can still hear the doubts ringing in his ears.
‘Tasmania will be a dead end job. ‘You won’t succeed’. ‘Tassie is different’. They won’t accept you’.
These were some of the strongly-worded warnings he received prior to accepting the JackJumpers’ head coach job.
As an American, he had no idea about the Apple Isle, so he reached out to his basketball connections to canvas a picture of the challenge ahead.
And it wasn’t pretty.
The general consensus was clear: take the Tasmanian job and you’re destined to fail.
“But the more I continued to hear the noise, the more I wanted the job,” Roth reflects.
“Because it was right up my alley of proving people wrong and testing my abilities.
“I was going off what a lot of people said that I should wait another year to get a better job somewhere else if you really want to coach in the NBL.
“The state isn’t well resourced and they’ve always had struggles connecting the state, but that challenge excited me.”
Roth had an extensive resume as an assistant coach, including 18 years in the NBA with five teams, but he was yet to steer his own ship.
While the Tasmania job posed significant challenges, he wanted to prove his worth as the main man in charge.
“At some stage you really want to do it on your own,” he said.
“As a head coach you get two options: take over a team that is really bad and you make changes and hopefully survive or the once in a lifetime job is to start something from zero and build it up.
“That excitement of trying to do that was a huge attraction for me.
“Then when I got down to Tassie – and I met the people – I soon realised the job was right in my sweet spot.”
WHAT MAKES TASSIE TICK
When Roth first arrived in Tasmania he was determined not to be “the arrogant American who knows everything.”
“I didn’t want to be bull headed about what I thought should be done,” he said.
“I knew that wouldn’t work.”
Roth jumped in a car and spent his first two months in Tasmania driving around the state from Bernie to Devonport and everywhere in between.
He knew to build a team the state would be proud of, he had to understand its people.
Roth went out of his way to listen to former players, referees, coaches and administrators to gain a greater appreciation of basketball’s past in Tassie.
“I just listened and wasn’t the guy that thought he knew it all,” he said.
“So, what they wanted in a team? Why things didn’t work in the past? For me, it was about putting my ear to the ground and listening to the people.
“I resonated with the background of the people I was talking to, in terms of how I was raised. They were looking for a tough, gritty team that would fight and defend the island.
“I never really heard them say anything about winning or losing, it was all just competing and showing the mainlanders that they deserve a team.
“I then had to find the right players and people to surround this team with people who had the same values.”
Tasmania’s tough identity showed up in their Game 2 grand final win over Melbourne United on Friday. The JackJumpers looked in trouble trailing by 15 points in the third quarter, but they surged home to level the series ahead of Sunday’s Game 3 at John Cain Arena.
First ever Championship Series win.
— Tasmania JackJumpers 🜠(@JackJumpers) March 22, 2024
More to come. pic.twitter.com/fyVtwy4ZZX
EMPOWERMENT AND FREEDOM
Some owners in sport like to control everything, but Roth says he has never felt this way under Larry Kestelman during his time in Tasmania.
He praised Kestelman for giving him the freedom to grow in his role as JackJumpers’ head coach.
“Which is rare because ownership people like to put their fingerprints on something or control something or someone,” he said.
“I’m very appreciative of Larry because he never once to this day stepped in to talk about something to do with basketball, me hiring someone or what type of player we’ve got.
“This has been a very unique situation in that I’ve had freedom from day one and I’ve never had to look over my shoulder and be second guessed by ownership.
“They gave me full trust and that was quite empowering.”
MAN OF THE PEOPLE
Roth has endeared himself to the Tasmanian public.
In his own words he is “humble, hardworking and vulnerable”- traits the public in the Apple Isle can relate to.
Roth is also real. What you see is what you get.
He has a daily ritual of smoking a cigar, while he enjoys a red wine while wading over the video after games.
Tasmania Chief Operating Officer and former Hobart Devils player Darren Smith believes Roth is the perfect fit for Tassie.
“The whole community in Tasmania loves Rothy,” Smith said about Roth, who has guided the JackJumpers’ to two grand finals in the club’s three seasons.
“If you’re not genuine, you can kind of spout all this stuff but if people don’t actually see it, you’re not living it and you can see it a mile away and so I think that’s what’s been most attractive for the community down there about Scott, he’s just so authentic and what he says he does.
“He’s not always easy to work with because he pushes hard for what he wants and he believes in it. But that’s healthy, having that passion and debate around decisions but, ultimately, he’s got a very good reader on the pulse on not just the team, but on the brand and the community.
“He’s really values driven, like the idea of defending the island – It’s genius. He’s just tapped in, he understands and it’s been like that from day one with him. It’s pretty impressive.”
WHO IS SCOTT ROTH?
Born in Ohio, Cleveland in the United States
In 1995, he graduated from Cleveland State University with a degree in communications
Playing career: (small forward)
Selected in the fourth round of the 1985 NBA draft by the San Antonio Spurs
He played his first two professional seasons in Turkey
In 1988, Roth signed with the Utah Jazz, playing 42 games across the 1987-88 NBA season
In 1989, he joined the Spurs and played 47 games in the 1988-89 season.
Later that year, Roth was acquired by the Minnesota Timberwolves in an expansion draft and he played 71 NBA games in 1989-90.
Coaching career:
Roth had six seasons as an NBA assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks (1996/2000) and Vancouver Grizzlies (2000-02)
He also had four seasons as a scout adviser for the Milwaukee Bucks, he was a scout for Minnesota in 2016-17 while he had assistant coach stints with Golden State, Toronto and Detroit.
Roth moved to Australia in 2019 to become an assistant coach at the Perth Wildcats under Trevor Gleeson. He helped the Wildcats win the 2019-2020 NBL championship.
Roth joined the Tasmania JackJumpers as the club’s inaugural coach in 2021, guiding the team to the NBL Grand Final and winning the Coach of the Year.
NBL GAME 3: (Series 1-1)
Melbourne United vs. Tasmania JackJumpers at John Cain Arena from 5.30pm
Live on ESPN and Kayo
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Originally published as Former Test captain Tim Paine and NRL coaching legend Craig Bellamy have helped Scott Roth make the Tasmania JackJumpers an NBL powerhouse
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