Melbourne Tigers: Remembering ‘the comeback’ grand final series win over Perth Wildcats 30 years on
It has been thirty years since a hostile Perth crowd booed the Melbourne Tigers off the podium. The players remember it well, writes SHANNON GILL.
Basketball
Don't miss out on the headlines from Basketball. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Lanard Copeland remembers it like yesterday.
He went for a walk to clear his head before the biggest game of his career, but made the mistake of wearing his Melbourne Tigers tracksuit.
“People were driving down the street, yelling out and blowing their horns at me,” Copeland tells CODE Sports.
“At the time I took it personally.”
If you thought Western Australia was hostile to Victorians during the pandemic it had nothing on the events of 30 years ago when the Melbourne Tigers tried to take their first NBL title at the expense of the Perth Wildcats. A deciding Game 3 of the NBL grand final series was in the offing and the city could only see one result.
“They had the balloons in the rafters and the champagne sitting in buckets waiting for them to win,” Tigers icon Andrew Gaze tells CODE Sports.
“We thought ‘screw this’, they’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves.”
Last Sunday the 1993 Tigers were back together again, honoured at halftime of Melbourne United’s clash with Illawarra in the week of the 30 year anniversary.
It’s a mark of how close the team remains that despite some being interstate and some having NBA playing sons – Warrick Giddey and Dave Simmons – kicking off their seasons, every player on the roster attended.
It was like that 30 years ago, too.
Nobody missed the weekly team dinner. The team played together and partied together. It was the bond that helped achieve what many thought was impossible.
Beating Perth in Perth.
When the ball tipped off in that fateful Game 3, the Tigers had been in the NBL a decade and had never won a single game out west.
****
The Tigers reached the 1992 grand finals series against new cross-town rival the South East Melbourne Magic but lost in a series that gripped the city.
“We felt like we’d overachieved a little bit,” Gaze says.
“And then in the off-season we picked up Mark Bradtke and everything changed.”
But not straight away.
The Tigers didn’t gel at all to begin with, starting the season 1-5.
“It was terrible,” Gaze says.
That all turned around mid-season in a game that NBL fans still refer to as “The Comeback”.
Seventeen points down in the last quarter against the Magic, Copeland remembers it being “embarrassing” in front of a sellout crowd. So he did something about it.
He made two three pointers in the final 15 seconds to win a game that commentator Stephen Quartermain called “grand theft basketball.”
“It was the catalyst for getting the season going,” Gaze says.
The win held them in good stead.
The Tigers gained revenge over the Magic with a 2-0 sweep in the playoffs to go back to the grand final.
****
Standing in their way was Perth, a team that had recruited just as well as the Tigers by adding dual-NBL MVP Scott Fisher.
“They were stacked,” Gaze says.
“Fisher, Andrew Vlahov, Ricky Grace, James Crawford, Trevor Torrance.”
The Tigers took Game 1 in Melbourne but, as expected, lost Game 2 in Perth. By virtue of the Wildcats finishing atop the ladder, Game 3 was to be played out west.
“There was belief by most that once we got to a third game we wouldn’t get the win over there,” Gaze says. “And there was a level of uncertainty among us about whether we could do it.”
But all those little things – the balloons, the champagne, the abuse on the streets – were all adding up. The Tigers eschewed the traditional pre-game introductions, instead staying as a huddled unit on the court, resolutely looking each other in the eye as they shielded the outside noise.
“We were getting booed, and we made it us against the world,” Gaze remembers.
The Tigers, best known for the freakish talents of Gaze and Copeland, on this day were pure steel. Copeland caught fire in the third quarter as the Tigers silenced the crowd, leading by as many 15 points.
But, as the pinnacle approached they got nervous.
“We didn’t handle the last six or seven minutes at all, “ Gaze says after reviewing the game recently. “We did our very best to blow that game.”
The Wildcats and their ferocious crowd came storming home and, when Andrew Vlahov launched a three-pointer with five seconds remaining, it looked to have put the game into overtime.
“To this day I still have nightmares,” Gaze says.
“I’ve never seen a ball go around a rim and then come out.”
Copeland agrees.
“You can see the fans in the background all get up as if the ball was in,” he says. “I swear that thing went in and came out.”
The laws of physics were denied.
The ball finally landed in Gaze’s hands.
He iced the game on the free-throw line.
A two-point win and the impossible was proved possible.
*****
That wasn’t the end of the Tigers’ us-against-them campaign.
As the NBL title was presented, the furious Perth crowd booed the champions.
“That‘s Perth!” Copeland says.
“I don‘t blame them for it.”
Gaze, who was booed to silence at one stage when making an acceptance speech, says at the time it didn’t register with him because it was expected. They’d just lived through four days of hostility from the city.
“At the time we were so overdone with joy we didn’t care, but in hindsight you did think it’s a bit rough,” he says.
His coach and father has a slightly different view.
Lindsay Gaze wrote in his autobiography that “what should have been a great moment in Tigers history was overshadowed by a level of unsportsmanlike behaviour that no individual or team deserved.”
“The morality of it was more significant to him than us as players,” Gaze junior says.
“He would often talk about how you behave when you won or lost.”
Thirty years on, Lindsay has been proven wrong to a point because it didn‘t overshadow the most indelible image of the day: a father and son’s embrace. It was the sort of emotion rarely seen in Australian sport in those days.
“We were still very much amateurs when the league was starting to become semi-professional, so we were getting our arses kicked for a long time,” Gaze recalls of the years in which the Tigers had been also-rans after first joining the NBL.
The Gazes had devoted their lives to the club, through thick and thin, and the tears flowed down Andrew’s face as he embraced Lindsay; a hug that was more like a headlock for its intensity.
“It was just an instinctive thing,” Gaze says. “You appreciate success when you’ve had to endure hardships. And we endured more hardship than most.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Melbourne Tigers: Remembering ‘the comeback’ grand final series win over Perth Wildcats 30 years on
Crosscourt: Phoenix mentor safe, but for how long?
South East Melbourne will stay the course with under pressure coach Mike Kelly — for now. Plus, here’s why Montrezl Harrell escaped sanction despite shoving a referee.
SuperCoach NBL fast trades, tips for Round 4
One player should be at the top of the shopping list for your SuperCoach NBL team this week. See the moves to make to get your team firing for round 4 in minutes.