Why? what is so far fetched about the suggestion? she could do no worse than the preceding 3 coaches and it appears she may be looking for a position if you read the Sunday Mail today. What you think it should be males coaching males and everyone else coaching the females, very old school thinking and a bit male chauvinistic dont you think?

Anon

she would do a better job than the last 3 male coaches.

Jan has won a worlds. Would you like to back down?

Would be interesting. Ive always thought females we better better at the fundamentals of basketball, not relying on athletism as much as men do. Bringing that style of play into an NBL team that has the athletism could work extremely well...and anyone would be better right now!

this is a just a plain joke hehe.

its not a gender issue but what will a team of purely professional players will feel getting coach at every situation by a woman.

and how will a woman feel when they are inside the locker? do she still have the same confidence and respect she wants to maintain.

simple thinking will just say no to this idea.

A woman coached Mt Gambier to the SEABL championship a few years back. Woman, man, hermaphrodite ..... does it really matter? Strewth, I thought as a society we'd gotten over this sort of stuff .....

Men Coaches are inside womens lockers all the time, whats the diff

If a woman coach was to make the rise from coaching junior men all the way up to senior men with success then she should be given the opportunity to coach in the NBL. However, jumping from womens league to Mens I don't see is correct in the NBL. It is a different experience level.

If a person's good enough, who gives a shit what gender they are?

One good thing about Jan's style is that she's not afraid to base her game around a TALL team. Something that most of the male coaches seem not to be able to do. This year in particular how many guards did we have in the team and on the court at any one time? How much was our 7 footer used? Not much!!!
Who got rid of an experienced and effective Matt Bursden when we had him.
I would be disappointed if all this years result was blamed on the boys. They didn't put the team together! They didn't call the plays! They didn't call the subs until it was too late to win the game!

Darryl Simmons wants heads to roll, I just hope he picks the right heads.

^ why does he have to be related to Phil? if your about to sit there and say Phil sucked as coach while winning a back to back followed by a third championship then you are sadly mistaken!

Phil won with a team put together by Mike Dunlap.

SRT, EC is a woman.

Yes that's right raytri. Dunlap recruited Darnell Mee, Kevin Brooks, Paul Rees (then David stiff the next year) didn't he?
And Dunlap made Cat into a star too, didn't he?
Oh. Um, no. Wait. That would be ... Phil.
Nice attempt to re-write history though.

Why would a big time player come play for Jan?

She isn't a part of any National link and wouldn't have any previous contacts nor experience.

"its not a gender issue but what will a team of purely professional players will feel getting coach at every situation by a woman."

what an ignorant contradicting statement.

Anon, the difference is your orientation about its game culture. Ask Stirling and the NBL first if they will consider your weird idea my friend.

whatever political correctness you're insisting but i dont think this one will happen very soon.

maybe when the NBL is too desperate enough.

My bad Isaac and EC didnt mean to assume, however i did when it was suggested EC was Phil!

and +1 for Jacks reply to Raytri. Dunlap didnt win 3 championships Phil did. doesnt matter who put the team together (even though Phil put it together) you still need to be a good coach to win championships.

Hell yes she could. And they'd respect her too.

What was the upshot of the Timms experiment? I think the Dragons brought her in as an assistant, didn;t they? Does anyone know how the dynamics between the male players and her role worked - or not as the case may be?

I thought she was more of a community development person? Wikipedia says "basketball development officer."

There is a female d-league coach by the name of lieberman and she is hugely respected.

Jan is one savvy woman..

Yes, Jan Stirling could coach the men...easy! She is professional and knows what it takes.

While Phil Smyth did win three Championships in 5 seasons, don't overlook his coaching record in his years after the 01/02 Championship. In the 6 seasons following the 01/02 Championship, the record was 5th, 8th, 5th, 4th, 11th, 9th. The last two seasons were why the coaching position was thrown open to applicants.

To be fair to Phil, there was not the money available during the Championship years, and you can only do so much with the players that a team can afford.

During these years Sydney, Brisbane and Dragons won/bought premierships and then their pribvate owners vanished and the teams folded.

At least we still have a team!!

Big yes

There is no way Sterling could coach men at a high level and she would not be respected! Guys would not put up with her super egotistical nature.The teams she coached were loaded with talent in the WNBL and should heve won. The Opal girls should of won gold at least at one of those Olympics?
We had the stars but she couldnt match it with the best US coaches,
She is too system oriented and did not utilise Jacksons and Taylors individual abliity in her Olympic campaigns.
She got a gold at the worlds but a lot of teams did not send their best players.
She is also a close friend of Clarke.

"She is too system oriented and did not utilise Jacksons and Taylors individual abliity in her Olympic campaigns."

wtf? Clearly you have no idea and are just taking bollocks to push an agenda. She used them better than any other Opals coach! Penny Taylor was MVP of the whole freakin world championships under Jan.

"She got a gold at the worlds but a lot of teams did not send their best players."

A lot of teams? Please. The top 3 other teams in the world at that time - USA, Russia & Brazil - all had extrememly strong teams in that tournament.

I was never a big fan of Jan but I have to admit that she did a superb job as coach of the Opals.
Contrast her to Carrie "run the starters into the ground" Graf and I would take her back as Opals head coach in a hummingbird's heartbeat. For me with Jan it's more a case of you don't know what you've got until it's gone.

I think that the main obstacle for her coaching a men's team would be whether they would respect her. That's something she has only limited control over, and I couldn't really speculate on with any confidence.