Macca
Years ago
Adelaide Fella's article by Joel Shepard..
Is this an accurate summary?
Adelaide Fellas article by Joel Shepherd
07/03/2006
Put most simply, Adelaide plays the game the way women's basketball ought to be played. Adelaide are fast, physical and aggressive. They like to score just as much as they like to stop other teams from scoring, and they don't try to restrict their star players from doing what comes naturally. In the 2005/06 season, Adelaide did not have the most talented lineup, and were certainly far from the tallest. Most analysts predicted they wouldn't even make the finals. But not only did Adelaide finish second on the ladder, they can count themselves pretty unfortunate not to have at least made the Grand Final.
So why is all this a big deal, and why should even non-Australian basketball fans care what happens to Adelaide? It's like this. For as far back as anyone can remember, defence and tight, rigid structure have dominated Australian women's basketball. It started with Tom Maher, who began his coaching career at a time when women's basketball in Australia was so much less developed, it was almost a different sport. Very few players of that era can be compared to today's players in any respect - with one or two exceptions, they were less athletic, less talented, and less pretty-much everything. Maher, realising that he couldn't rely on his players' on-court skills to win matches, created a system. That system was so tightly structured that it dictated nearly everything a player would do on the court. No deviations would be tolerated.
Australian women's basketball gained a reputation for ferocious defence - a credit to the system, no question. Maher won an enormous number of games with that system, and gained an enormous reputation to go with it. The system won games, not the players. But the system did something else, too - it nearly killed individualism on the court, especially on offence. Under Tom Maher's system, for example, Gina Stevens, for a few years Australia's best ever shooting guard, couldn't get a game for the Australian team. Why? Well, Stevens liked to take the initiative. She was a new generation of player - like Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor today, Stevens didn't need any system to help her score. She could score on her own, and didn't need much encouragement to do so.
Maher didn't like it, and would rarely let her off the Opals' bench, on the rare occasion she even made the team. Then Stevens was sadly diagnosed with chronic-fatigue syndrome, and was never half the player afterward. She retired in 2004.
Today, Maher is off coaching in Communist China (a perfect philosophical match, I think), but the system lives on, under current Opals coach Jan Stirling. Stirling is Maher Mark-2, and is far from universally popular amongst Australian players, inside or outside the Opals. She got the job, it seems, because
a) Basketball Australia makes a point of policy not to care what Australian players think,
b) she's senior, and it was her turn, and
c) she, like Maher, has a system. She's Basketball Australia's kind of coach, and it has forever been thus.
Adelaide's Chris Lucas doesn't coach like that. Lucas confesses he got the inspiration for Adelaide's present style of play from watching the Czech Under-20 team play during a European tour. The Czechs, prior to the 2001 Junior World Championships, were neither highly rated, nor tall. But they ran, attacked, and played with a speed and aggression that their opponents had rarely seen before. It made them Junior World Champs.
Lucas saw something in the Czechs that he thought might work for his present bunch of girls in Adelaide, and he was right. Adelaide don't give a halfcourt defence any time to get set - one rebound, and they're off and running. Even if they don't get a quick layup, the defence is often flustered, out of breath, and unable to get their matchups right. It also helped that Adelaide had the best rebounding backcourt in the WNBL - even when outsized, the forwards would box out on the defensive rebounds, and allow the guards to grab lots of boards ... immediately followed by a fast run down the floor. That Adelaide were probably the fittest team in the league didn't hurt either.
It wouldn't have worked without such a strong backcourt. Anchoring the point guard slot was Erin Phillips, without question the most talented and explosive all-round point guard Australia has ever produced ... or so she'll become, given a little more experience. Sharing backcourt duties were Jenni Screen, a talented three-point shooter and terrific defender, unlucky to have missed Opals selection; and Deanne Ranford, a streaky yet dangerous shooting guard.
Up forward is where most WNBL teams struggle for depth, and Adelaide was no exception. Yet in a team lacking height, Lucas did something unusual - he let go 6"7 Tracey Braithwaite, the tallest player in Australia. Braithwaite was simply never going to keep up with the end-to-end pace Adelaide were planning to set, and that mattered more than size.
He ran 6"2 Laura Summerton, who is still a little short on post moves, but loves to get out and run the break; 6"0 American Tami Willey, who was a revelation with her cool nerves and smooth shooting; 5"11 Cherie Smith, a quiet achieving hardworker and defender; and 6"1 team captain Sam Woosnam, who is strong, clever and experienced, and has the charming, straightforward nature to oil the gears in conversations between a reserved, intense coach, and a bunch of occasionally free-spirited players.
Adelaide weren't outsized against some teams, but against Canberra and Dandenong, the eventual Grand Final contestants, height became a real issue. Dandenong had 6"2 Jacinta Hamilton, 6"3 Emma Randall, 6"1 Jenna O'Hea and (when fit) 6"2 Shelley Hammond. Canberra had the tallest line-up in the history of the WNBL, with 6"6 Jenny Whittle, 6"7 Tracey Braithwaite, and some blonde kid named Jackson - you might have seen her around!
Canberra and Adelaide finished the season with two wins apiece head-to-head, despite the mismatch. Sure, one of Adelaide's losses was in the Qualifying Final to get into the Grand Final, but Adelaide played all over Canberra in that game, only to be beaten by 33 points from that Jackson girl. Moral victories don't feel any better when the scoreboard indicates a loss, but in the battle against giant frontcourts, slow halfcourt offences and boring-play-in-general, the moral victory this season was surely Adelaide's. Which is not to say that Canberra coach Carrie Graf is another Maher/Stirling clone - she's certainly not. But with three giants up front, a run-and-gun style wasn't ever going to be a feature in 2005/06.
But it can be done, with a smaller team, and for much of the season Adelaide proved it - if only a coach would dare to have faith in his or her players.
In talking with Lucas and his team, one thing about Adelaide's style becomes clear above all others - Lucas lets his players be themselves. There is some concern, for example, over Erin Phillips' transition to the Opals squad. Will Jan Stirling allow her the free rein that she's accustomed to under Lucas's coaching? Given Stirling's record, it doesn't seem likely. Phillips is spectacular. She takes risks, and creates her own opportunities on the court, instead of always waiting for the system to create something for her. Lucas sees this as an advantage, allows her to cut opponents to pieces as she sees fit, and resigns himself to live with the inevitable mistakes. Stirling, on the other hand, has rarely ever trusted a player like Phillips. Phillips does not always conform to the system, and the system matters more than the players.
For Chris Lucas, the players are the system. Their capabilities and limitations determine how the system works, and where its boundaries lie. It's fast, it's tough and it's flexible. The result is basketball that's fun to watch, and where spectators can see 100% of what each player can do, and not just the 50% that the system might grudgingly allow. Adelaide will certainly lose Tami Willey next season, and probably Jenni Screen as well. Hopefully, though, there are AIS juniors and others out there who'd like to come and play in a team where they can use everything they've got, provided they're prepared to work hard, run like hell, and make idiots of themselves in end-of-season video clips.
Australia might not be a powerhouse producing great female players in the quantities that America does, but the best of those we do produce have proven themselves worth watching at any level. If Australian coaching ever gets over this mental straightjacket of conservatism and defence-first-and-only, the quality of those players will improve even more, as will Australia's contribution to women's basketball on the global stage.
If you'd like to see that happen, cheer for Adelaide. Cheer for them to win titles. Then, maybe, the ice will finally break, and women's basketball in Australia will be played the way its players know how.
