If anything, his absence from ABA games feeds right into his detractors hands and is another example of how our coaching staff is lacking in the off-court recruitment stakes.
The biggest examples of this have come during the last few years where we have been hamstrung financially meaning we can't just go out and throw big money at everyone Smyth wants.
Did Smyth travel around Australia to find a project centre (whether it be Everstyn or other) in the various ABA comps around Australia during the years he had Holmes and Cat playing centre?
The guy is reportedly very well paid and is the highest profile basketball coach in South Australia. The NBL season goes for 6 months tops if you make it past the first round of the play-offs.
Even allowing for pre-season training that is a lot of time off and fitting in a couple of hours a week to endure the hard work of watching an ABA game at least to,
a) watch the players already on the roster to show you care about their development,
b) watch the prospective players to get a better feel of who you should be inviting to trials that via a box score.
Who knows how many games Goorjian gets out to or whether he relies on his assistants, but with Goorjian you can't help but be left with the impression that if there is any talent in the ABA/AIS/NCAA/U14s all the way to U/20s he knows about it and before most of the other NBL coaches, especially Smyth.
I have no personal insight to how much work Smyth puts in re monitoring young players, contacting families, etc but other posters reportedly in the know all seem to agree that the effort is non-existant. I'd like to hope that the info from posters in the know is incorrect because as a player Smyth's work ethic was reportedly second to none.
However, before I get bashed and have this post cast off as more anti-Smyth propaganda I note that Smyth himself in the Nagy article admitted that they had dropped the ball in the off-court recruitment area and that efforts were being made to fix this.
Not being sighted at an ABA game nor watching Smylie who destroyed Cooper, in person (despite Smylie playing right on his door-step for his former club) is inexusable.
No matter how I try to analyse the fact our coach has not made the effort of watching a guy who averaged 20 and 10 in the NCAA, it is just mind boggling.
I apologise for being pessimistic but in my interview of Sanders a year ago he noted that it was expected that the coaches would attend junior championships and monitor the AIS to prevent a repeat of the Newley situation.
The situation has once again repeated itself with Ingles and while money played a role, I get the feeling that a lack of appreciation of his talent (probably from not watching him as closely as others) played a role.
Again, I have no inside information but it has been posted that Ingles was not offered a spot in the 10 but in the 13. Again, evidence of a lack of appreciation of his talent.
However, assuming this inside information is correct then is this lack of effort good enough?
Money is always going to play a major factor but put yourself in the shoes of SAs best junior player whether it be Newley, Ingles or whoever is next and it is decision time re NBL teams and the Adelaide coach hasn't seen any of your games in person, has not been in contact with you at the AIS, and has not been in much contact with your family.
We are well and truly on the back foot right from the beginning.
Maybe it is time for someone like Belly (if he didn't have conflicts arising from agent work) or Sapwell to be made player general manager like in the NBA where the coaches coach the roster given to them by the GM and only have minimal input.
