Opals review for future, not PR

MELBOURNE (Paulo Kennedy’s View from Downunder) - The review into the Australian women's national program post the Rio Olympics is getting towards the pointy end with a report expected next month, and my hope is it's a far-reaching investigation.

Now, some may read that sentence and think I'm talking about digging deep to find which people are to blame for the Opals' Quarter-Final exit in Rio and I'm sure on some levels that must be tempting for the powers that be at Basketball Australia (BA).

After all, along with the 2010 FIBA Women's World Championship, this year's result was the Opals' worst at a major tournament since the early 1990s when they placed sixth at the World Championship and then failed to qualify for the Barcelona Olympics.

A report that lists the people who made the key errors would provide some dirty laundry for basketball media to air, a chance for BA CEO Anthony Moore and Co to wash their hands, and the perception that normal business has been restored.

However, in my view the last priority of this review should be to satisfy the media or to create good PR. Why? Basketball writers are great for creating discussion points, but not so good when it comes to taking responsibility or making important judgement calls.

Here are two good examples.

All care, no responsibility
Before Rio, I wrote about the importance of the Opals' style of play that had been so successful at the World Championship in Turkey two years ago and the importance of picking players who were suited to that style.

What I completely missed was how difficult it would be to fit a player of Liz Cambage's size into a system that relied on speed up-and-down the floor and versatility in the half-court. While it seems obvious in hindsight, I had a firm belief coach Brendan Joyce could get his team playing a similar style to 2014.

As it turned out, players like Laura Hodges, Natalie Burton, Tessa Lavey and Rachel Jarry weren't nearly as effective because the roles they fitted so well in 2014 didn't really exist in the style and rotations the team deployed in 2016.

Even a great like Penny Taylor was far less effective because the driving opportunities were no longer there offensively and defensively her penchant for hunting for steals was much more easily punished by opposition teams without the same proactive defensive approach by her teammates. I didn't really see any of that coming.

The second example is News Ltd writer Boti Nagy, who recently wrote that BA's High Performance Manager Jan Stirling should be "disqualified" from the Opals' review "on the grounds she is profoundly compromised in that team's decision-making process" - that is, she signed off on the team that was selected for Rio and should be admonished for doing so.

However, two years earlier, when Mr Nagy reviewed the Opals bronze medal team at Turkey 2014 - from which nine players graduated to the Rio Olympics roster - he described it as our greatest 'team'. Here are some excerpts:

"They were great, there's no other word for it. These Opals did us proud winning Bronze at FIBA’s World Championship for Women, redefining the meaning of 'team'."

"Back 25 years ago in my book 'High Flyers - Women's Basketball in Australia' then Opals manageress and long-time administrator Lorraine Landon described our 1988 Seoul Olympic team which lost the Bronze Medal playoff as the one which would go down as our greatest 'team'. A quarter of a century later, it is time to amend that."

"To date, we still haven't quite found the 40-minute game to unseat the US from its perennial pedestal but if it is going to happen at all, it will be under Joyce’s watch."

Long-term consequences
Both these examples highlight a very important point: as basketball writers, we don't hold ourselves to the same level of accountability we demand from others. We can write something one day and, if it is shown to be wrong later or we change our mind, it is of little consequence.

This review of the national women's team program will impact on our next generation of elite female basketballers. It potentially has enormous consequences that could be felt well beyond the next Olympics.

So this review can't just be about saying what will be palatable in the public domain or to appease public criticism, it has to be gotten right and that means investigating all the issues that make up the big picture.

The Opals program is now a part of the overall women’s program at the Centre of Excellence (CoE). The tangible side of that has been coach Joyce, with help from junior national team coaches Paul Goriss and Shannon Seebohm, has developed a style of play that now pervades elite women's basketball in Australia.

At major championships in the previous four years, the senior team compiled a 10-2 record and the U17 and U19 teams went 25-4, grabbing a gold and two bronze medals for good measure. Take out the Opals' Quarter-Final loss to Serbia and that is an incredibly successful period.

However, the question must be asked how something that worked so well in 2014 could at times look dysfunctional just two years later with the same coach and mostly the same team?

Key questions
One of the few exceptions to the current system being suited to our players is Cambage. That's not a criticism of Liz, she is the player she is, but it creates an interesting situation, and it should be a pivotal consideration for those reviewing the Opals' program.

They need to find out whether Joyce just failed to incorporate his star centre into the system, whether the system isn’t compatible with a player like Cambage, or whether there is a middle ground that hasn’t yet been found.

The questions then are whether it’s wise to change a system that suits so many of our players, has been proven to succeed and is now ingrained in the next generation? Whether you can have a system that doesn’t suit one of our most dominant players? And whether there are other key players coming through the age groups who might fit this category?

For mine, the answer to the first two questions is no, and that means whoever takes the women's program forward needs to be able to show how they can mould the Australian style to fit a dominant centre, or any other future stars whose strengths may suit a different way of playing.  

I wish those conducting the review all the best in getting to the core of this and any other problems that are identified. There has been a lot of success over the past four years, and one bad failure on the big stage.

What we don't need now is people madly bailing water like the ship is sinking. Instead, we need a mature approach that adjusts the ship's course and gives Australian women's basketball the best chance of success in an increasingly competitive international environment.

Paulo Kennedy

FIBA

FIBA's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

FIBA takes no responsibility and gives no guarantees, warranties or representations, implied or otherwise, for the content or accuracy of the content and opinion expressed in the above article.