Behind the sweetening of the violet crumbles

Sydney Kings mentor Brian Goorjian missed out on the highest honour for a coach this season. Darrell Halim reports, that news has left many questioning the snubbing.

There is no doubting that head coach Brian Goorjian is the reason behind the transformation of the former violet crumbles into the champion Sydney Kings of today, which makes his snubbing for the NBL’s Coach of the Year award for the fourth consecutive year even more astounding.

From 1993 to 2002, the Kings had unwillingly created a culture within the club that saw them struggle to win the big games. They would make the playoffs one year, lose badly in the first round, and follow up with a disastrous season the following year.

Just weeks prior to the commencement of the 2002/03 season, then Kings coach Brett Brown accepted an assistant coaching position with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs.

Luckily for the Kings administration, the Victoria Giants had just unceremoniously dumped the NBL’s all-time winningest coach.

In his first season in charge of the under-achieving Kings, Goorjian made an immediate impact, taking a team led by veteran point guard Shane Heal, which also featured the likes of an emerging Matt Nielsen and talented imports Chris Williams and Kavossy Franklin, to its first Minor Premiership with a 22-8 record.

After going on to win the clubs first NBL championship, Goorjian was forced to rebuild after losing a number of his core players, including the retiring Heal.

Coach Goorjian answered the call, coming up with stellar recruits for the 2003/04 season – current Australian representatives CJ Bruton and Jason Smith, veteran centre Brett Wheeler and athletic import Ebi Ere.

He led the new-look Kings to a second consecutive Minor Premiership with an NBL record-equalling 26 regular season wins, before beating cross-city rivals, the West Sydney Razorbacks, in the final series in what is considered to be one of the greatest playoff series in NBL history.

In the 2004/05 season, Goorjian faced an enormous challenge, losing 2003/04 season and Grand Final MVP Nielsen in the off-season and losing star playmaker Bruton for a decent period of time to a mid-season injury, but he was still able to take his team to a third straight Minor Premiership – only the third team in NBL history to achieve such a feat.

The Kings then obliterated each opponent they faced in the play-offs, capturing an unprecedented ‘threepeat’.

If you disregard the past three successful seasons and only consider the 2005/06 season, as you should when determining such an award as the Coach of the Year, the Kings’ record and Goorjian’s claims for the coaching award speak for itself.

The Goorjian-led Kings finished atop the NBL ladder at the completion of the regular season with a 26-6 record, exceeding his rivals’ expectations by finishing first for the fourth successive season after the official mid-season coaches poll predicted the Tigers would finish on top and were favoured to win the title.

Before Coach of the Year honours was announced to go to the Melbourne Tigers’ Alan Westover, Goorjian had already taken the Kings to their fourth Grand Final series in as many seasons with two convincing semi-final series wins over the Cairns Taipans.

What makes this season’s run even more remarkable is the fact that a number of critics have rated the current Kings roster as the least talented of the past four years. And yet, largely due to the basketball mastermind in Goorjian, here they are battling it out with the Melbourne Tigers for a fourth consecutive title.

So how is it that Goorjian has missed out on the Coach of the Year award for the past four seasons?

The voting involves a 3-2-1 points system that includes all of the league’s head coaches, captains and one assistant coach per club. So, maybe he just isn’t that popular among his peers.

But it shouldn’t be a popularity vote. Instead, it should be about voting for the best coach in the league. After all, it is the ‘Coach of the Year’ award.

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