Illawarra Hawks coach Brian Goorjian is always one to tell it like it is and right now, he is not a fan of the NBL Cup remaining part of the regular season.
Due to COVID-19, all nine teams have been situated in Melbourne for a month-long stint, with NBL Cup results counting towards both the inaugural Cup and the regular season.
Playing the Cup exclusively in Victoria Goorjian cited the apparent advantages it gives Melbourne teams… eight additional home games for example.
Before the NBL Cup the Hawks were 5-1 on the ladder but have since gone 2-4 and now ist 7-6 for the season as the return to regular home and away schedule.
Goorjian, who recently coached his 750th NBL game, noted that while it’s good to be able to showcase the league and its talent, he says it’s fundamentally unfair to have games count towards the regular season.
“You want to do it, but I would not have it count as the regular season,” Goorjian said.
“I mean, come on, Melbourne’s played eight more home games now, Phoenix are on a roll. You’re playing at their place and the place is packed screaming for them, they’re living a good life. We were in lockdown for a big part of this. You can’t have a situation where Melbourne and Phoenix are living different than us and playing home games. Have it in Wollongong at the WEC and see what our record would be. The thing is equality. You want to have a tournament, you want to move it around and let it be its own separate deal.”
Goorjian acknowledged that similar concepts do work effectively internationally but in these models, the tournaments always stood alone as separate to the leagues regular season.
“I wouldn’t have it count as the regular season, not just because of what I’ve experienced, because of how you want to use this tournament,” he said.
“The quarter [bonus-point] system, no, because you want to play your kids, you want to play your development players. You want to mix things up and experiment in this thing.
“Internationally, in China, we had something that was similar to this and it was great value for everybody and everybody liked it.
“Also in Europe, they break down and have a Cup, but it’s a [seperate] thing. You win that kind of money and it doesn’t correlate to the regular season
“I love the idea of it, our guys love playing games, and I think it’s got a future, but there needs to be some adjustments.”
With a game set for Thursday night against rival NSW team, Sydney Goorjian hopes the team can get back to its pre-NBL Cup-winning ways.
“We’ve been on the road now for three months so trying to stroke rivalry wasn’t part of this [preparation],” Goorjian said.
“We’ve played poorly, we’re in the hole right now, we want to stay in this picture. We need a win to stay in this [top] four so that when we get out homes games they matter.