BIO: Emmett Naar was born in Canberra (NSW) and played his junior basketball with the Northern Suburbs Basketball Association competition in Sydney.

Naar was part of a quality class at the Australian Institute of Sport and honed his skills playing alongside Dante Exum, Jack McVeigh and Dane Pineau. Naar received a scholarship to attend the Australian Institute of Sport (Canberra) in 2013. He spent two years year there and played for the program’s state league team (2013).

NBL EXPERIENCE

Emmett Naar made his NBL debut with the Illawarra Hawks at 24 years of age. He scored four points in his first game.

After being signed as a rookie by the Hawks on a three-year deal on 2 May 2018, Emmett Naar entered his first NBL season with high expectations, coming from a successful college career at Saint Mary’s. Illawarra had fallen short of making the playoffs by only a few games in 2018 and saw several key players leave, including Demitrius Conger (to Serbia), Rotnei Clarke (to Greece), Nicholas Kay (to Perth), Delvon Johnson (to Slovakia), and Cody Ellis and Rhys Martin, who both retired. To strengthen the roster, Illawarra added Jordair Jett (via NZNBL), Brian Conklin (via France), David Andersen (via Melbourne), Cedric Jackson (via USA), and rookies Emmett Naar and Daniel Grida.

Illawarra began the season with a dramatic quadruple-overtime thriller, narrowly losing to Melbourne (122–123). They followed this heartbreaking defeat with a heavy loss to Perth (101–61) but rebounded with a road win against Cairns (104–93). A brief two-game win streak later in October saw the Hawks secure victories against Brisbane (86–78) and Adelaide (120–109), momentarily seeing them sit in fifth place. However, inconsistency plagued the team, and they later endured a four-game losing streak in November, including defeats to Perth (81–90), Sydney (81–90), and Adelaide (79–104). Despite showing flashes of potential, the Hawks couldn’t maintain a consistent level of play, missing the playoffs with a 12-16 record.

Naar (4.2 points, 1.4 rebounds, and 3 assists per game) displayed his playmaking potential, highlighted by his efficiency. He became only the second player in the last decade, alongside Damian Martin, to average three assists and less than one turnover per game, showcasing his safe hands and maturity on the court. His top performances came during critical moments of the season, including 18 points, 4 rebounds, and 2 assists against Sydney (13 Jan 2019), 11 points, 1 rebound, and 2 assists against New Zealand (7 Feb 2019), and 10 points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists against New Zealand (14 Feb 2019).

Alongside Naar, Illawarra was led offensively by Brian Conklin (14.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 2.1 assists), Todd Blanchfield (13.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 1.9 assists), who earned the Hawks’ club MVP award, Jordair Jett (11.8 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 2.8 assists), and AJ Ogilvy (9.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks). Despite strong individual performances, the team struggled to find consistency and ultimately missed the playoffs in what was one of the most competitive NBL seasons.

2019/20
In 2019/20, Naar averaged 5.5 points, 1.5 rebounds, and 3.3 assists, playing a key role in the Hawks rotation, helping the team finish in a ninth place (5-23).

2020/21
In April 2020, the Hawks’ season began with the team falling into voluntary administration, with creditors voting to liquidate the Hawks one month later. The NBL, however, vowed to keep the club alive, and on 17 June 2020, the NBL announced that Dorry Kordahi, Bryan Colangelo and Michael Proctor had been awarded the license for the club.

Under the agreement with the new ownership, the team has renamed The Hawks in a effort to broaden the team’s appeal in New South Wales and shortly after, it was announced the team had added Brian Goorjian as its head coach.

With all players having to renew their contracts with the new ownership, Naar and Sam Froling being the only players from the previous season’s full-time roster to return as the new ownership looked to build a almost entirely new roster. This began with the signing of Deng Adel, who had just finished a short stint with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and Cam Bairstow, who had just returned to Australia after spending a season in Lithuania which was cut short due to COVID-19, who were both part of the Australian Boomers national squad. Justinian Jessup, who had signed a Next Star deal with the NBL, was also added to the roster and was placed in Illawarra on a two-year contract, while imports Tyler Harvey and Justin Simon were also brought in to be the focal points of the team’s offence and defence respectively.

The Hawk’s season began with plenty of off-court drama. First, it was the omission of AJ Ogilvy and Tim Coenraad, both fan-favourite players and key players from last season. As a result of injuries, both players were later added to the squad as injury replacements.

Next was the outpouring of fans calling for the return of ‘Illawarra’ to the team’s name, something which was front page news in Wollongong, clearly outweighing the Hawk’s 4-0 start to the season.

In early February, after a campaign by the new ownership group where more membership numbers and corporate support contributed, the NBL reinstated the Illawarra name ahead of the club’s first home game.

While the Hawks fought for, and retained their name, they faced several further challenges, the first being Bairstow, who after missing nine games with a minor hip issue was ruled out for the rest of the season and Daniel Grida, who ruptured the ACL in his right knee whilst playing in the state league. Add to that the struggles of Adel (5.9 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 2 assists), who was never able to make a impact in the NBL, requested a release from his contract mid-way through the season, in a attempt to prevent any harm to his future NBA chances.

From round 16, the Hawks took flight and won eight of their last 10 matches to cement a spot in the finals, qualifying for the postseason for the first time since 2017.

Scoring didn’t come easy to the Hawks, who fell from averaging 90.5 over the first 10 games to finishing with the league’s lowest points average in the league with 81.5. Only four Hawks players averaged points in the double-digits, Tyler Harvey (20 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 1.4 steals), Justinian Jessup (13.2 points, 3.7 rebounds, 1.7 assists, and 1.2 steals), Cam Bairstow (11.4 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 1.2 assists) and Sam Froling (11.3 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks). The Hawks also had the worst field goal percentage of the league, sitting at 42.5 percent on the season (47.8 percent from the two-point range and 33.2 percent from deep). Illawarra’s free throw shooting also came in at 69.4 percent.

Despite the challenges, Illawarra didn’t fall below fifth place for the entire season and eventually finished third (20-16). During the season, Naar set a new career-high with 12 assists against the Kings in round 15, this was also the most by any Hawk that season. He then finished the season averaging 3.7 points, 1.2 rebounds, and 2.6 assists.

The Hawks returned to the playoffs for the first time in four years but were defeated in three games by defending champions Perth.

2021/22
After nearly knocking off the Perth Wildcats and progressing to the Finals of NBL21, the Illawarra Hawks look primed and ready to progress even further in the upcoming season.

After a brilliant debut season, Tyler Harvey, the team’s leading scorer, was inked to a three-year deal and paired with import additions Antonius Cleveland and Travis Trice. Before the season began Trice was released from his contract after refusing to receive the COVID vaccine. Xavier Rathan-Mayes was signed as his replacement. Other additions included Harry Froling (via Brisbane) joining his brother Sam in Hawks colours and Duop Reath (via Serbia) joining the team after a impressive Boomers campaign.

Coming into the league off the back of a Bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics and ambitions to get into the NBA, the Reath started the season on fire averaging 19.8 points, 8.8 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game in his first four games. Star guard Tyler Harvey however, found his second year in the NBL a little more challenging, seeing his scoring numbers dip from 20.4 points per game, to 16.1 but still led the team in scoring.

Club legend Tim Coenraad (3.9 points and 2.2 rebounds) was not included in the team’s full roster, but was later named as an injury replacement. He was elevated to full roster once again due to a season ending knee injury suffered by Daniel Grida.

Other notables for the Hawks saw a significant improvement from Next Star Justinian Jessup (13.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.2 steals) in his second season, Sam Froling (8.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks) bounced back from a injury plagued season to become a major part of the frontcourt rotation with Naar averaging 1.1 points, 0.7 rebounds, and 0.7 assists across 29 games. Illawarra finished the season in second place (19-9), before suffering another disappointing exit in the semifinals, this time by by crosstown rivals, Sydney.

Reath (15.6 points, 7.1 rebounds and 1.5 blocks) collected the Hawks MVP award at the end of the season while Antonius Cleveland (14.2 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 1.8 steals, and 1.1 blocks) was awarded the Damian Martin Trophy for Defensive Player of the Year and also named to the All-NBL First Team.

Emmett Naar played four seasons the Illawarra Hawks. He averaged 4 points, 1.3 rebounds, and 2.7 assists in 100 NBL games.

Dan Boyce (815 Posts)

Dan Boyce is a die-hard Sydney Kings fan who grew up in Melbourne during the roaring 90's of Australian Basketball and spent far too much time collecting Futera NBL Basketball cards.