Magic Of Maher
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday April 25, 2000
Enfants terrible are supposed to burn out young, but basketball's Tom Maher shows no such signs. Maureen Fitzhenry reports.
AN HOUR after defusing a press frenzy over banned drugs, Olympic women's basketball coach Tom Maher is calmly performing magic tricks in the sunshine at an outdoor cafe. He pulls a worn deck of cards from his coat pocket and magically makes one pile come up all aces.
It's like that with Maher. The aces keep coming.
He's statistically the best coach in Women's National Basketball League history, with seven championships between 1983 and 1992. He's led the national team to its best placings in world competition, including a bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and a world championship bronze in 1998.
He's won 124 games, lost only 37 and is now preparing our best-ever women's team as gold medal contenders in Sydney. The first full training camp begins next week in Melbourne.
It may all seem like magic, but there's been a lot of hard work for this tough kid from Brunswick, in inner-city Melbourne.
His success is due partly to expertise in handling adversity a skill he also insists upon in his players, officially listed as one of Maher's ``seven commandments" for the Opals.
But if you ask Maher, he'll give you a different answer.
``I think I was born to it," he says, without a hint of arrogance.
Maher sailed through adversity again this month after player Annie La Fleur's home was raided by Customs officials, who had confiscated bottles of ``vitamins" which contained a banned anabolic agent, mailed to her from the US.
Maher proclaimed her innocence at a packed press conference, refusing to denounce the incident as a worry for the team's reputation.
His own reputation took a bashing in his early years as a coach, when he was known as an enfant terrible for his tendency to call a spade a spade. He ruffled enough feathers to risk political disaster in the tight-knit basketball world, but was saved by his undeniable talent and outstanding coaching record.
WNBL chief Leeanne Grantham says she's impressed with how well he has matured after 17 years as a head coach, seven with the national team.
``He used to be a real out-there, larrikin bloke," she says. ``He was a rough-and-ready footballer he went up to Darwin for a while and bit off a few ears or whatever he was doing.
``But whether you've had your ear ripped off or your head knocked in by Tom Maher in the past, you can honestly say he's earned his stripes."
Maher, 48, sees it as coming to terms with power: ``I made a lot of mistakes by playing the ego/power card, but I'm less likely to do that now.
``When you are a young bloke and physically capable, it's easy to be belligerent to win an argument. I've had to learn that's bulls---."
An all-round athlete who played Australian football, rugby league, soccer, cricket and first-division basketball before the NBL was formed, Maher took to coaching as a teenager.
At one point, he coached eight teams for no pay while studying physical education at university. He also knew at an early age that coaching would be his career.
Opals assistant coach Carrie Graf played for Maher through the awesome championship years with the Nunawading Spectres of the 1980s.
She calls her mentor a ``perfectionist" who wants things done his way, and lets everyone know it ``without covering it in fluffiness and ice cream".
``This is about winning an Olympic gold medal," says Graf, who regularly plays good cop to Maher's bad cop for the Opals.
Maher also has a passion for women's basketball unequalled in a male coach, Graf says. ``If you sit down for a glass of wine with him, he will spend hours talking about how wonderful his players are and it's not wanking, it's Tom."
Many players who embrace his approach find a friend for life including star Australian point guard, Opals captain and American WNBA sensation Michele Timms, a best friend to Maher and his wife of 17 years, the legendary player Robyn Maher.
Timms, who has played under Maher for 15 years, calls him ``brilliant" and ``by far the best coach I've ever had".
``No-one comes close," she says. ``He is very much a student of the game and open to changing his ways because he's continuously trying to learn. And that's the reason he's so good."
While Timms says she often felt like his ``whipping boy" in earlier days, his toughness is always balanced by fairness and the ability to motivate each individual on the team.
``Sometimes he can be an absolute a---hole, but he knows his stuff," she says.
As a person, she says Maher is funny, confident and far from arrogant, but always particular about wearing the latest aftershave, tie or shoes.
``I think Tom was the coach who started the trend in Australia of wearing ties and jackets to games instead of sweats," she says. ``But it's Robyn who wears the pants in that family, oh yeah," she adds with a laugh.
For his part, Tom Maher says the Opals are ``absolute superstars" who have no time for egos.
``It's like they've all taken a bunch of nice pills. They're seriously irked by people who stupidly talk themselves up."
But he worries a bit about them being too nice, an unstated politeness that has players hesitating to be ``ball hogs".
``The psychology with the US team players is `I want to take the last shot, I want to be the star'. In Australia, it's `I don't want to be the one who missed the last shot, I don't want to let the team down'."
Maher also worries about the immense weight of expectation on his star 18-year-old centre, Lauren Jackson, with whom he's had ``a few too many" talks lately on how to cope. He compares it to the pressure faced by teenaged supermodels and tennis stars.
``She might start thinking `I've got to get 50 points a game, then I'll have pleased everybody'," he says.
Maher's Bondi Junction office is full of pictures of Robyn and their children: Jake, 9, and Stevie, 6. His desk boasts a scrawled message placed in a huge gold frame.
``To Dear Mum & Dad," begins the note sent to the couple during the Atlanta Olympics. ``I hope you win gold. I am very proud of you. I love you. From Jake."
The office at Basketball Australia headquarters is also crammed with video players and TVs, which he uses to study his own players and the opposition.
Maher scouts other national teams relentlessly. He can tell you about every player on all 12 Olympic teams, even quote their stats off the top of his head.
For he knows that, even with the best Australian team ever, grabbing the gold may require a magic trick or two.
Several other countries also have teams at peak performance, full of young superstars and older players in their athletic primes: the US, Slovakia, Poland, Brazil, Cuba and Russia.
But there's a great consolation in having Tom Maher lead the Opals in the upcoming contest against the world's best.
He's always got an ace up his sleeve.
mfitzhenry@mail.fairfax.com.au
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald
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