Maher Works His Magic
Newcastle Herald
Friday April 28, 2000
AN hour after defusing a press frenzy over steroids, 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 the winningest coach in Women's National Basketball League history, with seven championships between 1983 and 1992. He's led the national Opals team to their best-ever 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 leading our best-ever women's team as true gold medal contenders in Sydney. Their 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, the inner-city suburb of Melbourne.
His success is due partly to expertise in handling adversity ? 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 Maher was known as an enfant terrible of basketball for his tendency to bluntly 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 bullshit.'
An all-round athlete who played 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 phys-ed at university. He once worked as a janitor at Melbourne's old Albert Park, the primary venue for Australian basketball, where he was immersed in the culture.
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 (food and wine are his hobbies), 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 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.
Robyn Maher, the 40-year-old former Opals captain who retired from international competition a year ago, says having a husband as coach was never a problem.
`I'm sure if I had been a lesser player, it might have been, maybe complaints about court time or something, but it wasn't that way.'
Tom Maher's Bondi Junction office is full of pictures of Robyn and their children: Jake, 9, and Stevie, 6. The office at Basketball Australia headquarters is also crammed with video cassette players and TVs, which he uses to meticulously study his own players and all the opposition as well.
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: America, Slovakia, Poland, Brazil, Cuba and Russia.
But there's a great consolation in having Tom Maher lead the Opals.
He's always got an ace up his sleeve.
© 2000 Newcastle Herald
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