Building Better Basketball

Today is the crossover episode you have all been waiting for, the OG’s of the Australian podcast game, Talking Split from Basketball Victoria. We were lucky enough to have Jenni Screen on at the end of season 1 and now we get two more of the set! I’m really excited to have the Brains and Voices of that show in High Performance Coach for Basketball Victoria Country Women Zoe Carr (@ZoeCarr85 on twitter) and Rob Coulter, Coach Development Coordinator for Basketball Victoria @RobCoulter on twitter

Alex shares team and player development ideas for coaches, teams, federations, and organizations all around the world. Alex’s focus is on helping coaches stimulate their thinking by combining their personal and practical experiences with the empirical evidence which exists within the research world. Many of these evidence-informed coaching ideas that Alex shares are based upon the Constraint Led Approach (CLA) underpinned by Ecological Dynamics (EcoD). Alex specializes in helping coaches make sense of the research, putting this into basketball-specific examples so that coaches can immediately integrate these ideas into their practices. He consults for NBA, NCAA and professional teams, while also serving as Player Improvement Specialist for Paris Basketball in the EuroCup and Head Coach of College Prep in Borgomanero, Italy

Brent has an honours degree in Exercise Science, is a full time Exercise Physiologist and Strength and Conditioning coach. You might have seen Brents face on your tv’s and wondered who he was as he has roles with the Townsville Fire, Heat and Flames and the Australian Opals. Brent is the brother of Paul Goriss, one of the current assistants of the Australian Opals. We are really excited we have been able to grab a window in his busy schedule to pick his brain about creating and maintaining a body for basketball success!

Todays episode is a going to be a little bit different, a little bit more serious but you know as coaches sometime we have to deal with the tougher conversations and our guest today is going to help arm you with what you need to look out for and how you can best handle the situations in the event that something does happen to a player under your care.
 
Joining me today is Damien Morris, the Head of Integrity at Basketball Australia. Damien is no stranger to Basketball having held a role on the board at Knox Basketball for the last 5 years alongside roles with Tennis Australia and a 27 year career with the Vic Police.

Howard Beck is an American journalist. Beck has covered the National Basketball Association for the Los Angeles Daily News, the New York Times and more recently, Bleacher Report. Since December 2020, he has been an NBA senior writer for Sports Illustrated, where he also cohosts The Crossover podcast with Chris Mannix.
On the podcast Howard gives us his own insight into how the global nature of the NBA is changing, the role of the coach in that and shares some great NBA stories.

Dee had an AIS scholarship at 16 and made history winning the first and only WNBL championships with an AIS team. Dee as well as representing the Opals also played professionally in Spain and Italy and after 13 years in the WNBL was awarded life membership. Dee swiftly moved into coaching and has had numerous senior roles in Victoria both at Club and state level as well as coaching the Australian U19 Gems at a World Championship level.
Dee joins Neil to talk about her role as Official Scout for FIBA at the recent Womens World Cup and the trends she observed! A must listen for anyone who got behind the Opals Girls at the recent tournament

Elite Player, Excellent Coach, Quality commentator and Super Mum ! Jenni Screen joins Neil to talk about her return to coaching, her coaching philosophy and supports and the Womens World Cup which is right around the corner!

Peter is Founding Director of The Inclusion Club and Manager of Play by the Rules – a national initiative to promote safe, fair and inclusive sport. Peter has worked for over 25 years in the field of inclusive sport, disability sport and physical activity including 17 years managing the Australian Sports Commission’s Disability Sport Unit.  Peter joins Neil to talk inclusion both in coaching and in sport in general.

Neil is joined by Alex Auerbach the Senior Director of Wellness and Development at the Toronto Raptors in the NBA to talk about his role at the highest level, how it can transfer down to community sport, his partnership with a previous guest and most importantly the Question of the Podcast!

A special double header episode spanning the whole globe. Neil talks to AFLW superstar Sarah Rowe about how she has become an elite multi sport athlete, her work off the field mentoring and supporting both coaches and athletes and how Australia fairs in terms of sport especially for young girls from her perspective. Then Neil is joined by Zach Schwartz who's face many of you will have seen on multiple NBA social media sites and Zach talks about the different way social media is used in sport in America at all levels and for our community coaches who are probably running the socials themselves this could be full of gold!