Singapore picked up their first win on Australian soil at the weekend and Matt McQuade caught up with Slingers coach Gordie McLeod for an exclusive Q&A.

MM: You had the great job in New Zealand, so why make the return to the NBL?

GM: Well, I thought this opportunity was one that really interested me. It’s not just the NBL side of things, but also being able to help develop basketball. When Bob (Turner) spoke to me about the job, he said it wasn’t just about the NBL team but also working with the Singapore national team…that’s one reason we’ve got Neo Beng Siang, an ex-national player, as an assistant coach, and Dean Vickerman has also come on board. They want us as a coaching group to help the national team and work with the players to improve the standard of the game over there.

The other thing that’s exciting is going to a new country and being involved in the NBL and all the challenges that brings up…one of the reasons I went to New Zealand was I wanted to coach in another country, and when the Singapore opportunity came up I thought well, I’m not getting any younger (laughs), so this is probably my last opportunity to coach in the league. I really enjoyed my time with the (Wellington) Saints in New Zealand, the NZNBL is a great competition, but in doing that I really got the desire to have another crack at the NBL.

Obviously the other thing is that Bob was involved with basketball before, and when he sat down with me and explained what his plans were and what he wanted the future direction of the club to be, well, that really interested me, and it’s a challenge I look forward to.

MM: Given that it is a new franchise, and some might call it the NBL’s great Asian experiment, do you think this is the biggest challenge you’ve had as a player or coach?

GM: Yeah, look, you go on your basketball journey and different hurdles are put in front of you, and you know, you really have to make the best of it. The thing about going over to Singapore and being involved with a new team…I knew what that was like when I was with the Razorbacks, that was a lot of hard work and a lot of fun, and it’s the same situation here.

MM: Can you give us a sense of how things are progressing in Singapore in terms of the interest the team is creating and what sort of public support is being generated?

GM:Well, that’s going to be the biggest challenge the club has, in educating the public over there about basketball, even having to educate them about what a season is. They don’t have any professional leagues over there, I mean they’ve got a soccer league but the public is very much into the English Premier League, they follow the NBA…they like their basketball but they really don’t know what it’s like to buy a season ticket, for example, and there’s no real understanding of the fact we’ve got 15 home games and 17 away, and that educational process is really challenging for the club.

Even with the corporate situation, the boxes in the stadium and so forth, that’s something that is totally new to the Singaporean community. There’s a group of people in the club that haven’t gotten used to the lay of the land yet, so that’s why it’s really important to get the locals involved. They will be so important in making this thing work.

It’s going to be very challenging to start with, but the thing is Singapore is a vibrant city, it’s a beautiful city, it’s pretty, it’s clean, English is the major language spoken over there so all those factors are in place that will help us create a successful team. Now it’s about putting it all together and working as hard as we can.

On the basketball side of things, I guess we are in the same boat as a lot of other teams in that you have that challenge of putting together a nucleus of players to work with, but the biggest thing is that Singapore doesn’t really have that infrastructure with basketball and basketball players that we really need in order to be successful. I mean they have the national team, and those guys play hard, but their style of play, their size and talent level is nowhere near the NBL.

The big thing with our group is trying to incorporate the Singaporean players into our program, and we’ll be doing that after the Blitz. We’ll have two players that will train with us on a full-time basis, and another couple will be younger guys who will train when their studies permit.

One other challenge we face as a team is adjusting to the climate in Singapore…at the moment we don’t train in an air conditioned venue so it’s been extremely hard on the players, and it’s been tough with the smaller group we’ve had, our big guys have been out injured and we haven’t had them for about four weeks. This is probably the first time we’ve had most of our group together, and hopefully the other guys won’t be too far away from joining us.

MM: Andrej Lemanis admitted last season that when he started coaching the Breakers he really had no idea what kind of a toll the travel and jet lag would take on the team. Do you see that as a major issue for the Slingers?

GM: I think that’s an educational thing…in our league you have to travel a lot to play anyway and with us we’ll have to travel even more. The important thing for us is to get some routines in place which will allow us to manage that the best we can, get the right people to research this to come up with the best strategy possible to deal with it moving forward.

MM: You’ve got a lot of bigs on your roster, guys like Ben Melmeth, Pero Vasiljevic and Benny Knight. Is that an indication you’re looking to play more of a power game this season?

GM: Well, the one thing we’ve got to do as a group is work out the strengths and weaknesses of the team, and get a system in place that will maximise the strengths. Obviously, as you said, those guys have a bit of size so we’ll be trying to utilise that, but really, in the NBL, I think it’s about having a bit of an all-around game. It’s about finding ways to score in the half court, ways you can score in the open court. Getting points in the paint is handy, but really, it’s all about finding the right style to suit our particular situation, both offensively and defensively.

MM: Marquin Chandler won the PBA MVP, but he’s not a guy basketball fans are that familiar with. What can you tell us about him and what are you expecting from him this season?

GM: Marquin’s only been with us a week, and we really haven’t been able to go five on five yet because we don’t have the numbers, but what we were looking for in that spot was a player with some versatility, and we think we’ve got that in Marquin. In practice he’s shown that he has a perimeter game, he can shoot the ball well and put the ball on the floor. As time goes on he’ll get a better feel for the league and we’ll see how he progresses, but in the tapes we’ve watched and the people we’ve spoken to, it’s that versatility that comes up consistently, and we feel that will help us matchup against the better teams in the league.

MM: Finally, what are your goals for this season, both on and off the court?

GM:Well, I think the ultimate goal for everyone is to have the best season you can with the dream of winning the championship. First thing is you have to make the playoffs first, and every team in the league, especially those that finished in the middle of the pack last season, will have that goal of finishing as high as possible in the regular season with the opportunity of being involved in postseason play.

That’s what we want to achieve on the floor, holding up that trophy when all is said and done. Off the floor, it’s about us getting that infrastructure in place that we need to have in order to be successful…it’s important for our guys to adjust and learn a new culture in Singapore, I mean we are guests in a new country and it’s very important for us to work hard within the local community. We’ve been doing that, I mean it’s probably like the early days of the NBL in that we’re going out to schools, we’re going out to shopping centres, we’re just trying to raise the profile and let the people of Singapore know what the Singapore Slingers are all about.

Ultimately what we are trying to do is integrate the Singaporeans into the club and the program. There’s a lot to be done, but you have to crawl before you can walk, and that’s pretty much where we are at right now.