Goorjian bats for exposure
Strong Group Athletics coaching consultant Brian Goorjian is convinced playing in EASL will improve the standards in the domestic leagues where the participating teams are seeing action and lead to raising the competitive level of national squads.
Goorjian said his experience with the Bay Area Dragons is proof. “We played in the PBA and EASL Champions Week last season,” he said. “Some of our guys never saw the kind of quickness and physicality in the PBA before. Hayden (Blankley), Kobey (Lam), Glenn (Yang) and the others got better. You won’t improve if you’re just playing the same teams over and over in the domestic league. You’ll improve with more international exposure playing against foreign teams. You get better in EASL then you go back to your domestic league and raise the level of play. That will also impact the national team.” Goorjian steered Bay Area to third place in the EASL Champions Week and second in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup.
Goorjian said Game 7 of the Commissioner’s Cup Finals between Ginebra and Bay Area was a highlight of his career. “It was incredible – 55,000 in the Philippine Arena,” he said. “I took a video of the crowd and showed it to my best friends (New York Knicks president) Leon Rose and (Orlando Magic coach) Jamahl Mosley. They couldn’t believe it.” Goorjian was in town last week working with coach Charles Tiu and the Strong team to prepare for the ongoing Dubai International Basketball Championships at the Al Nasr Club, United Arab Emirates.
After the Dubai tournament, Goorjian will return to Australia and get ready to coach the Boomers in the FIBA Asia Cup qualifying window against South Korea on Feb. 22 and Indonesia on Feb. 25. He’s in the process of finalizing the Boomers’ tune-up schedule before the Paris Olympics. Friendlies with China, USA and Serbia are in the works. Goorjian said the Australian players in the NBA are committed to join the Boomers. He made history in the previous Tokyo Games by becoming the first coach to deliver an Olympic medal in men’s hoops for a country in Asia-Pacific, piloting Australia to the bronze.