CONFIRMATION that Brian Goorjian will coach the (not Illawarra) Hawks this week was the biggest announcement in Wollongong since Wayne Bennett coaching the Dragons.
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For those with only a passing interest in hoops, Goorjian is the NBL's Bennett - though he's far more media friendly; probably just more friendly in general. He's won six titles, with three different franchises.
Getting the formerly underachieving Kings over the hump in 2003 had shades of Bennett's effort in breaking the Dragons 30-year premiership drought.
However, Goorjian probably shares more traits with Craig Bellamy than the ultra-calm Bennett. Both giants of their respective sports and leagues so it was enlightening to share a long chat the Aussie basketball great this week.
What was particularly interesting was his take on building a roster, specifically that it was his domain and his alone.
"I see it as my responsibility putting this team together," Goorjian said.
"I've got to coach the 12 players and I'm responsible for the team and the team's performance. My whole time in the NBL the general manager was always in charge of filling the stadium and bringing sponsors to the team and franchise, my job was to put together the basketball team."
Boy it was strange to hear. Strange because, in rugby league it's rare to hear anyone take such explicit ownership of the roster. It's always someone else's responsibility.
Of course it's not a like for like scenario. The sports are vastly different, for one their are NRL players who, alone, make the same amount as the NBL's 'soft' salary cap figure.
Rosters are 12-13 deep, not a top 30 like in the NRL, which also operates on a theoretically level financial playing field via a hard salary cap. There are third party payments, but they're made public unlike the NBL's mythical "luxury tax" that wealthier clubs pay.
Long-term deals in the NRL are common, but extremely rare in the NBL. Most basketball clubs have a mere handful on deals longer than two seasons.
The differences don't stop there, but it did get us thinking about the way NRL clubs operate, chiefly who should have control of the roster? No two clubs are the same in this regard.
It's often, incorrectly, said of the Dragons that Paul McGregor has no say in the roster. He does, he just doesn't have a say on the money players are paid. That responsibility rests with recruitment chief Ian Millward.
It's been effective in a lot of ways, less effective in others. On the surface, unburdening a coach of those responsibilities frees him up to focus on simply coaching the team.
It also guards against a coach falling out with players over money and gives them somewhere to deflect media questioning about contracts and disgruntled players that inevitably arise along the way.
Those factors were the primary reason your columnist was initially in favour of the set-up but it's fair to say that opinion's changed.
In a lot of instances the coach having little control over the make-up of his roster can be problematic. Perhaps the most public disconnect at the Dragons came over Josh Dugan in 2017.
At that time he was quite obviously the best fullback at the Dragons and that's where McGregor picked him in his 17 each week. However, as he was off-contract, Millward stated publicly that he felt Dugan was a centre and offered him money that would have made him among the top-paid centres in the game.
It was 300k or so short of the 'fullback money' Dugan was chasing but you wouldn't say Millward was wrong about that either. Dugan hasn't played Origin or Test footy since leaving the Dragons and has battled chronic injuries and patchy form whilst taking up a huge chunk of the Sharks salary cap.
He's not the only player fitting that description at the Sharks which has, ironically, become a headache for a rookie coach in John Morris, who inherited a roster full of famously difficult personalities and with no wriggle room due to a salary cap penalty he did not incur.
If you take a look across the league at all the coaches currently under pressure and roster issues not of their making, and still largely out of their control, are a common denominator.
McGregor has deemed Ben Hunt's best spot in the 17 to be No. 14, despite the howls of those who say you can't have a $1.1 million player coming off the bench. It wasn't McGregor's call to pay Hunt a million bucks a season.
Dean Pay didn't decide to sign Keiran Foran on similar money at the Bulldogs either, nor did he make a host of other decisions in a roster that is arguably the NRL's weakest on paper.
Morris didn't put Dugan, Shaun Johnson or Matt Moylan on their money at the Sharks, while Anthony Seibold didn't put Darius Boyd or Anthony Milford on their coin either.
Seibold's case also illustrates how vagaries around responsibility for the roster can be used to twist a narrative or pass the buck. How the richest and most bottomlessly resourced club in the competition can be in the midst or a rebuilding phase in unfathomable.
Roster management is obviously just another area in which the benchmark clubs show their superiority, the Roosters and Melbourne's of the world. In more recent, and arguably more innovative, fashion the Raiders have shown a strength in that area.
Other clubs are not so good, and where it's poor, so are the results. Yet, in almost every instance, it's the coach who pays the price. Ask a fan to name more than two recruitment managers, or three club CEO's and they'd struggle. When a coach is under pressure, you certainly never hear a chairman or a CEO come out and say "look, it's on us, we built this roster."
It's the coaches who wear the brunt of criticism when their team underperforms. When they do so drastically, it's their head on the chopping block.
Most who go into the caper would accept that, but if it is the case they should be pulling all the strings. That includes the salary cap, recruitment and everything that goes with it.