Hoopla was chatting with a mate over a mineral water the other day and conversation turned to the Hawks wobbly ol' start to the season.
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Whatever the mitigating factors, 1-8 makes for ugly reading.
"Imagine if Jacob Jackomas was coaching the Dragons," we said. "The fans would be baying for blood."
"If he was coaching the Dragons," our mate replied. "They'd have extended him for three years."
Solid content. There's actually some relief in the fact that coaches in the NBL are not under the same relentless microscope as they are in the country's other major sporting codes.
This early in the season, it's typically imports under the gun. That's not to say there aren't a few coaches feeling the heat.
James Duncan has managed to turn it down, but it was burning full blaze when a fairly stacked team headlined by Aron Baynes went 0-5 to start.
CJ Bruton is facing similar questions over whether he can drive the ferrari of a roster he's been given following the Sixers hit-and-miss start to their campaign.
It's never easy putting that type of jigsaw together, but it's a headache Jackomas would probably like to have right now.
Respectfully, the talent at his disposal is not in the same realm as that of his aforementioned peers, and it's something that should be kept in mind when analysing a torturous start to his head coaching career.
The lengthy apprenticeship Jackomas served under Brian Goorjian was - in NBL terms - something akin to tuning Hendrix's guitar for a decade or so.
Given the handover from master to apprentice came without the trauma or acrimony that can accompany such transitions, it was easy to think Jackomas had a rails run into his first head coaching role.
The reality has proven anything but, and for reasons that have little to do with raw coaching ability.
The Hawks made the playoffs the past two seasons, and were genuine title contenders last year. They had an Olympic bronze-medalist in Duop Reath, the Defensive Player of the Year Antonius Cleveland, a Next Star in Justinian Jessup and an import guard in Xavier Rathan-Mayes coming off the bench.
All have departed. The club made efforts to extend Reath and Cleveland before the end of last season, both respectfully choosing to explore free agency.
Cleveland was ultimately lured away by Adelaide on massive dollars along with Robert Franks, with whom he shares an agent.
With their time again, the Hawks front office may not have waited so long for clarity on Reath's future but imagine the fallout of making an early call only to see him pop up in Melbourne, Perth or - God forbid - Sydney.
That ultimately fruitless waiting game made imports Justin Robinson and George King late additions, the former lasting just one game before picking up a season-ending knee injury.
Amid that off-season loss of personnel, Jackomas has coached five of his nine games down a starting import point-guard. Robinson's replacement Peyton Siva played his first game straight off a plane.
None of the circumstances listed are of the coach's making. As a rookie coach he did not have carte blanche in the recruitment stakes in the way a Goorjian and those of his ilk would.
It's not a knock on any individual but, on paper, it was already a roster that would need to play above itself to beat a lot of teams. It's gone close to doing it at times, particularly on the road to Perth and Adelaide.
Had just one of those results, or perhaps an overtime loss to Melbourne, gone the other way, the Hawks would be sitting a win adrift of those far more stacked Bullets and 36ers.
There's no hiding from the 1-8 ledger, but Jackomas deserves more than nine games grace to show his worth as a head coach. Circumstances to this point have had him trying to play tennis with a ping pong paddle.
He obviously still has the ear of his mentor Goorjian. Hoopla is not privy to those conversations, but we'd be willing to bet Goorjian's head coaching start with the Eastside Spectres in 1988 has come up.
Goorjian succeeded a legend in Barry Barnes and dealt with a mass exodus of talent with the likes of Vince Hinchen, Bruce Bolden and Brendan Joyce following Barnes' former assistant Colin Cadee to St Kilda.
A handful stayed - including a young Shane Froling - and the depleted Spectres missed the playoffs with an 11-13 record - a losing ledger for just the second time in the foundation NBL club's history.
Goorjian missed the playoffs the following season, but he never missed them again. No one, least of all this column, is suggesting Jackomas will go close to replicating his mentor, it merely illustrates that the way a head coaching career begins isn't always an indication of its ceiling.
A great assistant, Jackomas may or may not have what it takes to be a long-term head coach, but anyone claiming to know for certain at this point is just playing two-up.
He was a not insignificant part of the Hawks run to consecutive playoff appearances. He deserves a fair shake with a full bottle.
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Mitch Jennings
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
