NBL: Gleeson on Hawks radar as Goorjian 'squashes' talk of a return to Illawarra

The Hawks front office made the inevitable call to end Jackomas's tenure on Tuesday following a limp 2-7 start to the season. It comes on the back of a franchise-low 3-25 campaign in his rookie year.

Read more: Hawks sack Jackomas following dismal start to NBL season

Assistant coach Justin Tatum will take the reins in an interim capacity, but CEO Stu Taggart said the club will be looking at a "proven record of success" when considering who to install long-term.

It comes at a time when the two most decorated head coaches in NBL history, Goorjian and five-time championship-winner Gleeson, are without head coaching gigs.

Goorjian's Hong Kong-based Bay Area Dragons folded in September, but the six-time championship-winner told News Corp that an approach from Hawks owner Jared Novelly was "squashed right away" given his Boomers commitments ahead of next year's Olympics.

He also said his close relationship with Jackomas, whom he endorsed as his Hawks successor when he departed Wollongong in 2022, would make a return "the wrong thing."

Gleeson departed Perth for the Toronto Raptors with five rings in 2021, but returned to Australia in April following the sacking of boss Nick Nurse.

He has publicly stated he's open to offers to make an NBL return and Campbell said the Hawks would be mad not to investigate securing the latter's services.

"Definitely, from our club point-of-view he's a proven coach at our level," Campbell said.

"He's been able to establish a great program over in Perth when he was there, he's been in the NBA. From a credibility point of view, he ticks all the boxes so we'll be certainly reaching out to Trevor to gauge a level of interest.

"We'll go through our process from our point of view, unearth some candidates both here in Australia and overseas to look at as a short-term option into a long-term possibility.

"We'll go through a process to make sure that the person we do get is the right person to move the club forward over multiple years.

"The one thing we wanted to make sure of is that we're just not going to rush into putting someone in place that we don't feel is the right fit for the rest of the season or into the next season."

Read more: 'Go out there and bleed' Hawks legend's blistering message in the wake of Jackomas sacking

Jackomas' difficulty as a rookie coach despite a lengthy apprenticeship under Goorjian highlights the risks in employing an unproven head coach, with Taggart suggesting it's a gamble the club's unlikely to make in consecutive appointments.

"That attribute we're looking for is proven success," Taggart said.

"I want to stress Jacob and the team have been working extremely hard on the training court, and in matches too, but as we go now through the process of identifying that next head coach, proven success is something that we'll definitely look at.

"We want to be able to have confidence that the [next] permanent head coach can hit the ground running with a program that they believe in. We're also looking for a coach who understands and values the importance of the community.

"That's another criteria that we'll assess as we consider the candidates that we speak to, but it comes back to sustained performance and success."

It would seemingly rule Tatum out of the race barring a remarkable turnaround in fortunes this season, with Taggart saying there is currently no set determination on the length of his tenure.

"The process that we're going to undertake, we haven't put a timeline on," Taggart said.

"We felt in making this decision [on Jackomas], which we've come to relatively recently, that Justin was the right person for the job in an interim capacity. He was in our system and had been working well with our playing group.

"At the moment there's not a commitment to Justin to see out the full season, but obviously if we see success over the course of the next two-to-four weeks, both in games and on [the practice] court, we'll take that into consideration.

"The preparations right now heading towards Sunday against the Breakers before we head into the FIBA break. The focus is on being on court for the next three days, traveling to New Zealand, and putting on court the best performance we can."

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