Basketball: Coach Smurf's winning ways attract the stars

By PETER JESSUP

To a lot of basketball fans, Jeff Green is the game's hooligan.

They have seen him stalk the sidelines yelling abuse. He has smashed chairs, cost his team technical fouls, been ejected from courtside, gestured at the crowd and been fined for abusing referees.

But Green, the coach of the defending champions, the Waikato Titans, is calming down in old age - he has just turned 44. The antics are a thing of the past. Mostly.

Green does all that because he cares and it is a passion he wants to inject into his team.

"People often think I'm abusing referees when I'm actually having a go at my team," he said. "My emotion is about my team, not about referees.

"If they're executing things the way they should, we wouldn't have those problems. It's just me trying to get them charged up and focused."

"But it is improving," he said of his behaviour as his Waikato side tuned up for the NBL semifinal against the Canterbury Rams in Hamilton tonight.

He might abuse them, but Green is a favourite with his troops. He treats them well and helps with their off-court problems, too.

He has attracted a team that critics say should win the title, with five present or former Tall Blacks, including the country's best player, Pero Cameron.

Green proved his coaching ability with two titles as coach of the Hutt Valley Lakers in 1991 and 1993.

His last application to coach the Tall Blacks, when Tab Baldwin beat him for the job, was part of the reason he calmed down.

"They didn't say, 'You're out because you're the bad guy.' I got a very fair hearing.

"They told me what my coaching deficiencies were and I've since gone out and worked on them.

"I don't want to lose my personality, but yes, I have calmed down. Things aggravate me less these days."

He sees assistant national coach Nenad Vucinic as the natural successor to Baldwin when he decides to go, but the top job will still glitter.

Another championship would help the cause.

The Titans are favourites to beat the Rams tonight. It was 1-1 in round-robin play, with the Titans 134-113 victors in Hamilton, the Rams 92-82 in Christchurch.

There are two key factors in this game: Pero Cameron's influence and the ability of the rest to disrupt the Rams' shooting stars, Terrence Lewis and John Whorton.

Green believes those two will have to score 50 points between them if the Rams are to win. Both are averaging 24 points a game in round-robin play.

So clearly Green will instruct his players to shut them down.

Superior depth on the bench and the speed game which Green likes to play should kill them as the game progresses.

There is some niggle between Green and Rams coach John Watson, who described Green's team as a bunch of Smurfs because of their lack of a big player.

Green happily adopts the mantle "coach Smurf."

"We've got the title. Watson has done a lot of talking for a man with a team that right down doesn't have a thing," he said.

In the other semifinal, the Nelson Giants are favourites to win at home against the Palmerston Jets this afternoon.

The Jets won the round-robin games, 87-77 in Palmerston North and 106-98 in Nelson, but both times the Giants were without the season's best forward, Ed Book. He is back for today's clash.

Miles Pearce has the big job of stopping him, and the Jets' top-scorer, Clifton "Super" Bush, who averages 23 points a game, has to beat the classiest guard line-up in the league.

The teams both have outside shooting prowess, but the home court should seal it for Nelson.