The trash talking and intimidation was fierce ... but ya know what ... all it did was make me more competitive. It never bothered me and I never once thought they were bad people ... they just played their game hard and tried to get an edge by getting under your skin ... or, better yet, if they could make you nervous.
Being overly nice is a big thing in this country (sometimes excessively so) - the Breakers continually chant their mantra of "we are family", giving the impression that's why they're so successful.
What a load of nonsense ... they win because they've got an excellent core of home-grown players with two outstanding imports. Last year they had problems with their imports - replacing one and not being able to re-sign Cedric Jackson, so they finished second to bottom.
This year Action Jackson was back with another outstanding big import in Ekene Ibekwe and guess what? They won ... it's not rocket science folks - being nice and being a family had nothing to do with them winning. In plain language: You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t ... I don't care how good a coach you are! Good players solve a lot of problems.
Back in the 70s the Oakland Athletics won three World Series Championships in a row. On the field they played together like nobody else in the league. But off the field they hated each other, often getting into physical fistfights in the clubhouse.
Just because you're a nice guy doesn't make you a better player or a superior person in any way. In fact when it comes to sledging the Aussies aren't really that tough - when I was coaching at Gonzaga University in Big Sky Country (basically white America) there were only 18 black players in the entire league.
We had more than half that number on our team alone with 10 black players. You can only imagine the abuse we took on the road. When we headed up to play the University of Montana our head coach informed the players that the stadium parking lot would be filled with 7000 pick-up trucks, all with gun racks and the only black thing these folks had seen was the road leading out of town.
The abuse was loud, horrific, intense and personal and yet Montanans are some of the nicest people I've met anywhere in the world. NBA legend Larry Bird has an impeccable reputation as a gentleman and yet he was one of the worst trash talkers during his career to ever take the court.
People are who they are ... and that's what makes the contrast between the make-up and the way different teams play any game interesting. You can have your bland, nice and polite Roger Federers and Pete Sampras.
As for me, I'll take the always unpredictable and highly entertaining John McEnroes and Ilie Nastases of this world any day of the week. And as for those damn Australians - nasty or not they're one helluva of a team.
John Dybvig is a former basketball coach and commentator.
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