NSR Australia had the privilege of sitting down and chatting with former Professional Australian Basketball player Stephen Hoare, whose 17 year NBL career spans from 1995-2012. With a career starting in 1995 at the North Melbourne Giants and finishing in 2012, at the Gold Coast Blaze. Stephen is best known as one of the best role players and sixth men to have played in the NBL. Since his retirement, he has taken the role as Commercial Director at the Southern Basketball Association in Melbourne as well as lending his exceptional skills to coaching at Southern Sabres.
What do you look for in a player ?
The first thing I look for is if someone is coach-able. That means that they are prepared to work hard all the time, they aren’t lazy and they aren’t goofing off all the time. You want them to have fun, but you want them to be able to take direction. Basically, someone that works hard, is coach-able and wants to learn.
If a player is looking to move up a division/squad but might not be there yet, can you give any advice as to what measures athletes can take to improve?
Nothing beats hard work! You have to be prepared to put in the hours to improve the various aspects of the game. Don’t just improve on the things you are good at but also the focus on aspects of your game you struggle with. The biggest thing I find that separates people at a top level is confidence, you have to believe that you are good enough and you are on the right track. If you want to be in Div 1 you have to believe you are a Div 1 player .
What makes a well rounded player?
In basketball there are opportunities for both well rounded players and players who are specialists, but you still have to be able to do the other things, you may be a 3 pointer specialist, but you have to be able to be able to play defense sufficiently too. You still have to be able to play to a team structure, rebound or guard. The main focus when I played, was being able to do everything, so every situation I found myself in I was able to adapt to it.
Best piece of advice given to you buy a fellow coach or player that you would like to pass on?
When I was living and playing in Sydney, our trainer who was one of the trainers for the NRL Canterbury Bulldogs and he was pretty hardco
re, but he always used to say “it’s not meant to be easy, if it was easy everyone would be doing it.” I always remember that, when you’re working hard, sweating and hurting that’s all part of it, you don’t get anywhere without being prepared to make that sort of sacrifice. You have to be able to push yourself, you don’t just do that by going out on a court and casually doing 100 shots.
How can parents/family nurture and help their kids if they want to pursue basketball outside of weekend games?
It’s great when parents are involved, as long as it’s a supportive thing. As long as parents have the best interests of their kids in mind and are also respectful of coaches decisions it’s a good thing that they are involved. It’s all about balance.
Playing Career and Advice
What does it take to play at a professional level?
There is no substitute for hard work and with that comes a lot of sacrifice. You hear the stories all the time, of kids who are growing up and their friends go out to all the parties and they have to go home at an earlier time and get up and train the next morning. But that’s what actually happens. You can’t go out till 5/6am in the morning and wake up and expect to have a good work out. So you have to be prepared to make sacrifices, your social life can suffer, you can have both but you have to have a balance. Especially at college as your away from home, in a other country, you have to have self discipline. I have seen plenty of guys going to college and have got caught up in the lifestyle and have never progressed in their careers. You have to be prepared to find that balance between having a good time and your training.
Advice for athletes wanting to choose this path?
Don’t do it half arsed, dedicate yourself to it. You never want to look back and have any regrets or say to yourself; if only I put myself out there and given it a crack .
How do you deal with setbacks?
I am a perfect example, I am currently at the top 20 games placed in the NBL history, but I am probably one of the only players in the NBL who never made a state team or a development squad growing up. It was never a concern for me at the time, it was just me, wanting to play, loving the game and getting better and better. From the time I got to the point of playing in the NBL, I went from playing in the second team in u20’s feeder team for the North Melbourne Giants to a year later playing in the NBL, which was a huge step straight away. But I also just believed I was good enough and kept working towards it. I spent two years at the North Melbourne Giants and then got cut after a lot of hard work and sacrifice. I then moved to Sydney and out of home for the first time, I made the Razorbacks teams for two years, had some injuries and got cut again. Then I moved back to Melbourne, went down to a Melbourne Tigers practice, again believing in myself that I was good enough and would be picked up and spent nine years with the Tigers. It’s never nice being told teams don’t want you, but you just have to believe you are good enough and I believed that if I kept at it and kept working I would finally find a place that suited me and things would happen.
How did you make the step to the NBL from the second team ?
I was in the second team in the bottom age group of the u20 and then the top team when I was 20, in the SNBL; the grade under the NBL. I was always good but never great, but coaches saw potential in me. I went to a club that was a feeder team of the North Melbourne Giants, at the same time they had seen me and wanted me to come and play for them as well, so it worked. From there it was just about working hard and waiting for the opportunities to come.
How does the NBL compare to competition in the US, College and NBA?
We quiet often get some very good college teams come out here and if they play against a close to full strength NBL team, the NBL team will win every time. If they play against a half strength team it can be very even. The top college teams would probably beat some NBL teams because a lot of those players end up playing and being stars in the NBA.
College basketball is a religion in the US, you can get upwards of 20,000 people attending one game. The Final four NCAA basketball tournament has TV ratings for the finals that are the second biggest behind the Olympics. I would have loved to go to college, I went on tours throughout my early career but I wish I could have had the opportunity to play and study in the US.
For Australian athletes going over to play college basketball in the US, would you say they have great opportunities when they come back to Australia?
Yes, for sure, what we are seeing right now is that some of the top athletes who go over to play college basketball end up going over to Europe and make big money playing in some of the leagues. Some others who may be a step down, come back to Australia and play in the league. We have had several players who have come back from college and gone straight into a NBL team and there will be more and more. There is plenty of opportunity at the moment in Australia.
What are some of your career highlights?
I won two championships with the Melbourne tigers. My personal awards include, six man awards. In 2004, I got to play in an All Stars game which was pretty special. The best thing about basketball was I got to travel all around the country and the world, to places that I would have never gone to if it wasn’t for the opportunities that basketball presented. I got to experience different cultures and lifestyles that I would probably never have chosen to do but being in that environment was fantastic. Some of my favourite countries that I visited were – the US tours, Barcelona, Spain and China. Places like the Philippines who were basketball mad were amazing as we getting police escorts everywhere.