How Gaze's Melbourne Tigers got their roar back

• The Melbourne Tigers made the NBL1 South Grand final, losing to the Sandringham Sabres
• Aussie basketball icon Andrew Gaze returned to the Tigers as head coach in 2022, he previously coached them in the SEABL
• Gaze won two NBL championships under coach and dad, Lindsay Gaze

Just weeks ago, Tom Wilson shared the court with Zion Williamson at Rod Laver Arena. Three years ago, he shared the field with Scott Pendlebury on the MCG.

As bizarre as it is, it's a contrast that's emblematic of how far the Melbourne United guard has come having led the NBL1 South's Melbourne Tigers - a team which has experienced a similar resurgence.

The Tigers finished 12th last year, marking it the third consecutive year where the Tigers failed to qualify for the playoffs, continuing a playoff drought under coach and Australian basketball icon Andrew Gaze.

Just 12 months later, the trio of Tigers junior Wilson, current Brisbane Bullets forward Jack Purchase and Illawarra Hawks big man Harry Froling sparked a late season title charge as the team advanced all the way to the NBL1 South Grand Final, finishing runners-up.

Facing the Climb

In April 2016, when Gaze became Sydney Kings head coach, he shared he was attracted to the challenge the job presented – Sydney were fresh off a dismal 2015-16 NBL campaign, where they won just six from 28 games.

“When you’re inheriting a team that finished last, I guess the good thing is you can only go up,” Gaze said at the time.

Gaze coached the Kings for three years between 2016-19, and while there was improvement, he was exposed to public scrutiny, especially when the team didn’t perform.

But after his Kings tenure ended, Gaze said the pressure was felt within the four walls of Sydney.

“When you go through stages with certain individuals when you don’t get a response or you’re not enabling them to fulfil their goals, it can become stressful. That for me was the biggest burden that I carried, the responsibility to the players," he said.

Nine years on, in facing a similarly challenging starting point, Gaze said his Tigers tenure has been character defining, with the team sitting second last and having minimal budget to improve following his return in 2022.

“I absolutely got drawn in by the challenge. When our senior program was on the brink of extinction, it was a difficult time,” Gaze told basketball.com.au.

“If you go back four or so seasons, I think we might’ve won six games (6-16 record). For me personally, with the team and group we had put together, I take that as a much more remarkable sense of accomplishment [than this year].”

Stories of Resolve

Purchase, a four-club journeyman at the professional level, told NBL1 media this year he had been “working his ass off for the last two years” to get into NBL-level shape. This was after the Tigers breathed new life into his love for basketball, following a brief stint at the Wildcats in the 2021-22 NBL season.

"I almost gave it up [2022], I was on the tools and I was actually doing some woodwork. It doesn’t take long working a job like that when you realise it's not what you want to be doing so it made me want to get back to playing basketball," the 2023 NBL1 South co-MVP told Bullets Media after he signed with the team.

"That kind of path was good for me to realise how lucky I was to be in the NBL at one point and it made me want to get back even more."

Wilson, who similarly caught fire under Gaze’s tutelage, told The Extra Pass podcast he believed in the dream Gaze sold him, having swapped codes and needing to readjust to reach NBL standards.

Wilson hadn’t been on an NBL court since March 2019 prior to NBL26.

“When I decided to come back to basketball, he [Gaze] was really excited for me and believed in me and said that if that’s something I wanted to do, he [Gaze] thought I could make it happen,” Wilson said.

The Way Back to the NBL

While the duo of Wilson and Purchase as well as Illawarra signing Froling have fast-tracked an incredible rise and extended their NBL careers, the Tigers legend credits a steady and patient approach, though measured growth for the team’s ascension.

“We feel like we’re ultimately striving to build a pipeline where we’re always going to be competitive and have a chance to contend for a title, and we’ve gotten there a little quicker than we thought… if you look at it objectively, we probably got a little lucky,” Gaze said.

“The margin between us completely missing out on the finals like we did last season and getting to the final, it’s so small. It’s those who can get elite talent that can bypass that middle tier, and fortunately with Tommy Wilson and Jack Purchase, we’ve had that basis for our team to continue to grow and get better and build around those two.”

With Wilson and Purchase at the centre of the offence, Gaze embraced a pass-first philosophy this year as all of Wilson, Purchase, Froling, and Gaze’s son, Mason, averaged three or more assists per game.

Gaze said this system, similarly run in Tigers junior programs, not only enhanced team performance but individual performance, potentially attributing to the growth of Wilson and Purchase in particular.

“People will make their own judgement and say, ‘that’s not the modern way to play’ but we’d consider ourselves a little bit different… we have a lot of cutting action, a lot of off-ball action. We feel with our system, it provides versatility,” Gaze said.

“We feel that brings a great diversity in skillset to find our strengths and exploit those but also put the players in situations where they can improve on some other areas, which are important for individual development.”

With Wilson experiencing an uptick in form this past NBL1 campaign, averaging more 24 points as well as five assists in 25 matches, this philosophy had the former Collingwood Magpie being a direct beneficiary of the individual development Gaze alludes to.

“I was with him [Gaze] in Sydney as a guy on the end of the bench, I didn’t really play, and now I’ve got the ball in my hands a lot, I get to make a lot of decisions,” Wilson told The Extra Pass podcast.

Purchase had a career year, collecting 12 20-plus point performances this year and leading the league in three-point makes.

His season was headlined by a performance in early May, which featured 10 made threes, leading to a 55-point performance against Eltham – the most points ever in a single NBL1 game at the time.

But the 30-year-old’s standout play didn’t just surface from his offence. Purchase was in the top five of the NBL1 South conference for blocks and the work done behind closed doors with Gaze's help may be a primary contributor.

“Three years ago, when we started this and we started to improve and see the trajectory of those analytics, there were certain key areas we focused in on, and there have been really good improvements,” Gaze said.

“In particular, on the defensive end, what we were able to do was as good as any in the competition.”

Given the aspirations of the personnel at his disposal, Gaze said while a championship has always been the goal, he has needed to juggle prioritising the goals of the NBL talent he’s taken under his wing.

“It’s a difficult situation because we can’t really recruit right now, given we need to keep our resources available for those guys [Wilson, Purchase, Froling], but they won’t know their circumstances until late but it’s the risks you’ve got to take and we’re prepared to do that given they’re Melbourne Tigers kids,” he said.

“We feel like that’s part of the purpose of what we’re trying to do, if they find opportunities overseas or sign in the NBL, we get great rewards out of that because the development of players is important to us. We feel good about that because we’ve helped them in their journey.”

The Maturation of a Basketball Mind

Years on from his NBL coaching stint, Gaze has learnt from experience.

Freed from the volatility attached with an NBL head coaching job, Gaze has been able to set his own standards which has led to success for the Tigers.

“At times with the Sydney Kings, you think you’ve got all the answers and you think I’ll be able to figure it out, but in hindsight, I didn’t get it right, I didn’t make the right calls to go about it – the way you teach, the way you communicate with your players, the relationships you build. I took for granted that they’re all gonna be on board,” he said.

“In the NBL1 you have far greater authority and its much harder to deal with that when you’re coaching a team where you’ve got players making very large sums of money. I think the skillset I had would be much improved now, given then I was probably making compromises rather than being a little bit more direct with what I wanted.

“With this role, I come with an understanding of how to get the best out of players with an absolute confidence in a system that I can build, that can exploit the skills but still provide opportunities.”

As Gaze moves into his fifth NBL1 South season with his beloved Tigers – the one that he is “repaying the debt” towards – it is fitting that his evolution as a coach embodies the resurrection of the club and the NBL careers which have been revived under his reign.