Mark joined us to discuss the Boomers squad, his involvement with the San Antonio Spurs this summer in America, and much more!
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SEN Tassie
Tassie JackJumpers Assistant coach Mark Radford (6.7.24)
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It's San Antonio, Texas, and it's late at night, and I'm very good, very, very happy. An amazing, well, it's an amazing journey, and we really want to touch on this in a bit of depth. The MacVay magnate stories, and we've been, you know, on the outside watching in, and I've been lucky enough to chat to you about these topics for a long time, to actually see, at the end of all this, those two fine young man Jack Jumper's championship players in this team is quite remarkable. How are you feeling? I just feel really pleased for those two flags. The amount of work, and every player would say, same thing, the amount of work that they put in, and everyone worked hard, and they're no doubt at that level they do. But when you see it firsthand and see things that Jack MacVay is putting sort of through, and the focus that he has had over the last two years to, or three years with us, that he's really kicked in this last 12, 18 months, taking a go to a whole other level. The focus that he's had with his training, his preparation, the work that he does off the floor, but probably most don't see, even around the group, has been nothing short of amazing, and he goes out and has an unbelievable camp, and performs, and gets himself selected, and then the will magnate story that's that's been really challenging from his standpoint with injuries, and being able to get himself back on the floor, and then he went to Spain, and was in great form, and had that unfortunate foot injury, and then his ability to stay focused, and on task, back to his rehab and preparation, that put him back on the floor. I'm not sure how many games into our season, maybe eight or 10 games into our season, and then he changed the way we played. Yeah, so it changed the way we played, and he's working, and then the championship series was like nothing short of sensational, and he's continued up with his off season, and had an outstanding camp, and he's formed selected, and you can't ask for any more, you go into those camps, and you put up your best performance, and you get selected like it's just great validation for your work. We'll stick with mags for the moment, and in isolation, those last couple of games over this week, which was obviously a small part of this selection, but don't, for anyone who thinks that it never matters, well, of course it matters when you're up against a proud country, regardless of the standing of China at the moment, well, I watched his defence again the other night, and he was not scoring heavily, missed a couple of dunks, and an alley who didn't go his way. I love the fact that he's 35 feet away from the basket, double teaming and harassing the guards, and then hustling back to get on the big dirt who's 7'4, and providing just a contest, you look at the make-up now with the team, Landale's clearly going to be the starting five, I assume wreath then is the starting four, and that probably meant in the wash-up that magnate had to go, but that ability to get his tank up to a level when he could do that, we're not having this conversation nine months and saying he could do that level, is that fair to say? Oh, without a doubt, and I think he'd be the first one to say that, and had talked about, oh, I've got to keep improving my fitness, my tank's got to get greater, I've got to be able to play more than 18 to 22 minutes of Jackie's basketball, I've got to be able to play longer than four or five minutes since, and his work extremely hard on that side of it, you know, let alone all the basketball stuff, he's conditioning has been very important for him, and that's probably that's come to fruition at the right time, and you know, his ability to defend the pick and roll, be a rim protector, he does that at a late level, not just good in the MBL, he can do that at any level in the world, he picks and rolls defenses, is right up there with the best of them, and that's what's got him selected, and he'll do other things, I'm sure offensively, and he'll have a different role, obviously with this team at that end of the floor than what he had with the Jackie's, and could become quite a focus point in the post for us, I'm late in the season, and I think we'll see that grow over the next 12, 18 months, even more, but his ability to, he can come out and show and pick and roll, he can get up before and defend, he can switch late clock, he can sit back at the rim and protect it, like he's very multi-dimensional defensively, and that this boomers team needed it, he's got to provide it. And then with McVose game, and you and I, the other night, were just texting about a couple of things in observation, I had, he didn't quite have the radar on, not that any of his shots are far away, it was just a bit long on two or three occasions, and I love the fact that he's rounded off his passing, we saw his rebounding in a, you know, in a championship series, just go to another level, and his ability to move his feet, just a bit quicker than what they used to be, tomorrow is being also significant development at 27, you know, now 28 years of age. Well, I think it comes with the willingness and openness to be coached, and Magna's exactly the same way, and he identified, as I just said, like my conditioning has got to get better, he identifies it, he has the support of the, you know, his network that's around him, and he goes and improves it, and Jack is exactly the same, you know, identified defensively, I've got to be better in these situations, he's prepared a little bit of the three at different times than he was in camp, and I need to be able to defend pick and rolls better, you know, because it's just not something that he did for us at the Jack Dumpers, and so identifying, okay, what are some of the areas that I need to improve in to be able to impact at this level, and not be a liability, and as soon as you identify them and you accept them, you have a lot better chance of improving them, and he's certainly, he's done that throughout this little campaign so far, and we all know the offensive and what Jack can do, and there'll be nights or games where he just chewed at great, but there'll be games like he did against China where he'll go six or eight, and he can win us a game somewhere in that campaign, he'll win us a game and with his shooting, and it's the greatest school you can have, and he hasn't. No doubt about that, by the way, do thank Greg, your coach, Popovich, for giving you half an hour to speak to me here as the newly endorsed assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, well done to you on this ride, I'm embellishing that just slightly, of course, but you must be super excited about the next couple of weeks you've got on your plate. Yeah, no question, I'm very fortunate to get this opportunity, and just to be here and just watch how this organisation goes about it, they're amazing, they have amazing facilities, as most NBA teams do, but this one is a very freshly built, you want for nothing, there's no excuses, everything is provided there for you to be the best basketball player you can be, and just see that first hand and see some of their younger coaches that are in development and how they go about it, and seeing them get opportunities to coach in the summer league is really, really good to see, and got a bunch of 15 guys in here that are trying to make an impact in their young careers to make the Spurs maintain, and so it's got to be a fun couple of weeks ahead, and head off to Sacramento tomorrow for some games there, and then we're at the Vegas for the main summer league period. And have you had a chance yet, maybe a bit early to say hello to the legendary coach? He's actually not in town, he's with the USA team. Oh, and we'll stay there. But he will stay there, but there was talk that he will pop his head in in Vegas to connect with the guys that are here, there's actually four guys on the summer league team that are first team players, so he'll pop in and see those guys along with everybody else on the Vegas trip for a day before he heads off to the Olympics. And you get to work with some of the some of the new young stars, of course, I mean, you're not going to see where he's going to be in Paris with his seven foot four, standing next to Rudy Gobi trying to win a gold medal, of course, which is a brilliant story, but you're obviously going to hear some stories, etc. But they've just got a couple of new good kids and the key to point guard castle, and you're going to get a fresh look as they put on a goonsie in the, you know, the famous spurs colors for the first time. That's fun. Yeah, much definitely those boys have been in camp and you would know they've been first around draft picks or whether they're like some of the other guys just, you know, fighting to make an impact in their basketball career. Very humble kids. They're just trying in here trying to get better, too, like they're one year removed, you know, they're freshmen in college and they're just young kids and trying to find their way and figure it out. I'm just there to rebound for them and throw some balls back to them and support them and encourage them. Not too much coaching that that's left up to the guys that, you know, work with them on a daily basis here, but just to see how they go about it and how they support their players. It's a good opportunity for what can we glean from this or what can I glean from this that we can bring back to the Jackies and might only be one or two things that we find that we can implement to make our team better or our club better and that's part of the trip. And then of course, just right now, a previous conversation you're now off to take on the world in this club championship in your little bit of research that you've probably seen. I'm sure it's quite scarce here. We're a bit of time away before that happens, but what sort of opportunity you see that being for this group of young men, most of the winners of the title, can that be a real benefit as well to the next season? Oh, most definitely. I think the exciting thing is for the players and definitely to the coaches, you just get to play against different styles of play. Yes. With that, you can learn from, you might take some things from. I know Jack Fleming was just away with the Australian team that played against Japan and he gleaned some things from how Japan played. How can the implement a couple of these concepts into our system that we have that he felt that they were really good at. And there will be no different ones going to play these teams in Singapore and there'll be some stuff that we like. We haven't seen that before on a regular basis. So we haven't seen this concept or do we like the way they taught or they coached that aspect of the game? Nothing takes some things away from that that's going to make us better than that's fantastic. It's just a brand new concept that's great to be involved in that and representing the MPL. That's great for our club and I know you're on a world stage. So it's great for our brand and great for the state. Could you get recognised? Mark Redford, I'd love to keep chatting to you all night about this. It's such a fun thing and in your world you've got so much joy and excitement around you coming off the title, the stuff obviously during the week now with with the two Jack Jumpers and Olympics teams, San Antonio Spurs. It's a pretty fun period. You've got a lot. Can you bottle this few months that you're about to continue on? It's pretty good. I'm just very fortunate. Like I'm humbled by the opportunity the basketball has given me and I don't say that lightly. The young boy from Bernie and I love Tasmania and love what the Jack Jumpers and the basketball club has given to the state and you've got to make haywire the sunshine because things can turn very quickly in this game and we've got a great basketball club that's doing great things and we should all just hang on and keep riding and take it as far as we can in the period that we've got to be at the helm of this organisation. So it's fun for all of us. And don't forget a dirty Hawk supporter which will burn them in a heartbeat when the devils start in a few years time. Mark Redford, great to have you with us and enjoy your next couple of weeks. It's good on you, mate. - Appreciate your time.