Australian Brendan Joyce was named Coach of the Year for leading the Kaohsiung Aquas to the highest winning percentage in the inaugural season of the T1 League, the professional basketball league said yesterday.
The Aquas finished top with a 23-7 record in the six-team league’s regular-season standings.
The Kaohsiung team also swept the Taichung Wagor Suns 3-0 in the best-of-five final to clinch the championship trophy.
Photo courtesy of the T1 League
On the hardwood, Joyce plays the role of iron-blooded coach, with strict discipline, demanding the best from his players and never compromising, the T1 League said in a statement.
However, “in private, Joyce below is full of affinity and amiable, as he is not only loved by the players, but has also won a lot of love from basketball fans,” the statement said.
In response, Joyce said he is proud to be named Coach of the Year and would cherish the award for the rest of his life, as it carries the respect of the fans and his peers.
Joyce said he also has tremendous respect for the Kaohsiung Aquas because he has pushed the players hard so that they could grasp at every chance of success.
“And they now know why, resulting in our first national T1 League Championship,” Joyce said. “Can’t have success without a wonderful performance from our players.”
Joyce said that the more experiences he has internationally, the more open his mind and heart are to so many positive opportunities.
A former assistant coach for the Australia men’s national team and head coach of the Australia women’s national team, Joyce has coached more than 400 Australasian National Basketball League (NBL) games
As a professional basketball player, Joyce was a point guard in the NBL, playing in the league’s inaugural year in 1979 and going on to play 289 games. He was runner-up for Most Assists from 1985 to 1987, and winner of the Most Assists award in 1988.
Born in Melbourne, Joyce was also a talented Australian Rules Football player and received an offer to play for the North Melbourne Kangaroos, but he chose basketball and went on to become a top NBL player for 13 years.
The Australian said that he is often asked about basketball in Taiwan, so he wanted to represent Kaohsiung the right way by not just playing good offensive and defensive basketball, but also building the correct culture.
The idea is not to just represent Kaohsiung on the court, but also embrace the community so people in the southern city would love the team, Joyce said in an interview in April.
To achieve this, he hopes the players would continue to improve, which usually brings success.
“Process is the keyword, stay focused on the process, that is my philosophy. The process of executing the offensive, the process of the defensive, the process of planning each game,” Joyce said.
Along with his Coach of the Year honor, Joyce has helped put Kaohsiung basketball on the map by forging one of Taiwan’s strongest teams to ever come from the southern city.
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