Canadian basketball might get carried away by the excitement of reaching the pinnacle of the world stage in the form of the Paris Olympics.
Indeed, the men’s team announced itself as a candidate for the gold after clinching the bronze in the last World Cup, and despite some struggles in their tuneup games, the women’s side earned its right to contend with a fourth place finish in the 2022 World Cup and the bronze in the 2023 FIBA AmeriCup. The men are currently 1-0 in the Olympics, while the women are yet to play.
Neither team has ever won the gold in the Olympics or the World Cup. But it turns out there is one Canadian in these Olympics who has already reached it.
While it might go a little bit unnoticed due to the excitement of the men’s and women’s teams, coach Gordon Herbert is the instigator, the mastermind behind the dazzling and captivating Germany — the reigning world champion and one of the (non-American) frontrunners for the gold. Herbert is the only Canadian head coach in Paris, a paradox with the Olympic competition featuring two Canadian teams for the first time since 2000.
Born and raised in Penticton, B.C., Herbert moved to Finland in 1982 after college to spend his career as a player until 1994 when he retired. He has become a cosmopolitan coach since then, coaching in Finland, Germany, Greece, Georgia, and France — and also for the Raptors, where he served as one of the assistant coaches under Jay Triano.
He also coached Canada on the national team stage, working for the national team as an interim in 2018 and being one of the assistant coaches of Nick Nurse in 2019. Herbert, now with Finnish nationality, has just signed a two-year contract with Bayern Munich. The EuroCup he lifted with the Skyliners Frankfurt has been one of his most remarkable achievements.
Herbert, called ‘Gordie’ by everybody and just ‘Gordon’ by his mum, is a basketball junkie with the appearance of a veteran scientist, with glasses and the white hair that signals wisdom. In fact, scientist is probably a fair descriptor: He has surely spent hours and hours experimenting and tinkering to get to the formula informing the well-oiled machine of Germany’s play. The German system is very sophisticated, where the on-and off-ball movement never stops, where the players are scheduled to reset the play as many times as needed once plan A fails.
But Herbert has another quality, something else that his hairstyle gives away. He always parts his hair, but there are always some unruly remainders — in an Einsteinian fashion — that he can’t manage to keep tidy. They hint at the bit of madness inherent to greatness, and that he verbalizes with his most repeated phrase.
“I’d rather try to tame a lion than teach a cat how to roar.”
He went into more detail about this approach in an interview with Martina Wengeinmeir, from Ispo.
“I have an ice hockey background, so I also like players who are ambitious and enthusiastic. So I’d rather tame a lion than teach a cat to roar. I don’t mind a bit of conflict and competition as much as having to push the players to fight harder and play harder. Sometimes as a coach you even create these conflict situations to see if the players are resilient enough or not,” he said.
That’s why Herbert, a fierce competitor in practice, is giving the reins to the rebel and outspoken former Raptor Dennis Schröder. A misunderstood genius, as genius always is, Schröder is known for things like turning down a four-year contract extension worth up to $84 million from the Lakers.
But he found understanding in Herbert and unleashed the best basketball of his career in the last World Cup, earning MVP honours. And Schröder unleashed when he touched on the lack of extension of the Canadian coach, who will leave Germany after the Olympics as he didn’t come to an agreement with the German Association.
It was a statement that summarized very well the virtues of Herbert as well as the strong bond that he is capable of creating with the players.
“It’s a shame that the national team didn’t come to me and talk about it. I don’t think anyone on our team knew that, and I think the captain should, of course, be spoken to so that I can update my guys,” he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur in May.
“Of course, he’s led us like no other for the last two years. Great coach. The mentality he brought to the team, the way we performed, and the role distribution, that was simply terrific. Of course, I think it’s a shame and sad that he can’t continue,” the point guard said. Schröder also referred to the bronze Germany clinched in the 2022 European Championship with Herbert at the helm.
As if he wanted to give back for such high praise, the Penticton native, almost in tears, complimented the human essence of his players in an interview with DynBasketball. “This is the most unbelievable group of players I’ve ever been around. They are humble, they care about each other. These players gave me a lot,” he said with glassy eyes.
“There is not really a hierarchy. We are all in this together. Yes, I’m the leader, but we are all in this together, and we all want the same. We’re going forward together, we’re on a ship,” he said.
For Herbert, all is about the team and nothing else and the collective and unselfish German team that he has created is the proof in the pudding.
“There is not really a hierarchy. Yes, I’m the leader, but we are all in this together, and we all want the same”
Gordon Herbert
The Germans are the paradigm of the team concept as they became the best in the world last year without any NBA superstar. Schröder, now of the Brooklyn Nets, has never found stability after his early career with the Hawks. Franz Wagner is a rising youngster but doesn’t have that status for the Orlando Magic. His brother Moritz is a bench player in the Magic, and Daniel Theis, who will play for the Pelicans next season, is also a bench player. Bayern’s sharpshooter Andreas Obst, nicknamed the ‘German Stephen Curry,’ is the most outstanding player competing in Europe. Germany kept it up in an NBA-like fast-paced game last year to defeat Team USA in the semifinal (113-111) and beat Serbia in the final (83-77), proclaiming themselves world champions against the team that eliminated Canada one game away from the gold medal duel.
The German team aspires to the gold again in the Olympics, and its off to a great start. It outscored Japan in its debut (97-77). Brazil and host team France, featuring Victor Wembanyama, are the other opponents in the group.
Gordie reflected on what the next step for his team looks like.
“Our toughest opponent is ourselves, we need to get better, we need to build on what we did last year if we want to be successful. If we are complacent, if we feel good about ourselves, we won’t be successful,” Herbert said to DynBasketball.
The power of Germany is such that in just two years the Germans surpassed what the national team accomplished in the Dirk Nowitzki era. The 2007 NBA MVP led Germany to one bronze in the 2002 World Cup and one silver in the 2005 Eurobasket. The team led by Herbert reached the bronze in the 2022 Eurobasket and the gold in the 2023 World Cup.
Hired as a coach of the German national team in 2021, Herbert realized he had several talented players, but he was clear that there just was one formula to make it to the top based on what he learned in Canada:
“I made a vision, and we needed a commitment for three years. In my experience with Canada, we had guys coming five days before we played, and it doesn’t work. The other thing is you need a core group with a national team going summer to summer to summer; that’s why Spain was so successful all those years. It was my experience, and then talking to Scariolo a little bit, about what they were doing. He is probably the best national team coach in our era,” he said.
Herbert’s inflexible criteria left Isaiah Hartenstein out of the equation as the German center preferred to focus on free agency the first summer he talked to the Canadian coach.
Despite the new Thunder center expressing his desire to be part of the national team, Gordie has stuck with the same core of players, as he is aware of how important it is to keep communication habits and chemistry, especially in the context of a very collective style of play.
“That’s the route. Some guys said they weren’t really interested in playing the first year, and that’s fine, the national team is not for everybody. We need a commitment. If you don’t have a commitment to anything you are not going anywhere,” he said.
The roster features up to 10 players from the team crowned world champion last year. The list just dropped Justus Hollatz and David Kramer, with Oscar da Silva and Nick Weiler-Babb filling these gaps. Herbert always had the ambition of coaching Germany to three medals in three years based on the talent available.
The goal is much closer now after making it to the podium for each one of the two previous summers.
“In today’s world relationships have become more and more important. I want to keep open communication with the team, keep building relationships, and going forward,” he said to Daimler Truck for the podcast Transportation Matters. “The players want to know. They told me: ‘Coach, what are you talking about? Three medals in three years? Are you crazy?’” Herbert said while chuckling.
But Gordie wasn’t that crazy. Especially given what he’s been through.
Gordon Herbert has an off-the-charts level of connection with the players, to the point of having convinced them to believe in a goal they found outrageous at first blush. His own history helps him connect, allowing him to open up and show vulnerability to his players.
Herbert had been dealing with depression for six years, trying to use alcohol to evade himself. He talked openly about it in a book titled The Boys Game Me Back My Life and keeps talking about it every time he is asked about it in interviews.
“I didn’t even know how I got into it. The worst moment was a training camp in the Czech Republic. I didn’t make it. I didn’t understand anything and I couldn’t do anything anymore. I couldn’t communicate anymore. After that, I was in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks,” he told the German Press Agency.
“I was in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks.”
Gordon Herbert, about his mental health issues
Such transparency helped Herbert win over his players and even gain the admiration of Dirk Nowitzki, who wrote the foreword to the book.
“People see mental health issues as a weakness, a lot of people wrote to me and said it’s very nice you came out and said this because they had issues and they were afraid to come out and to get support,” he said to DynBasketball. The German coach acknowledged he takes special care of the mental wellness of his players.
“You see the situation, feel the situation, sometimes if somebody is struggling and having problems I try to get my player to get to know him. We have a psychologist, if they are struggling with something they can come to me, they feel comfortable coming to me, talking to me about stuff, we have open communication all the time,” he said.
Germany plays with the same depth as Herbert has as a human being. The world champion plays with its heart out on the floor for all to see. It’s pure poetry in motion, impregnated with creativity. The only thing you’ll be able to predict about the Germans is that they are unpredictable. While they have sets, they possess distinct variants, and the team is capable of creating on the fly like art that flows in the canvas. A canvas that features on-the-ball and off-the-ball movement heavily unstoppable, baroque. Being different has just always been a way of life for Gordie.
“Our world is changing all the time, whether in business or sport. So my message would be to constantly adapt. Getting creative and thinking outside the box is part of that,” he told Martina Wengeinmeir in his conversation with Ispo.
Joe Viray’s video below shows a play that summarizes a bunch of Germany’s strengths attacking in the halfcourt in just one possession from the last exhibition game they played against Team USA. One of the first things to notice is how easily the Germans emptied the paint despite the Americans having the two bigs in Joel Embiid and Bam Adebayo, who were drawn out to the perimeter early. Germany originally wanted to set up Andreas Obst for a three, but Adebayo switched to blow up the action.
However, Obst realized the interior mismatch with Stephen Curry guarding Moritz Wagner. There wasn’t any help around as Germany loaded the strong side, but Embiid reacted quickly by switching later and taking away the undersized duel. The defensive activity was incredible. Yet the Germans, all on the same page, continued pulling rabbits out of their collective hat.
The German team was capable of executing a third action, and Wagner was eventually able to find the backdoor cut, which drew free throws. There is never a down moment, never a pause and admission of defeat due to defensive reads. Germany simply finds something better.
This constant ball movement and capability to keep reading and executing make Germany unique. There’s no ecstatic star, but satellites that nonstop revolve around each other in the system of Gordon Herbert. With no superstars, he is just one medal away from turn his ‘three medals in three years’ craziness into reality. His madness may be on the verge of paying off.
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