Tag: Ryan Petrik

New Perth Lynx coach Ryan Petrik on #WNBL21, coaching philosophy and Sami Whitcomb’s return

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Heading into his first season as a Head Coach at WNBL level, 39-year-old Ryan Petrik hopes to refine and retool the team’s up-tempo style as they try to climb back into the semi-finals.

Petrik takes the helm after logging five years in the program as an Assistant Coach. He has also coached in the Western Australian State League, where he previously worked with new recruits Darcee Garbin and Sami Whitcomb, and won championships in 2014 and 2015.

Here, he talks to The Evening Game about the coaches who have shaped his thinking about basketball, recruiting in the time of COVID-19 and how he plans to get the most out of his returning superstar. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Over the last few years the Lynx have played very fast, looking for a lot of fast-break points and three-point attempts. Do you see that style continuing?

Our methods will be very different, but overall our pace of play, the three-point shooting etc will be very similar. It’ll be just be a very different way of getting there.

When you coached (state league team) Rockingham, did your teams play that same uptempo, almost ‘D’Antoni ball’ style?

Yeah. It’s funny you say D’Antoni, he’s a massive, massive influence on how I coach. I’m probably not quite as in love with the Houston iso ball that he is running, but those mid-2000s Phoenix Suns teams were a very heavy influence on how we want to coach and play.

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Are there any other coaches who have influenced you?

I’m a massive fan of (Milwaukee Bucks coach) Mike Budenholzer, D’Antoni obviously, and I really like a lot of the stuff that (Miami Heat coach) Erik Spoelstra runs. 

Locally, I’ve always been a massive, massive Guy Molloy fan. Each year, his Melbourne Boomers teams come out with a whole new offence that is dedicated to that particular roster and it always makes a ton of sense. Nobody else in the league is ever running it. There is no copy and paste of Opals stuff, it’s all his own. I’ll certainly use that as an inspiration for what we do.

Do you spend a lot of time looking into whether a potential recruit will be a cultural fit?

That’s massive, especially coming from the Wildcats organisation and being really good friends with Troy Georgiu. He’s the Wildcats GM and I’ll lean on him a bit for this stuff. He’s always been a massive culture and character recruiter, as you can see in the Wildcats teams over the years. We will certainly try to use that in how we recruit.

Do you see this coming season as Darcee Garbin’s peak as a player?

You would hope so. She’s 26 now and especially as a big, they generally don’t hit their peak until their late 20s. Hopefully we’ll put in a base offence which lets her use her main weapons – she’s a really mobile, really agile big who can do a lot of really good things offensively. So if we put in place an offence based around her, Ebzery and Sam (Whitcomb), we think she’ll have at least as good a year as she’s ever had, but she’s also still trending upwards. 

Is Sami Whitcomb is a better player than when she left?

That’s a hard one to answer because the obvious answer is that yes, she’s better, but that probably does a disservice to how good she was before. It was a very high bar that she was at before she left the country. I’ve been coaching her since 2013 and what I’ve seen is that how she plays in the WNBA is very different to how she plays in France. We’ll use more of the French version. 

Having said that, we’ll build more stuff around her. We’ve had a bit of success building offences around her at a state league level. We’ll need a much, much more advanced version of that to really unlock her.

She really racked up the steals when she last played for the Lynx. Do you anticipate giving her a licence to gamble on defence and be quite aggressive on that end?

It’s funny; she was always the odd piece defensively back at state level. I’m generally a very conservative coach. I would much prefer to pack it in and make it hard for teams to get their feet in the paint, whereas Whitcomb is always one pass away, loves to jam the lane and go for steals. Generally, you wouldn’t be a fan of that, but the problem is she is so, so, good at it. We generally had team guidelines defensively, and then Sam was free to just make a read. 99 times out of 100, she would make the right read. 

We won’t be as aggressive defensively as what Andy (Stewart, previous Lynx Head Coach) was, but if Sami’s going to be so elite at getting steals like that, I won’t try to reign it in too much.

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Do you see Whitcomb as the two and Ebzery as the one, or is it more fluid than that?

It’s more fluid – we see them both as wings. They could both slide over if need be, but the plan is to play them both alongside a proper point guard. 

We’ve got some interesting thoughts on that. The thinking is if we keep them both on the wings, it doesn’t matter what set we run for a wing, we will always (get a shot) for one of them. The plan is for the first 36, 37 minutes of the game we will keep them on the wings as much as humanly possible. Then, when it’s winning time, they might need to slide over.

With the no imports rule, some younger players are likely to get more court time. How do you get them ready for WNBL level competition?

We’ll make sure we sit them down and explain what their roles are. That’s one of the biggest pieces of feedback we’ve got from players in previous years, players want to know their role is and where they sit in the pecking order. 

The team will be built around Sam, Katie and Darcee. Beyond that, is your job to facilitate and get Sam and Katie the ball or should you jack up a terrible shot? Then we get a boatload of repetition and scrimmage into them and show them (what to do) in film and practice.

We might say ‘Player X, your role is not to shoot heavily contested threes with 20 seconds left on the shot clock. Maybe that’s ok for Sami Whitcomb and Katie-Rae Ebzery, but for player nine (in the rotation), that’s not ok’. 

How much of a challenge is it preparing for the WNBL without the winter competition?

It‘s certainly a hindrance in terms of filling up the roster. We’re clear on who the first seven or so players are, but from eight to 15 it becomes very murky. It’s much harder to differentiate players when you can’t see them live. 

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Is it a significant advantage for teams like Southside and Canberra that have kept their Australian core together?

You would think so, anyway. Continuity of roster and coach should be a massive advantage whereas we will come in with 10 new players, a new Head Coach and a new offence. The benefit is that quite a few pieces we’re recruiting I’ve coached before or we’re quite familiar with. We think we’ll start behind the eight ball, but we don’t think it is a killer by any means.

Do you think it’s an advantage or disadvantage being a younger coach in the league?

There’s pros and cons to both. I’ve generally been one of the youngest at every level I’ve coached at so far. When I first became a Women’s Head Coach, I think I was the youngest. At State under ‘20s, I was one of the youngest and we got a Silver.

It would be a natural disadvantage against someone like Guy Molloy, who’s been around the league for so long. On the flipside, the positive of being so young is that you hopefully speak the player’s language a bit better. It’s probably a slight disadvantage, but there are major upsides as well.

Header image credit: TJ Dragotta, Unsplash.