Taipans provide NBL opportunities for NBL1 coaches

The Cairns Taipans thought outside the box this past NBL season to add some extra coaching knowledge and another pair of hands around the country with Adam Forde welcoming coaches around the country including three-time NBL1 West championship winner Dayle Joseph.

Forde has always been willing to be innovative and do things a little differently over the past five NBL seasons as coach of the Taipans and a lot of that is because of how hard he had to work through the ranks to reach the top level.

Going back to his time in Perth, Forde started his coaching in the NBL1 West (then SBL) and ended up leading the East Perth Eagles to a championship in 2013 while volunteering initially as a video coordinator for a chance to be involved in the NBL at the Wildcats.

That turned into him becoming a four-time championship winning assistant under Trevor Gleeson with the 'Cats before he moved to the Sydney Kings and ended up being a head coach for a season, and that's when the chance in Cairns opened up.

What he realised in his own journey was that there's no clear pathway for anyone with a coaching ambition to work their way up into the NBL eventually, and that's where he thought he could help in his role with the Taipans.

That is one aspect of the satellite coaching program he's helped set up and handed over the running of it to his lead assistant Will Lopez where the Taipans can provide coaches around the country a chance to be involved.

One part of that is a chance to be around the Snakes team when they are in their cities and having them involved in every aspect of the preparation, the game itself and then the review.

It's about more than that too and it's having connections around the country to help the Taipans have greater insight into players around the country, and all in all it's a program that Forde is proud of what it does not only to help the Taipans, but coaches all around the country chase their dreams.

ADAM FORDE

There was a whole multitude of reasons why Adam Forde felt like such a program would be useful, successful and was much needed, and that also just because of the location of Cairns and the resources at the Taipans, it was the perfect club to also implement such a thing.

"The vision of the satellite program came from thinking back to when I started out as an intern, and then along the way have built up a level of knowledge in a sense of a pathway to get into the NBL," Forde said.

"I guess it's a two way relationship where I also want to know as much as I can about every single NBL1 player or junior player or college player coming up through the system so at Cairns, we can almost get a headstart in the recruiting space.

"Then you think about how you can develop this network of coaches knowing that also Cairns is a small, regional team and it's not like we have a lot available to us there in comparison to what was available to me in Perth and Sydney.

"So with the connection of saying that I need to know about someone like Johny Narkle, for example, and I can call Dayle and get as much information as I can because he knows him the best.

"Then in return, it's about what I can do for Dayle and he might want to get part of our set up in some way when we're in Perth, and you might be able to get involved in some training sessions, our meetings, shootaround and then on game night," he added.

"So it's an enriching experience for him and also I've got an extra pair of hands for rebounding, he can provide a different perspective on different philosophies given the success he's had at NBL1 level.

"We're trying to help bridge that gap from NBL1 to NBL and I was trying to do that myself not that long ago, and Dayle's one example of many where we have a good selection of guys in Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland, and that was my idea and Will's the one that has taken it and run with it to how it is now."

WILL LOPEZ

Not only has Lopez become Forde's right-hand man as lead assistant coach at the Taipans, but he's also thrown himself fully into basketball in Cairns since making the move to Far North Queensland

He took on the role as High Performance Coach for Cairns Basketball while also coaching in the NBL1 North with the Cairns Dolphins, and now is preparing for the 2026 NZ NBL season with the Hawkes Bay Hawks – where former Taipans Jarrod Kenny is general manager.

Having come through the ranks of basketball in NSW and now moving to Cairns to get a full-time NBL coaching opportunity, Lopez is well placed to know what the satellite program can do for coaches around the country, but it's about much more than just that too.

"I had a little bit of a luckier situation where Cairns assisted me with some paid work through Cairns Basketball, but a lot of guys can't just pick up their life and move to somewhere like Cairns with no money and no job on offer, and just volunteer," Lopez said.

"So we had the vision of what we wanted to build and at one point we had a coverage of every single NBL1 league in Australia with someone from each state, and also the NZ NBL so we had a person on the ground in each of those competitions which for us provided a great resource to collect information and data.

"But then also, when we rolled into town to play whether it was Adelaide, Perth or wherever, we had an extra set of hands on game day or at practice leading up to the games.

"The trade off for those guys from being a part of the program and doing a little bit of the ground work in the shadows was that you got to experience what a game day was in the NBL, and that's something that you could tap into on your resume as understanding how it works.

"But also you got to tap into a little bit Fordey's IP and our processes might not be so extreme that they're different to other NBL clubs.

"But it's more the fact of how we do scout, this is what our practices look like, this is what our development plan looks like and this is what our scouts and reviews look like," Lopez added.

"While we appreciate their help, we want those coaches to take benefit from this program too and we've had a wide variety of coaches involved.

"Some of them were NBL1 coaches who just wanted to see things at the next level but we also had state level coaches who just wanted to see a bit more of a development plan or to get some ideas that they could take back to their junior programs.

"So for everybody they wanted a different outcome from being part of it, but for us we hit all those levels too whether you're an up and coming NBL1 player or a young kid who was a potential star going to college and we can help them, but also stay in contact over the years."

DAYLE JOSEPH

One coach who has firsthand experience of getting involved at the Taipans is Dayle Joseph who has built quite the impressive coaching resume in the NBL1 West at the Geraldton Buccaneers.

He guided them to a drought breaking championship in the last season of the SBL in 2019 and has gone on to win two more NBL1 West titles the past three seasons, and has been named Coach of the Year three times along the way.

He has proven himself capable of coaching talent destined for big things too including NBA championship winner Alex Ducas and current Illawarra Hawks NBL player Johny Narkle, who has been Grand Final MVP in both the last two championships with the Buccs.

His initial connection with Forde and the Taipans came from discussions about Narkle, and then when the Taipans spent a week in Perth in January earlier this year across HoopsFest and then a road game against the Wildcats, the timing worked well for Joseph to get involved.

"Personally for me it was great and it's difficult to be part of the NBL a little bit or to even get a little bit close to it, although having said that the Wildcats have been good too and I went to a couple of their training sessions early on in the season," Joseph said.

"Then it was sort of by chance that I had a conversation with Adam about Johny Narkle as it turns out and then one thing led to another about coaching and learning.

"He talked about what he learned from going to different Summer League programs and what he got out of that, and then gave me the invitation to be around his team if the chance ever presented.

"I thought that sounded awesome so I thought I'd try to get across to Cairns, but then as it turned out they were going to be in Perth around HoopsFest. That's sort of how it all started and from that I got to spend some time with them at two games and with a whole week at their training although it was on the road for them."

Joseph was able to spend some time in Perth and out of Geraldton across that week to be part of both game days with the Taipans against the New Zealand Breakers and Wildcats, and involved in training sessions and was immensely thankful for the opportunity.

"I did learn a lot and their attention to detail is quite a little bit up to what we sort of put into place and like Adam said at some stage, some of it is just about confirming that what you do is on the right track," Forde said.

"It sort of did help give a bit of affirmation to what we are doing in the NBL1 whether in Geraldton or I imagine a lot of the other clubs are the same.

"The fact is that we're not that far off it really, it's just that they do it all day, every day and for someone like myself, I'm working 40/45 hours a week in my job and trying to fit that basketball stuff in as well.

"I do feel like our knowledge of the game is not far off the pace and I felt like sitting there watching that I could have got up and started coaching on game day after being part of it.

"So that side of it I don’t think is out of reach, but certainly preparation and the scouting that they do is second to none, and the way they record it and keep it all accessible at the touch of a finger was something I found really interesting. That was a big difference to what we do for sure."

One aspect that Joseph noticed from being around the Taipans was that Forde was the clear leader of a young coaching staff.

It did have him curious how it might work at an NBL team like the Sydney Kings where you have Brian Goorjian as head coach but then the immensely experienced and credentialed Billy Tomlinson and Andrew Bogut as his assistants.

"The other thing I found was that was all those other assistant coaches below Adam are all young guys learning from him which I found very interesting," Joseph said.

"They would say that this is what Adam wants us to do and this is what they do for Adam, and they were learning from him and giving him the information that he needed.

"Then I thought it would be interesting to go to a team like the Sydney Kings where they have such an experienced head coach and experienced coaches under him, and wondering how that dynamic works for them.

"It's great what Adam does and how he tries to pass on his knowledge to others along the way so I enjoyed getting to see that up close."