Guy Molloy's long road to the top of the mountain

The veteran coach talks Grand Final tactics and the "dark days" before Melbourne's 2022 championship

Credit: Melbourne Boomers

After Game 1 of this year’s WNBL Grand Final Series, the Perth Lynx looked to have irresistible momentum. With their opponents only needing a single win to clinch the championship, and Head Coach Guy Molloy having decided to step down at season’s end to focus on his work with New Zealand’s Tall Ferns, it seemed likely that the veteran would finish his career in the league without a title.

In the aftermath of that first game where the Melbourne Boomers had endured a 27-point loss, Molloy and his staff resisted ranting and raving at the players. Instead, they empowered the group to find solutions themselves, asking each player to come to the next meeting with 4-6 points that they wanted to execute better in Game 2.

WNBL @WNBL

💜💜💜💜BOOM!!!💜💜💜💜💜

“The results of that (exercise) were really strong,” Molloy tells The Pick and Roll. “They came in with all the points that the coaches would have had anyway. We knew that we were much better than what we’d shown.” The players identified they hadn’t been physical enough on screens and hadn’t crashed the glass hard enough (Perth outrebounded them 47-36 in Game 1).