… says half the team should not have gone to CBC championship
MANAGER of the Men’s national basketball team which participated in the recent Senior Caribbean Basketball Confederation (CBC) Men’s Championship (CBC) in the Bahamas,  Raymond Padmore, is strongly recommending that former national captain/player and assistant coach Lugard Mohan should replace Robert ‘Bobby’ Cadogan as the senior men’s coach. And that the team underperformed due to unacceptable behaviour and that half of the team should not have been selected in the first place.
In an exclusive interview with Chronicle Sport the tough-talking, multiple former junior player Padmore said “the first thing, from the head I think they should change the coaches. I think the assistant coach should be appointed the senior coach.”
He further explained “Players got to do a lot of work on their own, period. I mean regardless if they had two weeks to train, any seasoned player needs just two weeks or more to get together with his team and mould chemistry-wise. Players don’t need four or five months to train,  because when I was playing basketball, we didn’t have to get that amount of time to train because we are always playing basketball.”
He recommends that the Guyana Amateur Basketball Federation (GABF) must ensure that players: “Have to play more at the higher level. We got to bring teams in, club teams got to come to Guyana . We just can’t send out a team out to the championship, because it is a lot of money.
“It is $4M we spent to send this team to the Bahamas and I don’t believe a lot of those players deserved to be on the team. It was a learning experience, but some of them should have stayed at home. Half of the team should have stayed home,” Padmore lamented.
Guyana played five matches and won only their final game against St Vincent and the Grenadines to finish seventh overall in the eight-team tournament.
When asked about the absence of overseas-based players the United States-based Padmore replied “The only way overseas-based players should play a role is if they are in college, or coming out of college.
“We have a lot of basketball players  overseas that don’t play competitive basketball. They are weekend warriors but we don’t need weekend warriors in the national team.
“We need guys who are in college who are just out of college and we need to scout them early.”
He said that the federation must take note. “We as a country got to know where our players are at any given time. If it is in school or out, which college, we got to keep in contact with them. That is for the coaches to get in contact with coaches of the foreign-based players and get an update on the player’s performance and their attitude, everything.”
However, he warned: “We just can’t bring a man from overseas and say just because he has come from overseas we include him in the national team. I went to Puerto Rico with eight, nine guys that are supposed to be overseas college guys and they were not ready for the tournament. We have to do a better job in scouting for players. Other countries do it.”
Padmore then advised that the federation set up a database and in someway know where you can find the players overseas.
Semi-professional or professional players will be perfect for a national team and at that level there is a lot of discipline. He said a professional player is a special player, a very special player.
Padmore said when you hit that level it is the highest level in basketball adding, “I would take a professional or semi-professional player any day in front of a college player, because you had to go through the college before you get to be a professional player.
Most of the players do. If we have four or five players who played professional or semi-professional basketball, especially in North America, you have to find them and let them know they are needed for their country.”
Looking at an online flash report during the tournament which leaked that there was a division among the team which basically comprised players from Linden and Georgetown; and that many things off the court may have contributed to the team’s actual poor showing, the outspoken manager replied, “the off-court performance will only affect you when they are not used to certain conditions. And this happened to our team.”
He pointed out “Even though we spoke about it before leaving Guyana, about the attitude, the conditions they are going to be under and the things that would entice them and the things they should stay away from; I don’t think a lot of them listened.
But, it was a learning experience for most of them. And I hope that they do take it seriously because the off-court activities has a lot to do with what you are going to do on court, because these kids do not know how to rest their bodies after a game.”
Padmore remarked, “Most of them when they finish playing basketball the night, they are out there, nobody resting; most of this tournament you have to play everyday.
Sometimes you play early in the day sometimes you play later but you got to rest your body and these kids don’t know anything about resting their body or how to eat before a game, what they should be drinking what they should not be drinking.”
He continued, “I was trying to tell them, as a lot of them were habitually drinking soda pop, eating this and you try to talk to them and they look at you as if you are stupid, what are you talking
According to the past junior national player, players are not educated enough about the physical condition of a basketball player as just getting up and playing basketball doesn’t work anymore as “you got to be mentally and physically prepared for basketball, especially when you got to play every day … I tried talking to guys especially when we were having dinner about their eating habits.”
He said there was nothing he could have done about that situation “to prevent them from getting out of their rooms because I am an early sleeper.
“We made curfews. I could remember one ‘night’ about 01.00hrs the telephone rang and there was a guy who brought the uniforms after they were washed, and when I got downstairs in the lobby I found a bunch of guys outside coming out of a night club.
“You talk to them and it is like ‘what’s up with you?’ It’s just a baffling thing that you could not understand how these players would want to do something like that. When you see them you think the tournament is over.”
He recalled also “talking to our centre on the bus. We had a game at 16:00hrs and this guy was running off the beach at 15:30hrs and we had the bus waiting for the guy to get to the bus. I talked to the coach about it and then I heard I was wrong to tell him what I felt about it.
I probably did not do it in the right way or manner but I just did it the way I felt, as a basketball player and the manager of the team, because I felt it was indiscipline when you have a game at 16:00hrs and you are not coming out of your hotel room to go to the game.
“He was  just running off the beach and it was brought right away to the coach’s attention but he never said anything about it.”
When confronted with the charge that he was playing players against one another Padmore rejected it, saying, “I am hearing that I was the one who was causing disarray on the team with Mackenzie (Linden) players and Georgetown players and I never knew there was any incident like that. I don’t know how that came about.