Flournoy inspired by Devils’ heroics

May 1 2008 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

Newcastle Eagles are two games away from re-affirming their dominance of British basketball, but already their coach has a wary eye on bigger things.

THE morning after the night before, talk of Manchester United’s Champions League semi-final win over Barcelona was passing back and forth among the Newcastle Eagles players in breaks between interviews to preview this weekend’s British Basketball League play-off finals weekend in Birmingham.

While the players were taken in by the quality of Paul Scholes’ winning goal for the Red Devils, the Old Trafford match was inspiring their coach to dream about the future.

Fabulous Flournoy stands on the brink of a fourth successive play-off final success. Victory over Milton Keynes Lions in Saturday’s semi-final at Birmingham’s Indoor Arena will set up the possibility, but already the New Yorker is starting to look beyond it. Having won every BBL prize going, the club’s player-coach and its owner, Paul Blake, are mulling over whether to apply to compete in Europe in the future.

At the moment, the Eagles are big fishes in a small pond, but Flournoy dreams of making them the basketball equivalent of Manchester United or Barcelona. If it sounds fanciful, however, there is no danger of the club risking everything to make it happen.

“When I watch European football games it does get you dreaming a bit,” he admits. “That’s our goal, where we want to get to. Are we going to be able to achieve that in one year, two years, five years? Not realistically.

“We want to be a premier club year in, year out. Eventually me and Paul want to be like a Real Madrid, a Manchester United, a Barcelona or New York Yankees. You can go anywhere in the world and everyone knows them, whether they know the sport or not. Those teams have built on their history and infrastructure year in, year out. You never envisage Barcelona or Real Madrid or Yankees or Manchester being bottom of the table. They might not be top, they might even lose a trophy, but when they do it’s almost like a phase where they reload. It never goes empty, it comes right back at you. That’s what we’re trying to achieve.”

But having spent so long building up the Eagles, Flournoy is determined not to jeopardise it all for a jolly in the ULEB Cup.

“Everyone’s asking if we’re going to play in Europe or not, and as a coach I would love to, but is the club ready yet?” he asks rhetorically. “When you’re playing in Europe you’re talking about playing teams where one player costs more than your whole team budget. Every British team that has competed in Europe – with the exception of Guildford who’ve just gone in – has gone bust. We don’t want to get into Europe just to go bust. We’ve done our homework, we’ve studied our history and we want to be like Real Madrid or Manchester United in football, in it every year. We want to be at the top of the table competing for trophies, having players coming through our system. We’re going to be superior in terms of how we conduct ourselves, how we carry ourselves on and off court. It’s about having that plan, so you can succeed for five years, 10 years, 20 years down the line.”

While Flournoy is looking to improve, he believes Newcastle’s rivals are trying to ape their winning formula. It is a compliment to the 34-year-old’s seven years of work but he is adamant the club cannot stop to enjoy it.

“All of a sudden in this league you’re seeing the emergence of player-coaches and people trying to do dual roles, people trying to play defence and emulate the things we do,” says Flournoy. “You also see teams running the same systems as us.

“What we try and do is build a platform both when we’re winning trophies and when we’re losing. If we decide we’re going to play in Europe, we’re not suddenly going to do something we’ve not worked on or planned.

“Paul Blake was talking about grassroots, development and community 10 years ago when everyone else was just talking about sponsorship. Now all of a sudden everyone across the league is implementing ‘Hoops for Health’ following our model. We’re three or four steps ahead of the game.

“When Paul put me in place he didn’t say, ‘Fab, I want you to be a player-coach and to win next season’, he said, ‘I want you to be competitive, I want you to put a team together and I’m going to help you and we’ll learn along the way’.

“I’ve developed as a coach, he’s developed as an owner. We were able to build upon that and move on a little bit more to be able to do more. Now we’re reinforcing our infrastructure. In five or six years’ time when everyone catches up we’ll be five or six years ahead of that, both on the court and off.”

We’ve studied our history and we want to be like Real Madrid or Manchester United in football