‘I used to have his poster’ – Trevor Gleeson’s winding road from Warrnambool to the NBA

But where there’s a will, there’s usually a way. And Trevor Gleeson, then a sports-mad teenager growing up in Warrnambool on Victoria’s southwest coast, and his mates still managed to get their regular fix of the best basketballers in the world.

It could take a while, but when the package they’d been waiting for finally landed, they’d gather around a television to watch the grainy images of an NBA game being played on the other side of the globe.

“We would get the VHS videotape and we’d ring up our mates and send the message around,” Gleeson says. “And all of a sudden, we’d have 12 or 15 people in the sleepout watching Dr J (Julius Erving), Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, and I was just in awe of how they could play at that level. It just really fed the appetite for basketball at a very, very early age.”

Those three giants of the game are long gone from the NBA, where each of them carved out a Hall of Fame career before leaving the hardwood behind, but Gleeson’s time in the league he grew up watching from afar almost four decades ago has just begun.

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When the Toronto Raptors came calling last year, Gleeson was a hot property in Australia, having steered the Perth Wildcats to five NBL championships in eight seasons.

Life was very good out west, he and his family were settled and very happy in the city they’d adopted as their home. But the 53-year-old just couldn’t say no.

The Wildcats released the most successful coach in franchise history from his contract in July, and just weeks later he was on his way to join Nick Nurse’s coaching staff in the NBA’s only Canadian city.

Reflecting on his decision to leave the Cats during a Zoom call from Toronto, Gleeson says: “Look, I’ve got job offers in Europe and job offers in Asia for more money than I was getting back in the NBL, but it was never enough to move me out of Perth. I had a great owner, great organisation and a good situation. So the grass is not always greener if you go for more money.

“But then [it’s] the NBA. That’s the pinnacle. It’s the best competition in the world. After talking about it with my wife, it’s really [that] I can’t put my head on the pillow and live a life saying I’ve said no to the NBA. I might be here one year, five years, 10 years, or who knows. But when my head hits the pillow for the last time, I know that I did the best and I’ve been in the best competition in the world.”

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Gleeson’s road to the NBA has been a long and unconventional one. After spending time on the Brisbane Bullets coaching staff in the late 90s he worked the sidelines for Quad City Thunder and Sioux Falls Skyforce in the Continental Basketball Association, then coached in Korea before finding his way back to the NBL where he led Townsville and Melbourne Tigers before taking charge at Perth.

He served as an assistant coach on the Australian national team, and even made stops at AFL clubs North Melbourne and Hawthorn after his run with the Tigers ended after just one season.

Yes, he’d seen and experienced plenty before starting this new chapter of his career, but it hasn’t taken long for Gleeson to learn that this is a whole new ball game.

“Let me tell you, the NBA players are the most confident players in the world,” he says.

“They don’t get to the top level without a level of confidence, so you’re going to have to know what you’re doing. They’re going to ask you questions. They’re going to ask why. And they’re going to ask what. ‘I’ve been doing this for a long time, why should I listen to this Australian coach that hasn’t been in the league?’ And you have to earn your stripes.

“Then throw on top of that the schedule of 82 games. You’re playing a minimum of three games, more [often] four, sometimes five games a week, and you throw travel in. It’s just unbelievable the travelling schedule. Fatigue comes in, you’re in each other’s back pocket, how do you keep it real? All those things I’m learning as we go along, and also adding some value out there.

“So it’s been a good first six months, or five months. Now I want to get to 82 games. I want to be there for the whole 82 games for the season and then the playoffs, and just build [on] that from there.”

Then, of course, there’s the coronavirus pandemic, which has continued to create havoc for sports around the world. The NBA has taken its share of hits for the third straight season, as have the Raptors, who reverted to playing their home games in an empty arena early this month.

“With Covid you’ve just got to roll with the punches,” Gleeson says.

“We only had four players for one game in Cleveland and then we had to have four guys come in and we’re coaching them in warm-ups. When we’re supposed to be doing warm-ups, we’re running through our plays while the opposition’s down there watching us running through the plays because we didn’t have enough time.

“Then after that we win six in a row. So you’ve got to roll with the punches, because you never know who’s in and who’s out.”

For the record, the Raptors lost that game in Cleveland by 45 points.

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Through the middle of January, things were looking up for Toronto, having absorbed some early blows before reaching the halfway mark of its season with a 21-20 win-loss record and in eighth place in the highly competitive Eastern Conference.

The Raptors had won seven of 10 to get their campaign back on track and look well equipped to be in the thick of the playoff race over the coming weeks and months, but Gleeson, while still new to the league, has seen enough already to know that things can turn quickly.

A six-game winning streak can very easily become a four-game losing skid. And how a team handles that adversity when it comes may very well decide its season.

“We’ve been on both sides of that avenue, that we’ve had injuries and Covid,” he says.

“I think we’ve had 14 players with Covid who have been out for extended periods, and it’s how you deal with that while you’re losing without losing focus. And how when you’re winning you don’t get ahead of yourself and think you’re too good. Otherwise this league will cut you down to shreds pretty quickly … To see how these NBA guys and coaches go through it, it’s been a good (learning) curve for me.”

Gleeson still has a lot to learn about his new workplace, and will log hundreds of hours between now and the end of the season as he and his fellow coaches make plans to deal with some of the finest competitors ever to play the game – a roll call of All-Star calibre talent headlined by LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Luka Doncic.

At the same time, reminders of those formative Warrnambool years, and the faraway stars that shaped them, are just as frequent.

“It’s funny now that I’m there at the Boston Garden,” he says. “And I’m looking up at these retirement jerseys and, ‘Oh yeah, I had that poster’. And we went to Milwaukee and I’m like, ‘I used to have his poster on the wall. I used to have his poster on the wall’, and it’s quite surreal when you’re doing it.

“But you always dreamt as a kid. You could do anything as a kid, your imagination is great. But then it was still a far-off dream two, three years ago, and then it started getting a little bit closer and closer, and an opportunity presented itself.

“Sometimes, when you’re playing you see Steph Curry or Durant, KD, or Chris Paul going around. And it’s just like, ‘Wow, they’re right there on the court scoring on us’. Now I’m the opposition. Now I’m trying to come up with plans and trying to get the players to stop these great players.

“You’re not going to be able to stop them for a long period of time, you’re just trying to make it very, very difficult for them because they’re that good. But that’s a different challenge in itself. You try to separate, but when you see greatness on the court you appreciate it.”

Just as he appreciates one important piece of advice he was given soon after joining the Raptors.

“Something one of the coaches told me at the start of the year is that you should do a layup in every arena and take a picture of the court,” he says with a laugh. “So I’ve been doing that on my journey. I’m a little bit of a tourist and I get out there early so the players don’t see me being a tourist. Then it’s all business.”

And that’s just fine with Gleeson, who no longer has to settle for watching those grainy images of the finest basketball players in the world.

These days he gets to enjoy the show from one of the best seats in the house.