Ken Watson • Bio

No 1 KEN WATSON

Coach

1956 and 1968 Olympic Games

Ken Watson was born in 1919.

Ken Watson was a great influence on basketball development in Victoria and Australia not only as a coach but as an administrator. His involvement with basketball started prior to World War Two and in 1941 he became Secretary of the Victorian Basketball Association, a position he was to hold for 44 years.

Basketball: Ken was a very good player; he played with (the precursor of) the Melbourne Tigers for about fifteen years; he played for Victoria (1946-1955) mostly as captain or as captain/coach; he would have been an Olympic player if we'd had a national basketball team in 1948 or 1952 (and possibly in 1956 if he hadn't done his knee the year before). Ken coached the Melbourne Tigers for around 25 years (1945-1970); Victoria for about 15 years; Australia (1956 and 1968); and coached junior teams for a lot of this time; and when he stepped down from the senior jobs, he continued to coach junior teams, and did so with extraordinary success (at the top level) until he was about 80. Basketball administration: club, state and national level (LG).

• Musically, Ken was talented (singing*, violin and piano ... and even half-organ with sister Enid!). He sang in St.Luke's choir, St.Paul's cathedral choir and organised the Chapel Choristers.

During the War he ensured that basketball in Melbourne continued and in particular strived to keep junior basketball going. As Secretary he was involved in the development of the Victoria Junior Council, the Victorian Country Council, the Victorian State Championships, and the South Eastern Conference (SEC) basketball competition. He and George Russell established the first Australian Junior Championships in Tasmania in 1954.

Ken was the first Secretary of the Australian Basketball Union.

As a coach he was vitally interested in developing junior basketball however he also performed with distinction at the senior level. After coaching Victoria at the 1955 Australian Championships (Sydney) which they won Ken was named as the coach for Australian basketballs first ever Olympic team....the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

The players well remember those Games, not only for being the first for Australia but because of the difficulties the team faced. Time and money allowed little team or player preparation and the players remember being coached by “correspondence” prior to coming into the Olympic Village a week before the Games. The team was an eclectic arrangement of Australian born players and of migrant players who mainly had learned their skills in the Displacement Camps of Europe.

To Ken Watson came the difficult task of bringing this group together in a very short time and with few resources. This lack of time together played against the team and they recorded only two wins and secured 12th place out of 15 teams participating. Ken and his wife Betty also were two of the mainstays of the Olympic basketball organizing committee so Ken was extremely busy. His wife Betty remembers “We were extremely busy. I don’t think people realised that the committee (and we) had to do nearly everything, while ken had to also coach the team.

Still the Aussie were glad to be there, and despite their disappointments they had laid the foundations for all those Australian Olympic basketball teams to follow.

Ken, a mathematics teacher, founded the Melbourne Tigers Basketball Club, and was also well known (and is to this day) as “the father of the Melbourne Tigers shuffle”. Ken brought the shuffle offense back from his studies at Auburn University in the USA. The offense became the trademark of the club and was carried on by Lindsay Gaze and Al Westover through to the present (2011).

In 1968 Ken was still coaching the Victorian State team and was named as coach of the Australian team for the Mexico Olympics.

The Australian team spent a week at Narrabeen Fitness Camp in Sydney where Watson’s task was once again to bring together a team that consisted of players from all over Australia. Ken was implementing the shuffle offense as it was felt that this technique would best serve Australia in the tournament as they could control the ball and limit the opposition’s opportunities on offense. This meant the team had to rely on mainly the Victorian players who were familiar with the offensive system. This made practical sense but led to some disunity within the team even before it left Australia. The Aussies had to contest the Qualification Tournament in Monterrey Mexico to qualify for the finals in Mexico City. A combination of factors worked against them. First there was the long train journey within Mexico to Monterrey, then there was the effects of poor food “Montezuma’s Curse”, some very poor officiating in an early game, injuries and the lack of unity within the team. This all added up to be too much for the occasion and though everyone tried their hardest the team did not win a game and was out of the finals in Mexico City.

Back in Australia, the Tigers under Ken’s tutelage was the premier club team in Australia. They were winning the Victorian Club Championships, the national Club Championships and the SEC games regularly and were completely dominant. The Tiger set the benchmark for other teams to reach and this made for some fierce rivalry between the Tigers and every other club in Australia.

In 1970 Ken decided that it was time to hand over the reins to Lindsay Gaze a long time player with the club, Olympian and a person who saw Ken as “a father figure and mentor”.

Ken quietly retired from administration and coaching at the senior level. He continued coaching Tigers junior teams and particularly enjoyed coaching the Under 14 group.

Ken’s wife Betty is synonymous with women’s basketball in Australia for her tireless and immense contributions to the sport and to women’s basketball in particular. His sons Ray and Ian represented Australia as players at the Olympics and David was an outstanding referee. Few families could claim such a contribution to Australian basketball as the Watson family.

Ken Watson was awarded Life Membership of Basketball Australia (1963), the Victorian Basketball Association (1967) and the South Eastern Basketball League (SEBL). Basketball Australia honoured Ken with the naming of the “Ken Watson Australian Under 14 Men’s Club Championships”. He was honoured by Basketball Australia Hall of Fame for his contributions to basketball with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ken Watson passed away in March 2008. He was 89 years of age.

For a time, 133 Arnold Street was the 'home' of basketball in Victoria and Australia. Ken was secretary of the VABA and the ABUA. I remember reams of paper printed with VABA headers and ABUA headers with the 133 Arnold Street address. The office/study was full of paper and stationery knick-knacks. Ken was always partial to a stationery store: he enjoyed shopping at Norman's much more than at Myer's. Towards the end, he occupied himself with Sudoku and crosswords, and naturally this involved piles of paper, fourteen different coloured pens and erasers and highlighters.

Arnold Street was an interesting house to grow up in: not only three

He was awarded life membership of

Basketball Australia (1963), and of both

the Victorian Basketball Association

(1967) and the South-Eastern

Basketball League. His tireless efforts at

the junior level culminated in Basketball

Australia naming the national U14 club

event the ‘Ken Watson Australian U14

Men’s Club Championship’.

Watson, a mathematics teacher, also is synonymous with the shuffle offence he brought to Melbourne after he saw it used at Auburn University in Alabama, in the US. He told The Sunday Age in a rare interview in 1993 that Auburn had the Tiger as its emblem.

"I brought home their publicity stuff, some of which we adopted ourselves," he said. He also brought back the Auburn shuffle, which became the club's trademark.

L I F E T I M E A C H I E V E M E N T AWA R D

K E N WA T S O N

Ken Watson is widely recognised as a

venerable sage of Australian basketball.

He coached the first Australian Olympic

team in 1956, and again in 1968 after

Australia had become recognised as an

emerging international basketball nation.

The 1956 Olympic team included several

new immigrants. Watson helped the

players overcome cultural differences,

and to adjust to international competition

and the aura of the Olympics. Under his

guidance, the team recorded wins over

Thailand and Singapore to take 12th

place in a field of 15.

However, his real passion lay in his

commitment to junior development. During

the Second World War, almost singlehandedly,

he kept basketball alive in

Melbourne by promoting junior participation

and organising competitions. He became

Secretary of the Victorian Basketball

Association in 1941, a position he was to

hold for 44 years. During this period he

pioneered many new key developments for

the sport, including the Victoria Junior

Council, the Victorian Country Council, the

Victorian State Championships, and the

South-Eastern Basketball Conference.

Together with George Russell, he was

responsible for launching the first Australian

junior men’s championship in Tasmania in

1954. Ken was also the first secretary of

the Amateur Basketball Union of Australia.

He was awarded life membership of

Basketball Australia (1963), and of both

the Victorian Basketball Association

(1967) and the South-Eastern

Basketball League. His tireless efforts at

the junior level culminated in Basketball

Australia naming the national U14 club

event the ‘Ken Watson Australian U14

Men’s Club Championship’.

Lindsay Gaze once commented, “Ken

was clearly a visionary. A lot of times

he’d be the one bringing along the

proposals for reform, for change, for

improvement, for adventure.”

History will show that the Watson family

have had one of the single greatest

impacts on basketball in Australia. Ken’s

wife Betty supported him in all his

endeavours, and his three sons were all

involved in basketball – Ray and Ian

competed at the Olympics and David

became one of Victoria’s top referees.

"SOMETIMES," said Lindsay Gaze, "I'm referred to as the father of basketball — that's bullshit. Ken is really the principal person responsible for the development of the game in Australia."

Ken is Ken Watson, the founder of the Melbourne Tigers, Australian basketball's most famous club, and secretary of the Victorian association for more than 40 years. He died this week, aged 88, after battling an Alzheimer's-type illness for several years.

Watson coached the cream of the sport — the national team at the 1956 and 1968 Olympic Games, state teams during a period when Victoria dominated, the Tigers' senior teams from the 1940s to the '70s, when he handed over to Gaze, and the Tigers' juniors until the early 2000s.

"His impact on the sport has been monumental, although he is not all that well known," Gaze, 70, said. "He was humble and never sought publicity."

He was, to Gaze, "a surrogate father, a great mentor, a very good friend and, above all else, an incredibly gifted educator". "It was his teaching skills more than his coaching skills that made him special, particularly with kids."

"I brought home their publicity stuff, some of which we adopted ourselves," he said. He also brought back the Auburn shuffle, which became the club's trademark.

Watson set it up, Gaze continued it and the National Basketball League's champion team under Alan Westover still has it as the basis of its offence.

Watson discovered basketball at 16. He stopped playing at 35 (in 1954) because of a knee injury and after selection for the 1952 Olympics, but coached Melbourne's senior team until early 1970.

"Lindsay Gaze was at the point of retiring as a player," Watson said. "He had been coaching state juniors through the '60s, so it was only right to step out of his road."

The elder statesman then took over Melbourne's juniors, stopping only when he and wife Betty moved to Aireys Inlet. "His family took away his licence to coach when he started to waver with his driving," Gaze said this week. "He had retired from coaching championship (junior teams), but was coaching in Geelong."

While the Watsons are usually associated with men's basketball — sons David and Ray have had long associations with the Tigers — Ken Watson also championed the development of the women's game, which used to be confused with netball.

"Ken was asked by FIBA (the international body) to develop basketball for women," Gaze said. "He advertised in The Sporting Globe, inviting females to attend and learn.

"He said to Betty, 'You better look after this'. She was the first president of the Victorian Women's Council and the Australian Women's Council.

"When you consider that over 50 years, we've gone from primitive (beginnings) to now world champions, it's a phenomenal sporting experience that Ken started."

Gaze said that although Watson was the second secretary of the Victorian Basketball Association, he was effectively the first because the original absconded with the funds after about 12 months.

"And he was the first secretary of Basketball Australia at a time when it was important to develop national programs," Gaze said. "Most of the good things in the development of the sport came from Ken's initiatives: the Victorian Junior Council, the Victorian Women's Council, the South East Conference (the forerunner of the NBL), the Australian club championships, the first international tournament …"

And Gaze said his mentor knew of Melbourne Tigers' latest success, the NBL championship won last week. "Betty told him and he was very pleased," Gaze said.

"She didn't tell him we lost game four, but she let him know we won game five and his expression of pleasure was recognisable."

So was Lindsay Gaze's when he talked about the win. He was not in Sydney last Friday because he had to coach the Tigers' under-20 boys, and he was able to see only three quarters on television before he had to drive to Waverley for their late game, listening intently for live crosses to the game on radio SEN as he drove.

"The game finished two minutes before we started. The players could not understand my euphoric appearance … it was a wonderful feeling."

Gaze was even more content when his boys won — they had been the underdogs.

■Ken Watson's funeral will be held next Thursday at Torquay.

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Ken Watson (The Basketballer Magazine/John Butcher)