Lindsay Gaze

Sort Order HTML <p>The Australian team was enjoying a very good tournament in the Olympic Qualification Tournament for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. The tournament was being held in the Japanese city of Yokohama. The Australians had won three of their first four games and were confident of defeating Taiwan in their fifth game. But Taiwan had other ideas. Taiwan tied the game at 62 all with twenty seconds remaining in the game. The Australian team point guard Lindsay Gaze was not happy. The refereeing had been very inconsistent and frustrating. But now was the time to play. Lindsay had possession of the ball and dribbled it around playing “keeping off” and working for the last shot of the game. “We win or it’s a draw,” thought Lindsay. He was half thinking about what the referees might call but that was out of his hands. Lindsay takes up the story, “As the clock wound down I decided to go it alone realising the worst that could happen was a tie, but after finding my way through some traffic pulled up for a jump shot near the baseline with four seconds left on the clock and good fortune allowed the ball to drop into the basket.” Australia had won! The players raced on the court and chaired Gaze off on their shoulders. Team-mate Michael Ah Matt was so enthusiastic that he ran into Lindsay’s elbow and ended up with four stitches in his head. Lindsay recalls, “I don’t remember collecting anyone with my elbow after the game.” But Lindsay had done what he had always been able to do. Make the big play when the game was on the line!</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay John Casson Gaze was born in Adelaide on August 16, 1936.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay was the youngest of three sons and his family moved to Melbourne when he was a boy. </p>

Sort Order HTML <p> “I was bloody hopeless at sport. I was clearly the most uncoordinated, awkward and untalented in the family. But I always wanted to play,” he recalls.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay’s sporting career started in Australian Rules where he played for Prahran in the Victorian Football Association (AFA).</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>He was named as a reserve in an amateur exhibition Australian Rules match at the 1956 Olympic Games. Introduced to basketball by his brother Barry in 1951 it was not long before long Lindsay was playing for the Melbourne Church Team under the guidance of Ken Watson the 1956 Australian Olympic Coach.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay was drawn between football and basketball but when he was appointed Stadium Manager for the Victorian Basketball Association (VBA) in 1958 his decision was made for him.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay was selected on the Australian Olympic Men’s Basketball Team for the 1960 Rome Olympics. The team was the first Australian Men’s National Basketball team to play overseas in a FIBA event. The Australian Team did not get past the Qualification Tournament in Bologna, Italy. However the experience of those games and other games on the way to the Olympics had a profound influence on Lindsay and his team-mates.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay was selected to play on the Australian Team for the 1962 World Championships in the Philippines but a political dispute (whereby the Philippines Government refused visas for several communist countries) prevented the tournament being officially recognised. An Invitation Tournament was arranged between the countries that were there (including the USA) and Lindsay and Bill Wyatt were named to the All Star Team despite the fact that Australia did not win a game.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>The 1964 Tokyo Olympics were a defining moment in Lindsay’s basketball career (as well as for basketball as a game in Australia) as the Australian Team surprised everyone by gaining second place in the Yokohama Olympic Qualification Tournament where they won all their games bar one before proceeding to the Olympic Finals in Tokyo. The Australians went on to defeat Peru, Korea, Japan, and Mexico to finish 9th in the 1960 Olympic Games.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>The results in Tokyo and the media coverage put the Australian Basketball Team and players such as Lindsay, Bill Wyatt, Michael AhMatt and John Heard and others on the Australian sporting map. </p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay was now enjoying basketball celebrity status in Australian Club basketball with the mighty Melbourne Church Basketball Team. Lindsay’s skill, tenacity, leadership, and all-round ability on offense and defence made him one of the nation’s premier players. His high stepping run, outstanding balance and fundamentals coupled with a reliable shot backed by his leadership made him in his time one of the mainstays of the Australian Men’s Team. His outstanding knowledge of the game in some ways set him apart from his fellow players as he played “like a coach” and led from the front. He could often be seen “coaching” the team while he was a player.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Australia did not participate in the 1966 World Championships in Brazil because of the Australian Basketball Union’s lack of funds. In 1968 an under-prepared Australian Team that included Lindsay travelled to Mexico for the 1968 Olympic Games. The Australian Team had poor results which were blamed on the poor preparation, a divided team, Montezuma’s revenge (poor water and food) and bad luck in some games. The Aussies did not win a game. “Monterrey is one of those places to which I have no great desire to return,” said Lindsay in Brett Harris’s book “Inside the NBL”. “The pre-Olympic Tournament bordered on farcical as the food and the living conditions fell well below international standards,” recalls Lindsay.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay was selected on the Australian Men’s Basketball Team for the 1970 World Championships in Yugoslavia where the team won only one game and that was against Egypt. This tournament saw the end of Lindsay’s international playing career though he continued to play with Melbourne Church in the South East Conference and the VBA. His interest in basketball was now changing to coaching. He was assisting Ken Watson with the senior team as well as coaching Club juniors. </p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Since he was 21 years of age Lindsay had been the Manager of Albert Park Basketball Stadium so basketball was his livelihood, passion and all consuming life-style. Many basketball fans were very familiar with the small cottage next to the basketball stadium as “where Lindsay and his family live”. He literally lived on a basketball court as well as working in one and playing on one.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay’s basketball career did not miss a beat as he was appointed Coach of the Australian 1972 Olympic Men’s Basketball Team shortly after he retired from international basketball as a player.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>His selection as the 1972 Olympic Coach was to continue his unparalleled run as an Olympic participant. The run had taken him through the 1960, 1964 and 1968 Olympics as a player and the 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games as a Coach for his country. In doing so he established the Gaze legend which was to be enhanced and continued by his son Andrew who played in the 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics and was the Australian Olympic Flag Bearer at the Opening Ceremony in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Under Lindsay’s guidance and leadership as the Coach, the Australian Men’s Basketball Team travelled the world and established a reputation as a top ten and then a top seven team with the best ever Australian result for a Men’s World Championship in Columbia in 1982 when the Australians finished 5th.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay continued coaching the Melbourne Tigers (previously Melbourne Church) through the nineteen seventies and eighties. Highlights were the Tigers winning their first National Basketball League (NBL) Championship in 1993 and then again in 1997. He was named as the NBL Coach of the Year in 1989, 1997 and 1999. Lindsay retired from coaching the Tigers in 2005 after an outstanding career as a player and coach over a period of some 50 years. In the NBL he had coached for 22 seasons, in 689 games and had 363 wins. He continues to coach juniors for the Tigers Club.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay Gaze was awarded the Coach of the Year in 1980 by Sport Australia, and was inducted into the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame as a Coach when the Hall of Fame was established in 2004. He was awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to basketball, and was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1989. He was a member of the FIBA Technical Commission (now retired) and was honoured with the Radomir Sharper award for services to officiating and basketball rules.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>Lindsay Gaze is synonymous with men’s basketball in Australia. His contributions to the game as a player, coach and administrator have been immense. Basketball in Australia will always be in his debt.</p>

Sort Order HTML <p>In 2010 Lindsay Gaze was named as a Legend by the Basketball Australia Hall of Fame and was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame as a Coach.</p>