Greg Gibson:
There’s no Substitution to Hard Work

Last year’s VTB United League newcomers Bisons are entering their second season with solid experience and new level of confidence.

Head coach Greg Gibson spoke with VTB-league.com and told us about how a team with limited budget could still be successful, about club’s off-season signings, about new all-small strategy and about his love for Finland.

Coach, what lessons did you learn during your first season in the League?

First of all we learned a lot. Being the new kids on the block in the VTB League last year we learned a lot of off the court things as well as on the court things. This year the club is trying to take a different approach to a number of things and an accurate travel schedule is one of them. On the court I feel that our style has to be a little bit different. We don’t have the budget that everybody else has. We are gonna be fast, we are gonna be dynamic. We don’t have size but we can be very quick and that’s one thing that we’ll carry over from last year.

How are the Bisons this season compared to last one?

We are deeper. We don’t have more money but we were able to lure in some quality Finnish players. We’ve got a deeper roster which will allow us to protect certain guys from time to time so that our players do not have to play so many minutes. I am very excited that we’ve got 12 - 13 - 14 guys that can contribute at any night and with the schedule that we have it takes a deeper roster. Obviously you can’t control injuries but hopefully we won’t have as many as we had last year because we really felt we could have made the playoffs had we been healthy. All I can tell you now is there’s no substitution to hard work and our goal is to be in the playoffs at the end of the season.

The Bisons changed half of the players on the roster. What can you tell us about the newcomers?

Well, I think they are all special in their own way and they all care about their teammates. Jacob Burtschi is a guy who played in Fraport last year that brings a lot of leadership to the team. He is not concerned about any of his statistics, he only wants to win and he really believes in good hard team-work. Martin Zeno is a guy that played at a very high level but only a handful of VTB league games coming off an injury the previous season. And we are looking forward to having him back at a 100%. Justin Jackson is new 4/5 position high-energy guy. So the guys that we brought in kind of fit that theme of playing up-tempo style.

One of the key players Matti Nuutinen has left the team. What can you say about his departure?

Matti is a guy that we’ve had since the very beginning of Bisons and it will be quite different not to have him next season. But he wanted to explore other options outside of Finland and he will play in Greece this year. He had a very good European Championship a few weeks ago and I am real happy for him to get this opportunity to go to Greece.

Finland’s national team again surprised us all advancing to the elimination round at EuroBasket 2015. What do you think about their performance?

I think they obviously made Finland proud once again. Coach Dettmann and his staff had done an unbelievable job of putting Finland on the map. I think for such a small country they are taking big strides to not only be competitive but to win big-time basketball. And I think last year’s Word Cup and this year’s European Championship show that and I think this is the situation where things are gonna get even better in the future for Finnish basketball as it got a lot of youngsters excited and hopefully this will pay off in the future.

Which national team players would you like to have on your team if you could sign them?

Obviously we would love to have national team players. Mikko Koivisto and Tuukka Kotti are two quality guys and great leaders and two great basketball players and we are very fortunate to have those. I’d love to have Salin, Murphy and Hoff and hopefully in the future we’ll have more resources to sign more national team players. At this stage we are still a very very young club and this is just our fifth year or existence and it just takes time to make people more aware of how good the VTB League really is.

How do you manage to keep afloat with the limited budget you have?

Well, it’s just a credit to our organisation. We come from a very small city here in Finland. The club - Ari Hannula and Aku Perho and the whole Bisons organisation has done just a remarkable job to get the sponsors that are needed and to get people throughout Finland excited about international basketball. And we are very proud that the smallest team in the VTB League can still be very competitive and win basketball games. I am confident that we have bigger things ahead of us.

Tell us about the process of selecting the players for your team.

I use a lot of connections around the world. Me and my assistant coaches go to Las Vegas every year to meet with several friends - several people that are very knowledgeable. We are not always perfect with our selections but we try to do the best that we can with what we have. The main thing is we get guys that are hungry and want to improve. And I keep telling my players that I just want them for one season and I want them to move on to bigger and better salaries they deserve.

You have an undersized roster. What are you planning to do about it?

It is not gonna be easy, but we are not a finesse team and we are not a slow team and the tempo is gonna be such were we are gonna pose problems for all our opponents with bigger, maybe slower players. We’ll have to guard, we’ll devise plans and maybe double teams in the post or maybe use different defensive schemes to try to offset the fact that we are smaller. And on the other end of the floor we wanna make it as difficult as possible for those same big players to have to guard us.

You’ve been in Finland for quite a while now. How do you like it there?

Well, I do love it here. Finland is very special to me because it’s a place where I got the opportunity to start my coaching career and I have a wonderful wife and kids here that are Finnish. I’ve always enjoyed being in opportunities that are like underdogs and especially here in Loima I saw a lot of potential and wanted to surround myself with people that had those same ideas.

I also like the people of Finland, who are very sincere, very honest and very direct. Once you become friends with a Finn, you become friends for life. I can tell you one thing I don’t like though is when the winter comes and it’s awfully dark here and I miss the sunlight.