FIBA advisor says preparation is key

FOSHAN – Take it from FIBA technical advisor and instructor Nelson Isley who has traveled to over 130 countries as a “missionary of basketball.” A national team that comes poorly prepared for the FIBA World Cup will end up biting the dust, he said.

Isley, 71, was a basketball star once upon a time. As a high school senior in 1966, the 6-4 guard averaged over 35 points. He had at least 80 college scholarship offers and chose to enroll at North Carolina State where his boyhood pal Pete Maravich’s father Press was the coach. Isley played three years with the Wolfpack then transferred to Louisiana State University where he earned a degree in history and physical education.

Isley was picked by the Buffalo Braves in the 1971 NBA draft, didn’t make the grade and played as an import in Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Portugal until deciding to hang up his sneakers in 1979 to pursue a career in foreign service. He was an oral examination short of a State Department job when a hiring freeze in Washington, D. C. opened an unlikely opportunity to coach in Peru. What was supposed to be an 18-month stay turned out to be a 21-year assignment where Isley conducted basketball clinics in Peruvian jungles, remote towns and terrorist bastions under government protection.

In 2000, FIBA recognized Isley’s ability to adapt to different cultures and took him in as a coaching instructor. Isley, who speaks Spanish and Portuguese, did clinics everywhere and wound up in Mozambique where he led the national women’s team to a silver medal finish at the FIBA African Championships in 2003. 

“When I was offered to coach Mozambique, I told the federation if I couldn’t be given six months to prepare for the championships, forget it,” he said. “That’s at least how long it takes to prepare for a major competition. They gave me six months and with FIBA’s support, we had the resources to pay for uniforms, food for the players and a bus to take the players from home to practice and back. I set up 20 international games to prepare the team. We went to different countries and in our first trip, we lost all our games but we got better game after game, losing by 40 in our first game then only by six to Brazil in our last. When we got to the African tournament, our players had the confidence to compete. I told them to go out there and battle, to give their best. They were prepared to win. In the final, our best player Clarisse Machanguana fouled out after scoring 21 points and we lost to Nigeria, 69-63. It was Mozambique’s best finish in 17 years.”

Isley said it’s no secret that preparation is key and cited the Philippines’ dismal performance in the ongoing FIBA World Cup. “You can’t prepare for the World Cup with just a handful of warm-up games,” he said.