COACH
Bob Turner
From the time he arrived at Shoalhaven on the NSW South Coast in 1976, Robert ‘Bob’ Turner has had a profound impact on basketball in New South Wales and Australia.
Bob was appointed NSW Director of Coaching in 1978, the very first to hold that position, and only the second full-time employee of BNSW. He helped grow the game across the length and breadth of the state, and in 1979 at just 25 years of age, Bob became player-coach for the Newcastle Falcons in the inaugural season of the NBL. He was the full-time coach of the Falcons in 1981 and was named NBL Coach of the Year that season.
That was just the start of an exceptional coaching career which saw the man with the ever-present toothy grin turn the Canberra Cannons into a mini-dynasty with back-to-back NBL championships and sellout crowds in the mid-1980s. To date Bob remains the youngest coach in history to win an NBL Championship. He then made his game-changing move to the Sydney Kings in 1989.
A man for whom the term ‘promoter-coach’ was coined, Turner’s ability to both sell the game and coach a team to success saw basketball in Sydney explode to almost-unthinkable levels of popularity. Forming a legendary troika with Hall of Famers Lorraine Landon and Mike Wrublewski, Bob built on the foundations of the club that grew to become an iconic franchise in Australian sport.
Bob would lead the Kings to the playoffs on four occasions before his retirement from coaching after the 1995 season, but his work with basketball in Sydney continued beyond his promoter-coach days. He stayed involved with a role in two Kings ownership groups – first in 1999, and then in 2010 to help rebuild the club with whom he is so intimately linked. Bob was honoured by the NBL in 1999 as one of their most prestigious Hall of Fame inductees.
His company Sportsline organised the ground-breaking tours of Australia by the Soviet Union in 1987 and 1988. These tours saw major venues sold out for the first time in Australia’s history, including the Sydney Entertainment Centre, and laid solid foundations for the international progression of the Boomers.
Bob moved to Basketball Australia in 1996, where he continued to promote extensive tours for the Boomers, Opals, and Rollers in the lead-up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Paralympics.
Bob Turner has made a unique contribution to help raise the profile of basketball in Australia, and his elevation to the BNSW Hall of Fame acknowledges his outstanding work in this state for more than 40 years.
Credit: Matt McQuade
Basketball NSW Hall of Fame Dinner
Date: Saturday, November 25th, Novotel Northbeach Wollongong
Time: 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start
Dress: Cocktail
Tickets: CLICK HERE to Purchase. Tickets are from $165 per person or $1550 per table of ten. Includes a three-course dinner, a 3-hour beverage package and a commemorative HoF booklet.