Nick Marvin and Kevin Lisch exist in a world that could be a den of temptation if not for their faith keeping them centred. The values inherent in their faith even helped save the club from extinction. Anthony Barich reports.
The once financially-stricken Perth Wildcats have gone from being on the brink of folding to being a national powerhouse under the guidance of Catholic chief executive Nick Marvin, who has worked to instil values in the team that are also inherent in his faith.
Though the Wildcats are the most successful sporting club in WA with four national championships and 20 consecutive finals appearances over the past 25 years to their credit, “something was fundamentally wrong” Marvin said.
For over a decade the club had failed to win a championship.
Indian-born Marvin, a parishioner of Our Lady Queen of Peace in Willagee, was recruited to the Wildcats in 2006 when American-born businessman Jack Bendat bought the club. Marvin had previously been a consultant advising companies losing money, and he arrived at the club with the National Basketball League also on the way down the gurgler.
Months after arriving he concluded that, if it were any other commercial enterprise, the smart option would be to shut the club down. Among a raft of big problems was that the club was burning through money on fancy players who were not producing results.
Over the next two years the National Basketball League progressively struggled and last year was on the verge of collapse, together with the Wildcats.
But Marvin and Bendat decided to fight. Collaborating with other clubs, they reformed the League. While the NBL effectively folded at the end of 2008, a new-look NBL re-emerged in March 2009 minus a team from Sydney or Melbourne. Of all the teams in the NBL, the Perth Wildcats underwent the greatest transformation.
Under Marvin’s guidance, and among other measures, the club slashed $1.5 million worth of staff. The Wildcats hired a new coach, Rob Beveridge, and developed “a new matrix” of character by developing a new culture. At the level of individuals the club has improved, Marvin says.
“That’s the focus,” Marvin said at the Disciples of Jesus event in November. “It’s just a bonus that they sat on top of the ladder for a time this season and have sold out their games for the past two and a half years.”
This year, in an unprecedented move, he made players sign contracts that included a zero-tolerance policy in regards to off-field shenanigans – including in the off-season – in order to address the same kinds of issues that have plagued other elite competitions like the AFL, NRL and cricket.
Players are required to participate in 350 hours of community service as opposed to the 150 that’s standard across the league, including work with schools, hospitals, juvenile detention centres and rural communities.
The Wildcats also partnered with the WA Government to promote its Alcohol: Think again initiative to fight binge drinking among youth, because getting drunk is not, Marvin says, a prerequisite to enjoying life. Such measures fall under under Marvin’s philosophy that “we exist to inspire and entertain through excellence”.
Under the new approach, winning was no longer the only priority – again, unprecedented for a professional sporting club where sponsorships worth millions of dollars are at stake.
Some players didn’t like it. Much to the chagrin of parochial basketball fans who love supporting West Australians, Marvin terminated the contracts of two local boys because they would not agree to the community service.
“I copped flack for it, but I stood by my decision,” Marvin said at a Disciples of Jesus youth event called Conquest in Osborne Park on November 25.
Kendal ‘Tiny’ Pinder excepted, basketballers in Australia are not under the microscope as much as footballers for their extra-curricular activities, but the pressures are just the same, Marvin says.
“You’re always up on a pedestal during or off-season,” he said.
“It’s not easy to be role models. Sportsmen go through different sorts of ups and downs than others, and drinking helps sometimes. They must resist the temptation.”
It’s apparent, he says, in the way the Wildcats now play – for others rather than for themselves.
“If you have the perspective to look out for others, it reflects on the court,” he says.
Kevin Lisch, a US import who grew up in Belleville, Illinois, is an example of Marvin’s new policy of recruiting exceptional players who share the club’s vision of values-based workers rather than millionaire superstars who go off the rails.
Lisch earned his way up the basketball food chain with a scholarship to the Jesuit St Louis University studying Business Administration before Marvin nabbed him and found him City Beach parish to help him get settled in Perth.
“At university, service to others took a back seat to winning,” Lisch says.
He survived university relatively unscathed because, he says, he was brought up in the faith in a family where basketball was a recreation, not an obsession; his friends respected his values; and regular prayer. His father, an NFL quarterback who played college football with the legendary Joe Montana, was also a positive role model for him, he says.
While he admits to “white-line fever” – becoming aggressive on the court to win – once he steps over the line he has to let it go; not let it out at the pub.
“It takes discipline to let it go. I still struggle with it,” he says. “At college, there were lots of temptations. After games guys go out and it’s all about how many beers and women you score.
“It comes down to praying a lot about every little decision you make day to day which forms the way your life pans out. There’s always time in the day to fit in a prayer life.”
The key to maintaining a prayer life amidst such a lifestyle, he says, is to stick to a routine and never put things off – especially prayer. Five or ten minutes in the morning, again before going to bed … even a silent moment alone to calm down after practice to let God speak helps centre oneself, he says.
With a new culture that defies that of many sporting clubs around the globe, the Wildcats now have a unique reputation. Some players have decided not to come to the club because of this policy. But Marvin doesn’t care.
“The worst thing you can do for an athlete is give him spare time,” Marvin says. He all but forces players to take up training and jobs outside of basketball so they have transferable skills after their sporting careers end, usually around age 35; sooner if they have a bad injury and a club considers them a liability.
“There’s resistance to that, but that’s a choice they need to make,” he says. “I’m obsessive about giving players tools for life after sport.”
If asked or challenged, he explains his faith in “secular terms” in the basketball world as one of the key tools he uses to make key decisions in his life.
To Marvin, holiness comes in exercising integrity in the decisions made in everyday life by turning to one’s faith for wisdom.
One of his first policies was to forbid swearing in his office.
When he arrived at the Wildcats, the pervasive “macho culture” was rife. As far as Marvin is concerned, swearing is a sign of weakness.
“Real men are in control of their faculties,” he says. While his nine to five job “forming 12 honourable men” is important, his family is his top priority. When he pulls into his driveway at 5pm, the next two hours are ‘peak hour time’ when he must help his wife feed, shower and put to bed four children.
“The path of least resistance is to watch TV, and sometimes it’s tough, but I often say a prayer as I pull into the driveway that I give my best in those two hours when those five souls need me the most,” he says.