Basketball On The Internet.

FOR a long time it's been my observation that in team sports, teams steadily will take on the personality traits of their coach.

I don't just mean the obvious, as in the coach's preferred game-style or his/her strategies and philosophies, which are a given.

But show me a showman and I'll show you a showtime team.

Show me a conservative and I'll show you a risk-free team.

I'll throw you some random examples, which, by necessity, admittedly are somewhat Adelaide-centric.

But take the footy.

Malcolm Blight, full of flair and charisma, coached the Crows and we saw teams with flair and imagination.

Gary Ayres takes the role and the Crows become dour and defensive.

Ken Cole coaches the 36ers and he is a showman. Take a look at his 1985-86 Adelaide team and you see an extroverted show on-court every night.

Phil Smyth is laid back and relaxed, clearly having fun and his team is relaxed, its on-court joy constantly evident.

Brian Goorjian is prowling the sideline, meticulous in his approach and what were his teams like at paying attention to detail?

(By the same token, when he was uptight in consecutive championship losses to the 36ers, so were his teams.

Contrast that with his Kings championship teams - far more relaxed and confident - how did those teams perform?)

Maybe it isn't such an insightful observation really because it virtually is inevitable that a team will reflect its coach in almost every way.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I have severe and sincere reservations about Carrie Graf's ability to coach the Australian Opals.

Don't let's confuse what I just wrote.

I have no doubts or reservations about Graf's coaching ability. Her WNBL record is impeccable and she also coached in the WNBA, though, in truth, I believe coaching there is more showmanship than substance.

But Graf the strutting, confident WNBL coach has been nothing like Graf the Opals boss.

The job she coveted for so long has been a bigger challenge than I think she expected and so has dealing with the expectation.

When you are going to your first World Championship as coach and defending the title, that's a big ask, and so is improving on an Olympic Silver Medal.

Don't let's confuse this article with my piece "Aussies Stand tall at Olympics'' either, by the way.

This is about how coaching cost the Opals from achieving their goal, not about whether a Bronze is something 210 other nations are left behind to covet.

Let's rewind to the Worlds and, understandably, Graffy wanted to stamp her own imprimatur on the team in 2010.

Hence Jenni Screen and Laura Hodges (nee Summerton), perceived by some as "Jan Stirling players'' from the previous coach's era, did not get a look in.

Dress it up anyway you like, that was how it looked and instead, Graffy took a top-heavy team which duly slumped from World Champion to fifth, our worst international result since we failed to qualify for Barcelona in 1992.

Credit her with learning from her mistakes and for London she not only reinstated Screen and Hodges, but Screen was elevated to starter and a key contributor.

But after the World Championship disappointment, Graf always appeared to be feeling the external pressure and expectation.

From what we saw, for many of her time-outs she appeared a little flustered, anxious and dishing information overload. Confusing?

Guess how the Opals looked on-court?

If anything, she over-coached and in so doing, inhibited many of her charges.

Plus for mine, some of the Opals' strategies were flawed.

Let's look at two.

Lauren Jackson has universally been recognised and feted as the best women's basketball player in the world.

She is an offensive force of nature.

Liz Cambage is the future-come-early, impossibly gifted with size and athleticism but with big-match maturity still catching up.

For one, how is it even conceivable that Jackson had just 85 field goal attemps in eight Olympic matches?

My God, that stat alone is damning and absurd.

Your best shooter, your most prolific scorer - the most prolific scorer in Olympic women's basketball history, for crying out loud - is getting 10.6 shot attempts per game?

Patty Mills took 116 shots IN SIX GAMES for the Boomers, yet Jackson averages less than 11 shots per game? Crazy.

(OK, yes, shots she was fouled on do not factor into Shot Attempts, just as Free Throw Attempts do not factor in which of them were for shooting fouls and which were for the bonus situation. For the record then, Lozza shot 46, just under six per game.)

So if she's shooting close to 50 per cent - which she did - and she is more accurate from the line than not, she should score about 15-16 points per game, right?

Is that what we want from our greatest offensive talent?

She averaged 15.9 so I wonder if the offence had maybe given her 20 shots per outing, what she might have delivered and where we may have finished.

Don't tell me we have to get used to being less-Lozza dependent because this is an Olympic Games and she is there and she is right in her prime.

Graffy has coached her for a big chunk of her career so that return was disappointing.

Talk about your structure not drawing the maximum from your greatest attribute.

Which brings us to Lizzie.

She is a star-in-making, a work-in-progress and a target for our offence.

But our interior passing to her consistently was just awful. The Opals were third behind Canada and Angola for turnovers and I still shudder seeing in my mind's eye Jenna O'Hea, Belinda Snell, Suzy Batkovic, Rachel Jarry, Jenni Screen forcing passes that just weren't there.

In Beijing, Australia was 12th in turnovers.

We rarely adjusted our strategy in London and the team was tentative, uncertain and out-of-sorts for much of the tournament.

And they STILL won Bronze.

I felt all along Graffy was so desperate for success, especially after the Worlds, that she tried to effect or impact on everything.

Hence the "over-coaching'' or just plain bad coaching.

After the starters got the game going for about the first five minutes - if that - in came the subs.

And so it continued, often within two minutes, or even less.

Other than the starters at tip-off, the fives on-court rarely had an opportunity to get a rhythm going which, I submit, is why so very many people have observed: "They never really looked in sync, did they?''

No, they never really did, with the possible exception of the first half against the USA. And momentum is such a huge component of success in basketball.

Subbing in three players at a time?

How will that sustain momentum?

As the tournament wore on, Jenna O'Hea - admittedly one of my favorite players - looked like she was starting to second-guess herself offensively, giving up shots she normally would take.

In the overtime loss to France, why Graffy chose to sit her in the extension as the French bolted away shall remain one of the Games' great mysteries.

Batkovic, in her third Olympics, at least was allowed to be a contributor while Hodges, in her third, was not.

Truthfully, if you're picking a player for her third Games, surely it is to use her? Or don't select her and take a youngster.

It isn't rocket science.

Rachel Jarry was a pleasant surprise and Sam Richards had some good moments too.

But either Graf has to take a chill pill and enjoy the experience more, or Basketball Australia has to look at who is next in line with a game-plan and the persona to give the Opals the freedom to succeed.