Interview: "Now we play basketball like a team," says China coach Maher

Olympic dream goes on, while based on team basketball. Thomas Maher showed much confidence in his girls ahead of the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT).

"If we don't get injured, and we hold our mentality, we are very hopeful to put up good performance," the Chinese women's basketball team head coach told Xinhua here on Friday.

After suffering a 35-point loss to Japan in last year's Asian Championships final, China had to go through a much tougher OQT, featuring 12 teams, to fight for the last five spots for Rio Olympics.

"When we lost to Japan last year, a big factor is that Japan was a much better team. On that day, they played their best, and we played our worst, so it was a big margin," said Maher.

"We've been making progression. We learned a lot from that. The tournament gave us many lessons, and we can move forward with these lessons, so we are a far, far better team than 12 months ago," he added.

Teamwork was the every word that Maher emphasized on during the four-month training this year.

"We couldn't understand how to play like a team before, now we can play like a team. Defense is Ok, we are good, but we didn't play our offense like a team until now, so we are much, much better.

"I understand the quality of the team. Some teams have superstars, but other than superstars, we've got a lot of good players, world class players. We have a lot of players, and a lot of depth."

Maher linked his teamwork idea with 2015-16 NBA finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers.

"It looked like today's NBA finals, Golden State played like a team, Cleveland played many isolations. We don't have Lebron James, so we can't play like that, playing one on five all the time. We need to share the ball," he commented.

"Our training has been great. The team is finally coming together, understanding our style, understanding a lot better about what we want to do.

"Physically we are fit, and mentally we have been practicing a lot of mental skills. We've been working on it. Hopefully under pressure we will be able to handle any pressure."

The Chinese team will play against Australia, France and Canada in their last three warmup matches ahead of OQT. Maher hoped that the team can show their style in their final simulate exams.

"I want to see our style. I don't want to see that we achieve what we have been doing. We know that we've been doing well defensively. Offensively we have done enough practice to show that we can play together and nice team basketball. Even though it's a strong competition, I hope that the team can still show our style and show we can play team basketball."

Pressure was no doubt the biggest challenge that China, a brand new team after Asian Championships three years ago, needs to face in OQT.

"We set up scenarios in practice, which is a pressure situation. What you should do in this situation, what you should do with this clock, and et cetera. That's how you deal with it."

"It's four years old now, but we started it together new, without older players helping to teach newer players, virtually we have all new players. It takes a long time for the team to understand how to play basketball in general in their thinking."

China is placed in Group D along with Spain and Venezuela. Maher had a clear vision towards the tournament. He knew that compared with world No. 3 Spain, Venezuela is more of a team to beat.

"We have to beat Venezuela to make into the quarterfinals. If we beat Spain, then we will be group's No. 1, and play No. 2 team in the other team. If we lose to Spain, Spain will be No. 1 in the group, so we play No. 1 team in the other group, which will be Belarus or South Korea.

"If we can beat these teams, we can qualify (for Olympics) straight away. But if we can't, we have to compete in the semifinals and finals. See if we can win the quarterfinals. That's the way we have to do with it," said Maher.

The team has cut its roster to 12 players on Friday, with Ma Xueya and Qi Siyue absent from the visit to France.

"Ma Xueya is unlucky, because she is the player that we think can make a big time player. In her position, it's a very deep position. We have Gao Song, Huang Sijing and Sun Mengran.

"She has been unlucky because she's been doing very well, but we can't have four players in the same position. We are strong in that position, and I think that she will go in the future as an Olympic standard player.

"Qiu Siyue got injury problems, which is a big problem for her. She uses the brain to play, but we need a speedy team, so we take Li Shanshan because she is more speedy."

Veteran center Chen Nan's comeback gave mental boost for the team in preparation, and acted as a strong supplement in the post apart from Huang Hongpin.

"She has been trained to give us more dynamic minutes. She is a super dynamic player, and that's what we need. Huang Hongpin can carry a big load, but Chen Nan has a dynamic quality that we want in our team. Huang Hongpin is a super defender, we want Chen Nan to play not big minutes, but quality minutes."

China is scheduled to fly to France for last phase preparation on Sunday. In such a big stage as OQT, Maher was confident that the team is ready to become a more mature one.

"We haven't yet shown maturity under pressure, but we've been working really hard on it, and we continue to work hard on it. Before you can be mature, you need some immature moments that you don't want. Now we are more ready to be a more mature team," he said. Endit