Australia is so one-eyed about footy that we barely look beyond Redfern or Moorabbin when ranking our all-time greatest coaches, let alone the codes themselves.

But after racking up his seventh championship on Sunday in a career spanning 37 years and counting, it’s time to peer over our back fences and throw a bone to NBL icon Brian Goorjian.

Yes, basketball remains one of those second-tier sports in Australia that can barely be detected over the white noise of Gorden Tallis’ latest spat and Bombers members going feral on 3AW.

And yes, even despite another 90’s-esque boom, the NBL still struggles to stir the loins of hardcore footyheads because it’s not the NBA and it sorely lacks in big hits and huge torpies.

But even despite basketball’s modest standing in the national landscape, Goorjian has still built an indomitable case as Australia’s GOAT.

Already snugly in the tier of Australia’s caste system missing the benefit of the Sherrin uplift, Goorjian punches solidly alongside other eminent Aussie coaches like Ric Charlesworth, Ange Postecoglou, Harry Hopman and Guus Hiddink (naturalised under special dispensation for fleecing Uruguay and being coined ‘Aussie Guus’.)

But after another gong, it’s time his name was elevated alongside patron saints like Wayne Bennett and Kevin Sheedy simply because his numbers have grown too prominent to ignore.

Widely considered the godfather of modern Aussie basketball, no import from the United States has left more of an indelible mark on Australia other than Don Lane and diabetes.

After 873 games of top-flight coaching, the 72 year old has rung up seven championship rings with three different clubs over three separate decades, all at a barely-believable winning rate of 68.5 per cent.

This includes the 2025-26 NBL title won by his Sydney Kings on Sunday via a heart-stopping overtime triumph in the game five decider against the Adelaide 36ers.

But for all his imperious numbers, the California native’s legend extends well beyond numbers and hardware.

Put simply, Goorjian can graze with history’s GOATs by virtue of consistently producing the simplest of successful traits: wherever he goes, good things invariably happen.

In a career spanning eight different NBL clubs, the mastermind has failed to finish lower than 4th in every NBL season he’s coached since 1990, nor be eliminated earlier than the semi-final stage of the playoffs.

In footy terms, it’s a Craig Bellamy-style consistency that makes him the Geelong Cats of the NBL, a rot-resistant relentlessness that never quits regardless of club or era.

However, the pearl in Goorjian’s navel lies in cracking two of Aussie basketball’s most stubborn walnuts.

All lifetime fans of Aussie hoops remember when the Boomers and the Sydney Kings were unrivaled for delivering nothing to local basketball but shattered dreams and grand chokes.

Goorjian firstly resuscitated the underachieving Kings by delivering the franchise’s first title in 2003 - even further burying the club’s ’Violet Crumbles’ tag by extending this to a three-peat for good measure.

Then after a string of fourth-placed finishes made it feel like there was more chance of Luc Longley fitting in a Morris Minor than the Boomers ever winning an Olympic medal, Goorjian helmed the emotional breakthrough bronze for the Boomers at Tokyo 2020.

Add the fact he’s now back in the NBL winning titles after a 10 year hiatus in Asia, and it’s clear he’s got a fair idea how to get a tune out of a list.

Of course, nobody inside basketball needs convincing of his resume, with the seven time NBL coach of the year’s presence in the Aussie game as imposing as his gangly figure stalking the sideline hawking for calls.

And nobody in cricket needs convincing either — only because they think a coach is something drawn by horse — but it’s the footy codes where it’s an uphill task.

Years of cultural significance and sizzling tribalism has made these rusted-on cohorts stubbornly patch-protective of their version of Mount Rushmore, so asking them to undo years of bias to acknowledge a Yank basketball guy is like performing a reverse vasectomy on a T-Rex with a toothpick.

But even the most ardent one-track footy consumer cannot deny the basketball doyen’s parallels to the titans of the footy codes.

Not only has Goorjian been at the helm for Australian basketball’s touchpoint moments — and not only survived through multiple generations, but shaped them — the Kings boss also overtook Bennett in January to officially become Australia’s most ‘winningest’ coach, so now it’s a statistical case as well as just feelings.

It gives Goorjian’s profile the gravitational legacy of a Sheedy to go with the longevity of Bennett — and with the hairline to match.

Of course, many will argue that nobody cares about basketball, and that if he was so talented he should do it in the NBA.

But I don’t recall Wayne or Sheeds dominating in America either, do you?