No risk, no reward: Roth hails JackJumpers’ resolve

While their season was still alive, Scott Roth wasn’t about to publicly declare just how proud he was of his Tasmania JackJumpers. But after Thursday night’s Play-In Qualifier, it was clear this group might rank among the most satisfying teams he’s coached.

Roth has already taken the JackJumpers to a Championship Series in NBL22 and delivered the club its historic title in NBL24. Yet despite those achievements, his pride in this year’s team may be greater than ever.

The JackJumpers’ campaign ended with a loss to Melbourne United, but given the circumstances they faced, Roth could not help but admire the way his players fought.

"Obviously I'm disappointed that we lost, but we executed a game plan that we worked on for five days to perfection actually," Roth said.

"We said if we could be tied by the fourth quarter, we'd be in a spot where we could definitely try to win this game, so that's a great credit to our guys to execute what we were trying to do.

"We basically scrapped our playbook and everything that we've done for the last year to play this game in a different way, and they did a wonderful job of slowing it down and making them (Melbourne United) quite nervous.

"They expended a hell of a lot of energy to beat us."

Roth knows performances like that do not happen by accident.

Over the past five seasons, the JackJumpers have built a culture that allows them to withstand adversity, and the challenges they faced in the final month of the regular season would have broken many teams.

Instead, Tasmania stayed true to its identity and gave one final reminder of what has defined the club under Roth.

Will Magnay, Bryce Hamilton, Ben Ayre and Nick Stoddart were all ruled out for the season, while Sean Macdonald had already been sidelined. Even so, Tasmania won enough games to reach the Finals and continued to represent the state with pride.

Roth held back from expressing the full extent of his feelings while the team was still alive in the post-season. But after Thursday night’s courageous performance, he finally let it show.

Tasmania’s starters logged 184 of a possible 200 minutes, as Josh Bannan, Majok Deng, Tyger Campbell, Nick Marshall and David Johnson carried the load.

"This has probably been the most rewarding year of my career, because when you build something from scratch and you have these foundational piece of your culture that everyone talks about throughout Australia, it's good when you're winning," Roth said.

"But it's actually built for when you're losing and most teams can't sustain what we went through, and the fact we doubled down when it got really tough for us, I can't be more proud of our players and coaches.

"That was where my reward came and this is better than a championship in a lot of different ways for me just seeing the grind that took place to really just suck it up and do what we had to do to get this chance to be in the finals, and chance to play this game.

"Personally for me, it's extremely rewarding of seeing what happened and that's including our front office and everyone at the JackJumpers.

"It's always nice when it's good for you, but when it's bad it actually shows who you are at the end of the day and when we stuck our head up, and we should be quite proud of what we did."

Roth also addressed speculation around his coaching future.

“I don't know why, because I am a crappy coach at the end of the day and it amazes me a tad, but you know, every year I've gotten tremendous offers to go some other places,” he said.

“I have another year in my contract and I'll be back to open up that high performance centre in Tasmania and the money can wait to go chase that. I can do that anytime I want to. But I plan on being back.

“Timing is everything in your life and I hit the jackpot when I got to Tasmania.”