Plumb is back — and looking to defend NBLC title

Doug Plumb will return as head coach for the 2023 season, the London Lightning announced Wednesday. Plumb led the Bolts to a 20-4 regular season record last year — and then an NBLC championship last spring.

(Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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When we last saw Doug Plumb, the beaming head coach was sitting at the postgame press conference, only minutes after the London Lightning had finished an NBL Canada Finals sweep of the KW Titans in June.

With champagne flowing in the locker room behind him, Plumb fielded one final question from media members: “Do you run it back-to-back? What’s going to happen next year? Are you back with the London Lightning?”

Plumb turned off-camera to Lightning GM Mark Frijia.

“Mark?”

“F*** yeah!”

“We’re back, baby.”

On Wednesday, the Lighting made it official – Plumb will return in 2023 as head coach for the defending NBLC champions.

Plumb says the decision to return to the Forest City was an easy one – despite his strong personal and professional ties to the West Coast.

“Any time you win a championship, it’s hard as a competitor not to want to run it back. What we had last year was lightning in a bottle, to be able to go back-to-back is something you cannot say ‘no’ to,” said Plumb, who owns and operates GRIT, an athletic skills development and training company, in BC.

“From an organizational standpoint, from a competitor standpoint, you want to be at the top every year. When you have the infrastructure Vito (Frijia, Lightning owner) and Mark provide, plus the support of the community, it makes it a no-brainer that everyone should expect to be at the top of the league every year.”

Plumb started his coaching career as an assistant and then head coach with the St. John’s Edge. He joined the Lightning as an assistant in 2016-17 before taking over the clipboard in 2019-20. That season, he led the Lightning to a 15-8 record, topping the central division before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the season’s cancellation.

Coming into 2022, Plumb knew what the team he and his GM built could do. It was a talented roster, deepest in the league, running eight or nine players in the best of times. After rocketing off to an 11-0 start, the team finished 20-4 in the regular season (tops in the league) and 6-0 in the playoffs, with a perfect home record (12-0, 4-0) in both the regular and postseason.

But those numbers, as great as they were, represent the past, Plumb stressed. His focus is now on the season ahead.

“For me, personally, as a young coach, I want to show that we didn’t just get lucky,” he said. “As a competitor, you’re only as good as your last game. We won; it was great; it’s something I will always cherish. But at the same time, you want to show year in year out, day after day, that you can sustain it. Anyone can get lucky for a one-time shot, but can you sustain that excellence? That’s the great separator in pro sports.”

Last season, a fifth NBL Canada title cemented the Lightning as the premiere franchise in the league. The only remaining member of the league’s Original Seven, London is now home to more than half of the nine NBL Canada titles handed out in the league’s 10-season history.

A championship this year would be the third time in franchise history that the team won back-to-back titles (2011-12 & 2012-13 and 2016-17 & 2017-18).

“It’s rare at the pro level to be able to create something where you are consistently at the top of the pack,” Plumb said. “You see that at American universities. Or look at something like the (San Antonio) Spurs organization and the consistent excellence they’ve been able to establish in the league. As a coach, that is something you want to prove you can accomplish.”

(Photo: Matt Hiscox Photography).

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In 2023, the Lightning tip off the new season at home against the Sudbury Five on Jan. 19. The unbalanced regular season schedule runs through May 3 with London playing 30 games, while Sudbury and Windsor play 33 and 27, respectively. KW will play 24 games as it enters the schedule on Feb. 20.

Despite teams playing a different number of total games, London will play KW, Sudbury, and Windsor seven times each.

“This season will be a marathon and a sprint at the same time,” Plumb said of the schedule that sees London play six more regular season games than last year. “The unbalanced schedule is going to be a challenge. But that’s where the league is at. We took a massive hit from COVID. It is what it is. Now, we have to do what we have to do as a league.

“In the end, the schedule doesn’t really matter. We’ll just play whoever the opponent is in front of us.”

Plumb knows the level of competition will be outstanding, if only because of the level of coaching among the four NBL Canada teams. In addition to Plumb, the league boasts veteran Bill Jones in Windsor, Logan Stutz in Sudbury, and newcomer Cliff Clinkscales in KW.

“Any time you have quality people in the mix, even if it’s low numbers, it’s good,” Plumb said. “We might be a small league, but that’s a mighty lineup of coaches. The competition is going to be incredible.”

Last year, the Lightning’s wire-to-wire run had its tangles along the way. Injuries, incidents, and lots of attitude frayed knees and nerves to varying degrees all year. Perhaps unappreciated from the outside was the psychological work the coach needed to do beyond the X’s and O’s.

This team had its share of issues, from personality clashes, to questions about effort, to leadership gaps. There were games when the group looked less like a team and more an assemblage of incredible, if individual, talent.

The 34-year-old Plumb has been a coach for six years, making him a “young veteran” of sorts. He learned a lot from those experiences last season and will carry those lessons forward into 2023.

“From a demeanor standpoint, I become a little bit more comfortable with myself as a coach every year. I don’t feel I have to put on a persona,” Plumb explained. “I have learned that people don’t care about how much you know, people care about how much you care.

“That’s true in pro basketball, too. Everyone has their own stuff going on. As the season goes on, there will be ebbs and flows. But if your players feel like you are authentic with them, that your relationship is about more than a paycheck or a win, that you actually care about them and their development, that will garner loyalty at the end of the day.”

While he brings new perspective into the new season, don’t expect total Zen mastery during the flow of the game. Plumb is one of the fiercest competitors in the league, so expect the same sideline fire from a head coach who led the league last season in technical fouls.

“Excellence is demanded in the moment. You have to do what you have to do,” he said. “But from a day-to-day standpoint, things won’t always go the way you want them to go. You need to give a little more grace and get into solution mode rather than killing people in the moment.”