Indigenous Round in the NBL got underway with a Cairns Taipans win, with significant Chris Goulding, Shea Ili, Brad Newley and Cam Gliddon milestones to come, and with huge matchups and more Brisbane Bullets coaching drama, there’s plenty going on.
Round 11 in the NBL began on Wednesday night with the Cairns Taipans too good for a Brisbane Bullets team dealing with plenty. The Snakes won 85-76 to improve to 9-5 with Brisbane playing under a third coach in as many weeks and one import coming in, and another unable to play.
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The massive round of NBL action has no letup with the fourth and final Throwdown of the season on Thursday night at John Cain Arena between a desperate Melbourne United and a firing South East Melbourne Phoenix.
There’s then three lots of double-headers to look forward to beginning on Friday with the Illawarra Hawks hosting the Sydney Kings and then the Perth Wildcats at home to the New Zealand Breakers.
There’s two more matches to come on Saturday with a battle over a top four spot between the Tasmania JackJumpers and Cairns Taipans before two teams desperate for a win clash, the Adelaide 36ers and Brisbane Bullets.
That leads into Sunday with two games in Victoria with the South East Melbourne Phoenix playing the Sydney Kings in Gippsland in a battle of top three teams before Melbourne United plays host to the Illawarra Hawks.
Round 11 continues with the Adelaide 36ers hosting the Tasmania JackJumpers on Monday and then the Cairns Taipans at home to the Perth Wildcats on Tuesday.
Add in Melbourne United trio Chris Goulding (400), Brad Newley (300) and Shea Ili (200) bringing up significant milestones and Cam Gliddon to play his 300th in his hometown and there’s plenty to look out for this round.
BULLETS COACHING MERRY-GO-ROUND CONTINUES
What is happening with the Brisbane Bullets coaching situation is now anyone’s guess, but their second interim coach Greg Vanderjagt was at least encouraged by his team’s performance in Cairns on Wednesday night.
It didn’t really come as any great surprise when the Bullets did part ways with James Duncan after a rough start to the season, it was more the timing of the decision just as the team was preparing for a trip to New Zealand back at the end of November.
Things have just got bizarre since. Initially general manager of basketball, and Australian basketball legend, Sam Mackinnon was appointed interim head coach and the team was responding well.
Despite the personnel challenges with injuries to Tanner Krebs, Tyrell Harrison, Kody Stattmann, Aron Baynes and the wait to replace import Devondrick Walker, you could clearly tell Nathan Sobey, Jason Cadee, Gorjok Gak, DJ Mitchell and co were responding well to Mackinnon.
Taipans hold off Brisbane in QLD battle | 01:11
What his four games in charge also did was light a fire under Mackinnon that he wanted the head coaching job for the rest of the season, and perhaps beyond.
He made that clear following Saturday night’s loss to Melbourne United. So what happened next? The Bullets replaced him leading into Wednesday night’s game in Cairns.
More accurately, Mackinnon was told by management that he could only continue coaching if he gave up his GM role and you can’t blame him for choosing the security of having a full-time job.
If reports are to be believed, what happened next was even more peculiar. Assistant coach Greg Vanderjagt was appointed the next interim coach and that announcement was made public before he was even told.
There’s no reason to suggest Vanderjagt can’t do a good job on the back of building his coaching credentials throughout Queensland after a strong 243-game NBL playing career with Gold Coast and Townsville.
However, the whole situation just feels bizarre and whether it’s the ownership group including NBA stars and entrepreneurs or chief executive Peter McLennan making these calls, it just doesn’t look good.
It appears the Bullets are still on the hunt for a new coach to bring in for the rest of the season. With only 14 games to go, to bring in somebody new to the club and league feels like a monumental mistake.
Trying to learn the league, your players and get things in place in the middle of a season just feels unrealistic.
What the Bullets do have working for them is talent and experience. New import Andrew White III showed good signs against Cairns hitting three triples. They are still led by Sobey, Baynes and Cadee, and Mitchell, Gak and Stattmann are emerging.
After Wednesday’s nine-point loss in Cairns, Vanderjagt got some things off his chest.
“From a club and team perspective, what’s happened has happened,” Vanderjagt said.
“All I want to talk about is the playing group and that’s the staff’s concern. My concern is for Sobes and the rest of the group about their welfare and well-being.
“The distractions are frustrating for the group, there’s no doubt about that, and they’ve been through a lot over the course of the season, and the last couple of years. I’m going back to when I first became involved in this thing in 2021 with the COVID season and delays to last season.
“The playing group has been through a lot and the club has made some decisions over the past couple of weeks that the club is entitled to make. What we need to do moving forward is compete and play for each other like this group did tonight.”
Moving forward, Vanderjagt hopes the direction the club is heading starts to become clearer, but ultimately those are decisions all above his head.
“We need to find some consistency in terms of what we do off the court as an organisation, and there will be a lot of questions about what’s happened,” Vanderjagt said.
“But right now, they are questions for our CEO and the ownership group. They are managing the situation as it keeps unfolding and from what I understand there are things in process.
“I don’t know when those things are going to come to a close and a decision is going to be made, that’s a question for our CEO.
“My focus is on the playing group and getting this group ready to compete in Adelaide on Saturday against a really good basketball team.”
KINGS NEED TO STOP ‘SUCKING’ IN FOURTH QUARTERS
The frustrations of Sydney Kings championship winning coach Chase Buford over his team’s fourth quarter struggles was plain to see and hear on Sunday, and it would have been a long week for his team on the back of that.
Before anything, the Kings are the defending champions, they are sitting atop the standings in NBL23 with a 10-4 record and have still won six of the past eight matches.
They likely have the best player in the league in Xavier Cooks, Buford has proven himself a tremendous coach and they are going to take some stopping from becoming back-to-back champions.
However, a couple of issues have crept in. In the first part of the season it was poor free-throw shooting which almost cost them on their first trip to New Zealand, and more recently it has been their fourth quarters.
Last Thursday night the Kings dominated the Breakers for three quarters before nine turnovers and nine fourth quarter points gave New Zealand some hope even though Sydney held on to win 88-81.
Jackjumpers stun Kings with late charge | 02:08
Then again on Sunday in the grand final rematch with Tasmania, Sydney were up by 14 to start the fourth quarter on the back of a Cooks-led dominant finish to the third term.
The Kings struggled the rest of the way with the JackJumpers scoring 26 of the game’s last 30 points to overrun them and score the 84-76 win.
Buford didn’t mince his words after the game about the fourth quarter troubles or hide his frustration.
While that was the initial reaction, this week has been all about trying to fix the problem and we’ll get the first indication of that against the Illawarra Hawks in Wollongong on Friday night.
But then on Sunday in Gippsland, it’s a true test for both the Kings and the third placed South East Melbourne Phoenix in their first meeting of the season.
“It’s about our sixth in-a-row, we just suck in the fourth quarter. We’re soft,” Buford said.
“If I knew how to fix it, we wouldn’t be here talking about it. As a team we try to be an attack the rim team and let that set up our game. We limited ourselves with some of the obnoxiously turnovers that we had more than anything.
“Frustrated is a good word to describe the feeling. Honestly I thought it was different than in Auckland. It was a very different game to be fair.
“In Auckland, some things got stagnant because we were being tackled and held. In this game, we just didn’t nut up and play basketball when it mattered.”
UNITED GREATS RACK UP BIG NUMBERS
Brad Newley and Chris Goulding are two of Australia’s finest basketball players this century and the Melbourne United pair will both reach significant milestones on Sunday against the Illawarra Hawks.
Melbourne’s season is still hanging by a thread coming into Round 11 at 6-11 following Monday night’s heartbreaking loss to the Perth Wildcats. But if keeping their season alive isn’t motivation enough, it’s a huge milestone weekend.
Not only is Shea Ili playing his 200th game, but also on Sunday captain Goulding brings up 400 and veteran Newley reaches 300, provided of course they all get through Thursday night’s Throwdown against the South East Melbourne Phoenix.
Across 399 games, Goulding already is an all-time great of the NBL. Having made his start as a development player at both the Brisbane Bullets and Perth Wildcats, it was at the Gold Coast Blaze he was given the chance to show a glimpse into his potential.
From there he joined the Melbourne Tigers, remained when they transformed into United and the rest is history. He’s a two-time championship winning captain, was Grand Final MVP in 2018 and has been named to the All-NBL First Team twice.
Not only that, but he has become a regular on the Australian Boomers team and is an Olympic bronze medallist and he deserves to count himself mighty unlucky to have not played in the NBA.
He will now play his 400th game on Sunday and someone who felt the full brunt of his talents was Cody Ellis.
Ili unloads to help United past Bullets | 01:20
He was part of the Sydney Kings team that Goulding dropped 50 points on back in 2014 and he’s never forgotten that. He also feels nobody will ever match what Goulding has done as the only current player to hit 1000 three-pointers in his career.
“We saw Goulding hit his 1000th threes last week which is an amazing accomplishment,” Ellis said on Hoops Heaven’s Basketball Hustle podcast.
“It’s similar to Buddy kicking 1000 goals, it’s probably something we won’t see happen again just because of the way it’s played now with shorter games.
“That won’t be touched again so it’s a big couple of weeks for him and I’ll never forget the 50 points he scored against us at the Sydney Kings, and the defensive specialist in Sam Young that we had. I certainly won’t forget that anytime soon and I tend to mute it when it gets brought up.”
Then there is 37-year-old Newley who will play the 300th game of his NBL career also on Sunday for Melbourne against the Hawks.
Newley began his professional career in the NBL at the Townsville Crocodiles back in 2004 and now it’s where he will finish, but in between he was a star in Europe playing high-level basketball in Greece, Turkey, Lithuania and Spain.
Newley returned to the NBL to play for the Sydney Kings for the 2016/17 season and that’s where he spent the next five seasons before surprisingly, they didn’t offer him a new contract. Not ready to retire, Newley found a new home in Melbourne and now gets to 300 games.
He has been one of the most dynamic slashing players Australian basketball has produced and one man who saw him at the start in Townsville was then teammate John Rillie.
Rillie is now coach of the Wildcats and coached against Newley on Monday night, but paid tribute to him all the same ahead of his 300th NBL game.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to know Newls since he was a kid because both of our fathers played against each other,” Rillie said.
“We’ve got a phenomenal relationship no matter where either of us have been in the world. We’ve always stayed connected and I saw him this morning and it’s been an amazing career.
“The NBL probably didn’t see him at his peak but did give him a great platform to be drafted to the NBA and then have a great career in Europe, and with the Boomers.
“I love seeing what he’s doing and it’s certainly a career that we can all look back on when he’s retired and enjoy. He was dynamite in the open court at his best.”
REJUVENATED GLIDDON’S MILESTONE BACK ‘HOME’
Cam Gliddon was searching for a rejuvenation to his NBL career signing at the New Zealand Breakers this season, and he has certainly found that ahead of now playing his 300th game back in familiar surroundings.
It’s been quite the remarkable ride for Gliddon to now reach 300 games and it’s only fitting the milestone will come up back in Perth when he plays for the Breakers against the Wildcats.
Gliddon grew up in Bunbury, in Western Australia’s south-west, and it’s a homecoming for him now on Friday night with the chance for family and friends to join him for the milestone occasion.
Gliddon was always a prodigious talent going to the Australian Institute of Sport and then onto his college career at Concordia before coming back to Australia and beginning his NBL career at the Cairns Taipans a decade ago.
He became a mainstay of that Taipans team under Aaron Fearne which included reaching a Grand Final in 2015 where they ironically lost to his current team, the Breakers.
Gliddon then moved on to the Brisbane Bullets and while there he became an Australian Boomers mainstay including being part of the team that played at the 2019 World Cup.
The last few years haven’t quite been as fruitful. Gliddon’s last season at Brisbane and then two seasons with the South East Melbourne Phoenix would be best described as frustrating, but the 33-year-old knew he had plenty left to give.
When new Breakers coach Mody Maor reached out and outlined the role he saw Gliddon playing across the ditch, he couldn’t help but be excited about it and signed on for two years with he and his family making the big move.
The result has been Gliddon playing a key role on a Breakers team currently sitting second on the table at 11-5 heading into Friday night’s game in Perth against the Wildcats.
It’s the ideal time for Gliddon to reflect on the journey to 300 games in the NBL and to look back on how buoyant he was feeling about signing with the Breakers coming into NBL23.
Wildcats seal victory in dying seconds! | 00:54
“I’ve got immense belief in myself and I know that I’ve still got a lot left to give, and I tried to still show that last season when I got the opportunity to show it,” Gliddon said at the time.
“I’m happy to get a two-year deal just because the situation of moving again is not pleasant, but I knew a team would have faith in me and New Zealand put the two-year deal out straight away to show they were committed to me.
“I wanted to show I was committed to them too, I didn’t want to go over there for one year either and then be looking elsewhere.
“It was a tough year where I had COVID once and then was in isolation after being a close contact, then I had gastro and was on minutes restriction at the start of the season.
“It was a very frustrating year for me personally and one that I want to put behind me, and go forward.”
ILI’S INSPIRATIONAL RETURN SPARKS UNITED
Speaking of Melbourne United milestone men, inspirational point guard Shea Ili will celebrate his 200th NBL game also on Sunday having just sent a reminder of his value for his team.
Melbourne were the best team last regular season in the NBL and universally Ili received a lot of that credit for his tenacious defence, intensity at both ends of the floor and just his fighting spirit on top of his improving offensive arsenal.
He’s already won championships both at the New Zealand Breakers and Melbourne in his 199-game NBL career, but sometimes just how valuable you truly are is only felt in absence.
Some worrying concussion symptoms have plagued Ili throughout this season and limited him to five of 17 games, and in a lot of ways without him United have appeared rudderless.
Xavier Rathan-Mayes did his best to be the point guard, but he was brought in to work off Ili. All of a sudden last weekend with Ili back in the line-up Melbourne were instantly a different looking team.
The result should have been two wins too. United beat the Brisbane Bullets on Saturday night and then had the game won in Perth on Monday before losing it despite leading by eight with 45 seconds to go, and five with 10 seconds left.
However, the impact of Ili was huge and now he will celebrate his 200th game in the NBL this Sunday when United is at home to the Illawarra Hawks.
It’s a significant milestone for somebody who has got to where he is through nothing but sheer hard work, perseverance and desire.
Nobody knows that better than his Tall Blacks and Breakers championship winning teammate Corey Webster.
The two just happened to be rivals in Perth on Monday night with Webster the hero for the Wildcats hitting the game winning shot. In the bigger picture, he can’t be happier to see Ili back on the floor.
“I’m very happy for him. Honestly what he’s been through this season with his concussions, man that’s scary for anyone,” Webster said.
“For him to come back and have symptoms again and things possibly go wrong, I’m just happy that he’s out there and I’m happy for his family and kids to see him playing.
“I’ve seen Shea play since he was in high school and I’ve seen the growth he’s made as a player, and change his game. Back in the day, all he could play was defence but now he’s an offensive threat out there, he’s a leader for them and he’s a national team player for us where he’s a leader too.
“In this league, he’s the enemy for me now and when we step in between those lines there’s no more friends and it’s a battle. But aside from that I’m very happy to see him out there playing again and healthy.”
