Isaac
Years ago
Point guards in the NBL
Paulo Kennedy has this article on the NBL site about the importance of the point guard position and includes a brief section on the failings of the 36ers.
Is it really the point guard, or should teams wing it?
The proof is in the pudding - over the last decade only Wollongong, with Charles Thomas, has won an NBL championship with an import point guard. Darryl McDonald was the starter on the 2006 Tigers' championship team as a naturalised import, and every other starting point guard for the title winners has been a local.
If you look at the last three seasons the starting championship point guards have been Damian Martin, Adam Gibson and Nathan Croswell. They are all very capable players, but none of them are superstars, and none averaged more than 10.4ppg in their championship seasons.
From about 2006 the NBL changed. It became faster, more aggressive, more physical and more dependent on the three point shot. If you look at the teams who have been successful in that time they have all had one thing in common – depth, athleticism, speed and versatility in the 2-4 spots, with a plethora of players between roughly the 6’5-6’8 mark who can guard multiple positions.
The Adelaide 36ers are a team that simply hasn’t fitted the mould the past two years – Adam Ballinger not quick enough to defend the four spot last year, Jacob Holmes and Jeff Dowdell not athletic enough this year. Until they get more versatility and power into the frontcourt I think they will languish near the bottom of the ladder.Full article
Before everyone jumps into "of course we need a centre" mode, I don't think that's what Paul is suggesting. Last time he and I emailed about this sort of stuff, he was proposing an athletic forward in the mould of Petrie, probably taking Holmes' spot. Paul, jump in and correct me if I'm wrong.
As an aside, it would be interesting to see what the Blaze could've done this season if Petrie didn't get injured. He was averaging 15 and 8 when he went down, shooting at 66%. That was in under 28 MPG across three games. It's a small sample size, but the Blaze were 2-1 (close loss to the Hawks who were the dominant team in the first half of the season) in those games. Their two other opponents were Townsville and Cairns.