Preview: Brisbane v Melbourne (Round 15)

When: 5.30pm (AEDT), Saturday 14 January, 2023
Where: Nissan Arena, Brisbane
Broadcast: ESPN; Kayo; Foxtel; Sky NZ
LIVE SCORES & STATS

Who won the last time?

Melbourne 104 (Goulding 20, Tucker 20, Barlow 11) d Brisbane 88 (Gak 18, Johnson 17, Mitchell 16) – Round 13 at Nissan Arena, Brisbane

Gorjok Gak officially announced himself as a future star of the NBL in this game with 18 points, 13 rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block, but not enough of his teammates came along for the ride, Melbourne winning possession points 25-15 as they grabbed 20 o-boards. Ultimately it was a 30-12 United run bridging half-time that proved the difference.

What happened last game?

There were no dazzling bursts in Christchurch on Thursday, but Melbourne expertly managed the game like a Euroleague team for the second straight outing to lead from go-to-woe and never give the fatigued Breakers a chance. Brisbane appeared to be some sort of chance when they trailed by one late in the opening term, but what happened next is best left unspoken, the Kings destroying their once-proud rivals 94-46 the rest of the way.

What’s working?

Looking forward – Nothing much is working when you lose by 49 points, nor when you’ve lost four in a row by a total of 91, nor nine of your past 10 with a deficit of 185. With seven games still to go, it will be a long and ugly slide if they keep the mental cue in the rack, so all the Bullets can do is look forward. They need to look forward to playing defence though, because giving up 107.3ppg in their past three has given them no chance of winning.

Owning the tempo – United are on a seven-game road trip with two key players missing and playing accordingly. After grabbing leads in Tasmania and New Zealand, they have executed walk-up basketball superbly to starve the home team of momentum and silence the crowd, both games having just 146 possessions, well below the league average of 158. Impressively, United had 10 assists in the final eight seconds of the shot clock against New Zealand as they executed through physicality and found the open man with composure.

What needs stopping?

CG & Tuck – Remarkably, in two United wins over Brisbane this season, Chris Goulding and Rayjon Tucker have top-scored with exactly 20 points apiece, draining 14/25 from distance. They’ve scored them at key moments too, combining for 20 points in Melbourne’s game-winning 30-12 run in Round 13, while scoring 18 in the final 15 minutes in Round 10 as Dean Vickerman’s men outscored the Bullets by 14 to secure a runaway win.

Challenging Marcus – When coaches say defend with your hands up, they’ve got a picture of Marcus Lee in their heads. His listed 211cm doesn’t do justice to his immense length, as Brisbane found out last start, shooting 14/22 from two-point range with Lee on the bench, but just 9/26 with him on. In Christchurch on Thursday, the Breakers hit 35 per cent inside with Marcus manning the middle, compared to 50 per cent in the other 11 minutes.

Who’s matching up?

Aron Baynes v Marcus Lee – Far from shying away from Lee, however, Brisbane’s guards need to go at him and feed the likes of Baynes and Gak, forcing Melbourne’s sole centre to make decisions on the run. Lee fell foul of the phantom on Thursday and Melbourne were outscored by five with him on the bench, but +17 with their import recruit playing. Last time against Brisbane he was +23 in 22 minutes, with United -10 in the other 18.

Nathan Sobey v Shea Ili – After a horror showing against Cairns in Round 14, Sobey hit the ground running against the Kings with nine points on 4/4 shooting and three d-boards in his first seven minutes to have the Bullets within a point. When Sobey is flying, Brisbane play with a different energy, and Melbourne will be hoping Ili can get this job done after a quiet 1/6, five-turnover night in Christchurch where he appeared to be fighting illness.

Tyler Johnson v Xavier Rathan-Mayes – What chance of United beating the second-placed Breakers with Humphries and Barlow out and Goulding and Tucker combining for a 3/13 night? A good chance when XRM has 20 points at 63 per cent, his three-point shooting blowing the game open. Johnson has averaged 20.3ppg at 52 per cent in his past three games, and which sixth man can provide the best spark will be important on Saturday.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Watching <a href="https://twitter.com/JustMarcusLee?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JustMarcusLee</a> do this game after game will never get old. <br><br>?: ESPN on Kayo or Foxtel <a href="https://t.co/LycVz85TTc">pic.twitter.com/LycVz85TTc</a></p>&mdash; Melbourne United (@MelbUnited) <a href="https://twitter.com/MelbUnited/status/1613438512912822272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Who’s missing key men?

Isaac Humphries and Dave Barlow remain sidelined for United, while Brisbane will be missing Tanner Krebs with an ankle injury.

Who’s saying what?

Nothing summed up Melbourne’s current business-like attitude than Rayjon Tucker losing a shoe in Christchurch, stumbling but still finding Mason Peatling for a bucket with a sublime behind-the-back pass.

Earlier in the season, when Tuck was in the midst of a three-shot, four-foul night, the other areas of his game may have suffered, but he and all his mates are currently executing with a selfless toughness for 40 minutes.

“We've been on a pretty good run on the road and we knew the Tasmanian one was really tough, and coming into something similar with a team that’s been playing great defence all year and play with a physicality, I thought we really stood up to it,” coach Dean Vickerman said.

“Their defence in the second half went up another level and we were able to take a couple of (Breakers) charges through that and deal with their physicality.”

For the second straight road game, Melbourne sucked the life out of the ball, executed with poise and found ways to get great looks late in the shot clock, with Xavier Rathan-Mayes quarter-backing beautifully in Christchurch.

“Like the last game, going against their pressure we found a way to get to the foul line and get some cheap ones,” Vickerman said.

“Their defence forces you to play in a lot of high pick-and-rolls, space the floor and we saw some guys be able to get downhill.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">No shoe, absolutely no worries for <a href="https://twitter.com/th3flighttuck?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@th3flighttuck</a> ??<br><br>?: ESPN on Kayo or Foxtel <a href="https://t.co/J4K717gyD3">pic.twitter.com/J4K717gyD3</a></p>&mdash; Melbourne United (@MelbUnited) <a href="https://twitter.com/MelbUnited/status/1613451900359446528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“X is a guy in those kinds of moments, he can really attack some of the switches and I thought he made good decisions for us tonight.

“We feel like we've got to play finals basketball right now so we've stepped up the intensity a fair bit, we've got people playing different roles and they’ve bought into what they’ve got to do for the team.

“I think everybody’s sacrificed a little bit for the good of the team, and (we’re) really celebrating the right things, just grinding it out and finding ways to win.”

Brisbane are not sacrificing for the team right now, and the truth is when the going gets tough, they go into their individual shells.

“It gets to one point in the game where it goes from being a two or three-point game, and we’re right in amongst it, and it goes to 15 in the space of a minute, two minutes. Now you’re trying to crawl your way back and we’re not good enough at the moment to be able to give up leads like that and find our way back in it,” Jason Cadee said.

“We’ve had our first three trainings with our full team this week, or the course of the last seven days, and we’re trying to find who we are and what we are, and right now we have no idea.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Angus Glover FLYS to the rim??<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeTheKings?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WeTheKings</a> <a href="https://t.co/jadVWEwxAR">pic.twitter.com/jadVWEwxAR</a></p>&mdash; Sydney Kings (@SydneyKings) <a href="https://twitter.com/SydneyKings/status/1613119716557561859?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 11, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

“It’s hard because you want people to love coming to watch you play and I care about this place and this singlet that I play in, so it’s deflating, it’s disappointing,” Cadee added.

“We’ve got to find reasons, we owe people who show up, we owe them a better performance than tonight.

“How do we get it? We’ve got to keep working hard, and Saturday in those points of time where it starts to go against us, how do we find resolve as a group, because if we do it individually we won’t win many games.”

Their past two embarrassing performances have come against the high-speed Taipans and Kings, who have run them out of their own gym.

Melbourne without Humphries and Barlow, and backing up off a tough encounter two nights earlier, will likely be a very different proposition.

The Bullets will need to show they execute possession after possession in the half-court, and the ever-optimistic Greg Vanderjagt is hopefully Wednesday’s opening term can be the catalyst for a good performance in that regard.

“The way we played in the first quarter was really pleasing. In terms of a response, we got a positive response for 10 minutes, I thought we were pretty good ... it was just us being able to sustain it for 40 minutes against a really good team,” he said.

“(Sobey) started the game really well, he had an intent to attack the rim, we got him some good looks from the three that he knocked down.

“The most pleasing thing was we did it out of system, not just Sobes making great plays off individual magic.”