Wells: Rakocevic gives 36ers 'different dymanic'

He may have only played 15 minutes off the bench in his Hungry Jack’s NBL debut, but Nick Rakocevic has already made a strong impression.

The Serbian big man , who only arrived in Australia less than a week ago, hit the court for the Adelaide 36ers in their Round 3 win over Cairns, despite not training with the squad.

The 27-year-old tallied eight points, eight rebounds (including five offensive), one assist, one steal and one block - leading to high praise from coach Mike Wells.

“It’s been a really interesting trip for Nick, to fly straight to Cairns and for us to get him up to speed in that short amount of time,” Wells said during Thursday’s post-game press conference.

“Going into the game, I didn’t know if I was going to play him, but I was open to trying to find an opportunity to see how he felt.

“[Full credit to him] his stance was that he wanted to get in there [and show what he could do].

“So for him to play 15 minutes and end up with 8 [points] and 8 [rebounds] is great.

“He’s a very, very talented player, who will give us a different dynamic on our offensive end, compared to Z (Zylan Cheatham) and Ice (Isaac Humphries) - he’s got a lot of different things [to his game].

“I’m excited about the potential there to impact the group and help us function when defences are all over Bryce [Cotton] or DJ [Vasiljevic] - as he can really pass it, shoot it and play off the bounce.”

Rakocevic was just one of the Sixers’ bench group which Wells highlighted, emphasising how important it is for his side to get contributions across the board.

“I give our bench a ton of credit for changing the flow of the game when they entered the play,” second-year Sixers coach Wells said.

“We want to make the game easy for all our guys [to contribute] and by them not dropping the intensity, [we were able to achieve that] - it was a full team effort.”

Rakocevic’s next chance to impress comes in Round 4, when the 36ers host Tasmania on Thursday, October 8.

That fixture will tip off at 7.30pm AEST, live on ESPN.