United "A New Team"

By Dan Woods - NBL Media
Photo: Isaac Humphries (Credit - Melbourne United Media)

Jack White, Matthew Dellavedova, Jo Lual-Acuil, Yudai Baba. All four are high quality players who have bid farewell to Melbourne United this off-season.

Dean Vickerman and his staff have, of course, replaced them. A new import trio of Jordan Caroline, Rayjon Tucker and Xavier Rathan-Mayes will all don the navy blue this season, while Isaac Humphries' impending return from injury could be one of the stories of this NBL season.

As Melbourne prepares to begin its NBL Blitz campaign, the new-look side has played just four games together, all in the absence of reigning NBL Sixth Man of the Year Shea Ili, and lost all four. 

United head coach Dean Vickerman says those early clashes will not be a barometer for United’s season.

“I know we have to be patient; it feels like I’m coaching an absolutely brand new team and it felt like that the other night,” Vickerman told The Huddle. “Even us having the St Mary’s game one day into pre-season it was like ‘we’ve got to get ready to play a game, we don’t know each other’s names but let’s try to put a structure out there’.

“Normally there’s a stepping stone to putting your team together and your structures and how you do it, but we had to skip a lot of things just to go ahead and play a game, and then we had to backtrack and say ‘this is actually a good moment for us because we know how many things we don’t know about how to get better’.

“We set a plan about the stepping stones to get to the next part of it. We’re slowly growing, obviously we haven’t had Shea for an extended period of time with the international commitments and now the concussion, so that’s really good growth for ‘X’ (Rathan-Mayes) to be able to lead our team and others to step up in that area.”

After suffering a devastating knee injury while playing for the Adelaide 36ers earlier this year, should Humphries recover and become the player he’s shown the ability to be, he could be one of the most underrated signings this NBL season.

The former Atlanta Hawk looks set to form a brutal front-court partnership with Next Star Ariel Hukporti, whose shot blocking and interior strength was on show in NBL22.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">? Coming soon to MU!<br><br>ICYMI - Earlier today we announced the signing of Isaac Humphries. Here’s a little look at what the big man can do! <a href="https://t.co/zSgJzXmwxz">pic.twitter.com/zSgJzXmwxz</a></p>&mdash; Melbourne United (@MelbUnited) <a href="https://twitter.com/MelbUnited/status/1550395212857769985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 22, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

While the pair are forming a strong relationship both on and off the court, Vickerman says Humphries, who is affectionately known as ‘Ice’,  is just happy to be back on the court.

“It was interesting, we played him (Humphries) [for] 17-18 minutes the other night and we get beaten by 30 or whatever. We’re talking to ‘Ice’ and he’s so excited. He’s like ‘I just played a game of basketball, nine months I haven’t played’,” Vickerman said.

“He got a little bit of pain in his knee after playing some minutes but he was good to practice the next day and smart enough for us to say ‘you haven’t played for nine months, we just played you, you practiced all week, take this next game off and we’ll get you ready for the Blitz’.

“I think he’s in a pretty good space, certainly with his head. He’s enjoying being in Melbourne, he’s really bought into ‘it’s not all about me, it’s about me and Ariel, and how can the two of us really impact winning and support each other’ and it’s been a really good relationship.”

United completed their roster on Friday morning, with Dave Barlow re-signing, reversing his decision to retire just a few weeks ago.