Why stability is key in Perth's title push

Stability seems to be the word of the day at the Perth Wildcats. The bulk of last season’s Playoff roster is already re-signed for NBL25, and General Manager of Basketball Operations Danny Mills believes his side has the rare opportunity to grow together into the coming season.

After the signing of exciting collegiate prospect Elijah Pepper, the Wildcats have already locked in their local core for the upcoming campaign. As it stands, they’re looking for a Next Star to replace number one draft prospect Alexandre Sarr, an import, and some new development players.

While other teams across the competition are searching for almost entirely new rosters, the Wildcats are aware the bulk of their improvement is going to come in the form of growth and development in its emerging talent.

Auckland-born former US high school prospect Dontae Russo-Nance will continue his tenure as a development player next season, while the likes of Ben Henshall and David Okwera have already been earmarked for increased roles in NBL25.

If you couple the expected improvement from that emerging talent with the growth of the likes of Hyrum Harris and Kristian Doolittle across the NBL24 campaign, Mills believes the Wildcats have created a recipe for success.

“Last year when we restructured the whole group and brought in new guys a lot of them were on two-to-three-year deals. We knew this year was going to have that stability because of those guys returning,” Mills said on NBL Now.

“For us this will be the first year besides Bryce returning we’ve got a second import coming back, so getting that done with Kristian early in the piece when we knew he was a guy we wanted at the Perth Wildcats for a long time was crucial, so we’ve got that stability going, then it’s about developing.

“To take that next step, yes you can go out and get some new players, but you’ve got to develop internally as well. We’ve got some really exciting young talent … we talked about Ben Henshall, he’s going to get an opportunity to play and he’s currently playing really well with our team in New Zealand, the Otago Nuggets, which is part of our structure here.

“It’s having some of our younger players and staff to go over there and have an opportunity to play somewhere like the NZNBL, which is very competitive and give them reps that are high usage which he might not get in an NBL season, but can get him to that next level.

“Last year there was excitement about getting a new group in, and some youth and athleticism we’d probably lacked for the couple of years before that. This year not as much because you know what’s coming back, but that’s the beauty of it. You know what you have, you know what worked.”

That re-signing of Doolittle back in March looms as an integral piece to the Wildcats' rise. 

The import forward emerged as a genuine Best Defensive Player prospect as he continued to find his feet over the course of the season, and he flashed the potential of his multi-faceted offensive game in a number of key wins for his side.

In the six games Doolittle scored 15 points or more across the season, the Wildcats won five.

His move from the power forward to the small forward position was a masterstroke by head coach John Rillie, and helped kickstart a previously faltering campaign for the club, taking them to an eventual second-place finish in the regular season.

Mills says Perth realised it wanted to retain Doolittle early into his tenure with the club.

“I think there were probably people out there who were skeptical he wasn’t good enough, but we knew he was and we could see it daily in practice,” Mills said.

“It started to become clear his profile fits this league so well. He’s 6’7”, 6’8”, built like a truck, is as strong as anything, he can play off the dribble, and I thought JR did a fantastic job moving him to the three to give us a bigger lineup and more size defensively.

“He’s a connector, he’s not a guy who needs the ball, he isn’t a high-usage on-ball guy, but he can make a shot, has an elite mid-range game and can back guys down because he’s so big. Defensively we had him guarding everyone from Matt Dellavedova to Alan Williams, so he’s switchable which is something we lacked previously.

“He’s currently in Puerto Rico and plays there every off-season, but his international career has taken him all over – Israel, Japan, France and now Australia.

“He and his wife just had a baby and have started a young family and, as a lot of people do, came to Australia and love to the lifestyle. It was a pretty quick, easy discussion when we decided we want to bring him back.”