The Wildcats are being widely tipped to miss the NBL finals for the first time in 35 years, but coach Trevor Gleeson says the dire predictions are nothing new.
Yanni Wetzell had an impressive NBL debut for the South East Melbourne Phoenix in Adelaide.
The South East Melbourne Phoenix were resolute in their pursuit of rising Kiwi hoops star Yanni Wetzell for the 2021 Australian NBL season. And we saw exactly why over the opening round. The Breakers may have been twiddling their thumbs inactive over the early skirmishes of the Covid-delayed season (they debut in round 2 on Friday in Adelaide), but that did not stop a Kiwi making one of the big-impact performances of the tipoff round. Aucklander Yanni Wetzell, a highly touted off-season pickup by the Phoenix, produced an outstanding all-round display in the Melbourne side’s double-overtime 116-108 defeat at the Adelaide 36ers that had coach Simon Mitchell joking he had now found his star Kiwi singing’s baseline performance level.
The opening round of the NBL season is in the books, and it sure feels like we ve already seen it all.
The top talent has been shining, a double-overtime thriller had the NBL world on the edge of its seat, some imports are looking questionable, Next Stars are taking centre stage . and that s all basically come from just one game.
Despite how early it is in the season, we ve seen enough glimpses to make a few educated assessments of what we liked and didn t like from the first round of action, all under the obvious preface of understanding the tiny sample size.