Assessing Justin Schueller’s first Brisbane Bullets roster

Schueller starts a new Bullets era with an import point guard next to Nathan Sobey, defence a real priority in recruitment, and a link to the elite youth.

Revisiting all that went wrong with Brisbane last season was bleak, with the James Duncan era ending with a ton of disconnect and mediocrity. From recruitment and game style philosophy, through to execution on court, management, coaching, and the players didn’t appear to be set up for success. Read my full postmortem from December last year, if you would like to further jog your memory on some of the problems.

Whoever put their hand up for the Bullets head coaching job would need to be doing an extra round of due diligence to ascertain what exactly the vision and alignment was with ownership, how much control they would have over the roster, and be ready to continue to ask questions once appointed.

The appeal of the job ended up being too good of an opportunity for Justin Schueller, and he’s been searching for answers since.

Schueller on “The Basketball Show” in February:

“I think making sure you come in and understand the whys on everything is really what my first couple of weeks here have been about. Figuring out why we’ve had guys off the floor so much, why hasn’t chemistry worked, where are the gaps in our program, and how to generate a sustainable program. Not just what wins now, but what wins well into the future. Then it’s about what did this roster really need… ”

Elaborating further on “The Huddle” in April:

“My first visit up there was right on the back of some positions moving on. I was asked to lead the whole club and, first time head coach, for some people that’s unusual. But in my roles in the past, it was always leading big programs… The best part with Stu Lash [Senior Basketball Advisor], it feels like I’ve been working with him for two years. There’s a good synergy in how we evaluate the game, how we see individual personnel. He’s based in the states, which could be seen as a challenge, but we’re on the phone every morning… For me to be able to come in and just make the basketball decisions alongside one other person has really made this free agency period quite streamlined, and I think that is going to put us in a position of success moving forward… What we feel we’ve done is been able to get everyone on the same page, change culture both on the floor and off the floor within a short period of time.”

Schueller appears comfortable with where his power and relationships sit, and more importantly, he has been able to bring in players that fit his vision. Defence and toughness was spruiked by Duncan in the past, but the roster decisions and execution on the floor never really followed.