Five sneaky-big questions surrounding the 2022 NBL offseason
The 2021-22 season is in the books, and silly season has arrived. What should we be paying attention to during the shortened offseason?
Credit: May Bailey Photography
With the Kings hoisting the NBL title and Ian Clark burgling a Spalding, the 2021-22 season is officially a wrap.
We may not have our beloved league around for the next five months, but it’s not all bad news — the offseason is here! For nerds like me, the next five months are just as good as the season itself. Five months of countless rumours, debating roster moves, and making horrifically off-base predictions is on the way!
With all that in mind, here are my five sneaky-biggest questions set to surround the next five months.
Will Tassie get the band back together?
The Jackies were easily the best story coming out of the 21-22 season, and one of the best stories Australian sport has seen in years. No NBL fan will ever forget the JackJumpers’ inaugural fairytale season.
This past season’s JackJumpers were an anomaly in more ways than one. In a league dominated by teams that spend big on superstars, the JackJumpers had a roster built on gritty veteran castoffs and little top-tier talent. Yet, they made the Grand Finals on the back of playing with unmatched toughness, energy, and togetherness.
Their success during the 2021-22 season feels completely irreplicable. Still, it would feel like a disservice to the JackJumpers’ fanbase and players if they didn’t get the band back together. That’s the hard question now facing the Jackies’ front office: do they try to capture the same lightning in a bottle again or chase something even better?
There are clear downsides to both paths.
On the one hand, attempting to recreate the irreplicable feels logically unsound. The JackJumpers had a negative point differential this season — they relied, at least a little bit, on luck to make the playoffs. It’s hard to imagine that bringing back the same roster would produce the same level of success.
On the other, though, shaking up the roster risks losing the magic that made this team successful and tremendously popular. There were undeniably intangibles that made this JackJumpers team as good as they were. Would bringing in a star signing or two take away what made the JackJumpers who they were and what made their fanbase so proud?
Following that year, the Taipans brought basically everyone back and tried to recreate their feel-good story. They then finished rock bottom. Meanwhile, upon closing the 2019-20 season by winning 12 of their final 16 games, the Breakers attempted to upgrade their roster, bringing in Tai Webster and Lamar Patterson, among others. They then finished second-last. On the plus-side, they for some reason made a documentary series out of that disaster of a season and gave us this gem.
Neither path sticks out as all too desirable for the JackJumpers, but they’ll have to lean one way or the other. Here’s hoping that they pick the right one, and we get to see some more Jackies magic next season.
How will the star local market play out?
The biggest advantage you can have in the NBL is an All-NBL calibre local. Having a superstar local under contract gives any team a huge team-building advantage over the competition. Most importantly, it allows teams to use import slots selectively rather than shop the import market for team needs.
As an example, take the champs, who were able to nab a luxury bench piece in Ian Clark because they had Xavier Cooks under contract. In the end, it was the combination of Clark and Cooks that got the Kings home down the stretch of game 3 against the JackJumpers.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a surge of those top-tier locals returning home — Cooks, Jock Landale, Tai Webster, and Matthew Dellavedova, just to name a few. Clubs haven’t really seen a shortage of local stars to chase.
For instance, Nick Kay is happy living abroad for the time being, Isaac Fotu seems destined to never play in the NBL, and Brock Motum seems to always be out of NBL teams’ price range. Elsewhere, it feels like no one knows what’s going on with Mangok Mathiang and Thon Maker’s sights appear to be set higher than the NBL. Maybe the Bullets’ dream of signing Aron Baynes becomes a reality? But that still feels like a longshot, even if it makes some sense for both parties.
In addition, a bunch of local stars currently in the NBL are off-contract. Those stars include Cooks, Mitch Creek, Finn Delany, Isaac Humphries, Jo Lual-Acuil, and Duop Reath. Of those, Cooks and Lual-Acuil seem almost certain to move on to greener pastures. I’d be shocked if NBA teams don’t take hard looks at them. Meanwhile, as Liam Santamaria noted a couple of months ago, Phoenix fans should feel good about their chances of retaining Creek.
This leaves us with a lack of realistically attainable top-tier local talent in the market and a bunch of clubs bereft of those types of players. That could entail a bidding war over the local stars that are available and, perhaps, a couple of interesting allegiance switches.
To my eye, Finn Delany is easily the most intriguing of the local stars on the market. After a woeful season in the meat of his prime, it should be clear to anyone that he is in desperate need of a change of scenery. At his best and on the right team with the right pieces around him, he’s an All-NBL level talent. As Jacob discussed earlier in the year, that was absolutely not the case this past season — the Breakers didn’t exactly put him in the best position to succeed with their roster moves.
Although I’m a Breakers fan, I think he should find a new home in the NBL. Luckily for him, there are several excellent potential landing spots around the league. The idea of him in Perth playing off of Bryce Cotton makes me salivate, for instance. As does the potential of him coming in as a Xavier Cooks replacement if Cooks does indeed find himself in the NBA next season.
Can Cairns buck the trend?
Up until a couple of years ago, I described the Taipans as a feeder team for the rest of the NBL. Prior to their miraculous 2019-20 season, they had a bad run of losing their best players to richer sides. Cam Gliddon, Mitch McCarron, and Melo Trimble’s moves away from Cairns are great examples.
Any small market team in any sports league that is excellent at identifying talent will encounter this issue. Unfortunately for Taipans fans, Cairns seem vulnerable to this problem again this offseason.
According to Spatial Jam, Cairns’ two big finds from last offseason — Keanu Pinder and Bul Kuol — both have mutual options for next season. After each had award-winning breakout seasons and were able to showcase their talent on a depleted Taipans squad, it seems likely that they will decline those mutual options in search of hefty pay rises.
Kuol and Pinder loom as intriguing, young options for richer teams looking to solidify their future. Every team needs more wing shooting, and Kuol provides that in spades, in addition to the rest of his developing game. Pinder, meanwhile, would be an excellent reserve big for any contending team after refining the rougher parts of his game this year in Cairns. Both should have a long list of suitors.
Cairns probably offers the greatest opportunity for minutes and development for each. Yet, like in past years, it’s possible that Cairns simply won’t have the money to match what other teams are offering their two bright stars, even if Adam Forde follows through on his promise to take a pay cut to keep them around.
Forde is building something in Cairns. He’s a good coach and is committed to internal development. He laid the groundwork for future success in his first year in Cairns — with roster continuity and a couple of big import hits, the Taipans could be somewhat competitive next season. But if he’s going to continue building upon the groundwork he laid, he’ll need the Taipans to buck the trend and find a way to keep around Kuol and Pinder this offseason.
What will the play-in tournament look like?
I’m on the record as pro the NBL introducing the play-in. As I outlined last year, it makes little sense that just four of the NBL’s 10 teams make the playoffs. As far as I can tell, no other sports league in Australia allows just 40% of its teams to qualify for the postseason. Meanwhile, as I discussed earlier this year, the NBL’s current competition structure means that around half the league’s teams have nothing to play for two-thirds of the way through the season. In just a 28-game regular season, that’s a big problem.
Consequently, expanding the number of teams in the postseason makes all the sense in the world, and as announced in a late April press release, I was tremendously excited to hear that the NBL will be implementing it next year.
“We are very excited to announce that our Finals campaign will include a Play-In from next season, and believe it will add greatly to the excitement and intrigue as the season’s finalists are determined,” NBL Commissioner Jeremy Loeliger said.
“We are assessing multiple models of how the Play-In will be structured and how many teams will be included, and will make further announcements in the near future. We have seen how successful the Play-In concept has been in the NBA and the numerous benefits that it has delivered to fans.
“Teams will stay in the hunt for the championship for that bit longer, Finals spots will be decided in new and innovative ways, and an extra layer of excitement will be added for our fans.”
However, in announcing that a play-in game is coming, the NBL made no reference to the format that will be used.
A simple one-off game is the easiest and least controversial. Importantly, it wouldn’t water down the playoffs too much — an understandable fear held by those against the idea of introducing the play-in.
On the contrary, the NBL would be missing an opportunity to create some real buzz and drive fan interest through the roof by limiting the play-in to just a one-off game. Moreover, expanding the postseason by just one squad would do little to solve the problem of half the league having nothing to play for over the back half of the season.
For these reasons, I think I'm in favour of an expanded NBA-style play-in, with the postseason expanded to 6 teams. I wouldn’t go so far as to put the third-seeded team at risk of elimination, but a format in which teams 4 through 6 have to be involved in the play-in could be solid middle ground.
The details here are far from trivial. This decision is important and one that the league shouldn’t take lightly. With the league surging in popularity, picking the right play-in format could help to elevate the league to even greater heights.
To boot, the choice of format could have real team-building implications over the offseason. It’s feasible that if the NBL announced that 6 teams had a chance to make the postseason instead of 5, teams lower on the totem pole would invest a greater amount this offseason. Would the Bullets’ brass, for instance, finally push their chips in and start to ratchet up their spending to competitive levels if they had a 60% chance of making the play-in? Would Cairns try even harder to keep around Kuol and Pinder? Would Matt Walsh try even harder to make an obviously doomed big-name signing? The ramifications could be huge!
Does Melbourne have cash to splash?
Ever since rebranding as ‘United’, Melbourne have been the league’s premier big spenders. Every year since rebranding, they’ve operated as if they could care less about the salary cap — the sheer amount of star talent they’ve acquired in that time has been eyewatering. They have been the NBL’s version of Real Madrid.
Well, that was until this past season.
Last offseason, Melbourne used just one of three available import slots, made just one big-name acquisition (Delly), signed bargain bin players, and lost three stars (Mitch McCarron, Landale, and Scotty Hopson). In the middle of the season, with their halfcourt offence clearly an issue, two import slots up their sleeve, and the title race wide open, Melbourne’s only move was to re-sign Yudai Baba.
Every indication given by Melbourne’s actions since winning the 2021 title scream that they don’t have the type of money they used to.
The question here is simple: was this past season an aberration?
The 2021-22 season showed us that Melbourne has the infrastructure in place to be a dominant regular season team even without big money signings. Their defensive pressure and transition offence will always churn out wins during the regular season. Headed into next season, much of that infrastructure remains in place: Delly, Jack White, Shea Ili, Ariel Hukporti, Mason Peatling, and Chris Goulding are all under contract.
However, should they fail to open up the coffers again and snag a couple of big time offensive weapons, they will likely stumble once more when it matters most. When the pace slowed down against Tasmania and their transition attack was mitigated, they showed that they simply didn’t have the halfcourt shot-creators necessary to win at the highest level.
Money would solve that.
Melbourne would’ve known their deficiencies. They didn’t lack awareness — anyone could’ve seen what their roster was lacking shot creation. What they lacked was the money necessary to make the needed upgrades.
Just why they didn’t have that necessary budget this past season is anyone’s guess. Maybe it was the effects of shelling out as much as they did on the 2021 team (and all the star-laden squads before that season)? Maybe COVID-19 impacted their finances more than other teams? Maybe they spent an arm and a leg to get Delly over here?
Or maybe, just maybe, this is the new normal for Melbourne. Maybe their big-spending days are over.
Either way, the answer to this question will have a gigantic impact on the offseason ahead and who ultimately wins the 2023 title.