How Nathan Sobey and Justin Schueller are leading Brisbane back to relevance

After a two-year run that was dire on the court and dysfunctional off it, the Brisbane Bullets are back in the finals hunt.

It was a long and winding journey that took Nathan Sobey from NBL development player to his rise as one of the brightest stars in the league. After starting with the Cairns Taipans, he made the move to Adelaide, where he went from a scarcely used bench player in his first season to a high-level starter in his second. Following two All-NBL Second Team selections in four years with the 36ers and a narrow Grand Final loss to Melbourne in 2017-18, he made his next move to Brisbane, searching for more postseason success with a team that had just made their first finals appearance since rejoining the league.

Credit: May Bailey | Clusterpix

Sobey continued to thrive in his first season with the Bullets, and they improved their record despite just barely missing the finals by percentage only. It was the following year that he took his biggest leap, though, going from star to superstar. His 21.1 points per game ranked second in the league and represented a jump of more than four points from his previous best mark, with career-highs across the board and an All-NBL First Team selection only further underlining his brilliance. While the Bullets again missed the postseason, this time by a single win over a 36-game season, the team’s .500 record and Sobey’s emergence as a top-five talent gave them plenty of hope.

That hope was dashed in record time, as the team crashed to embarrassing new lows over the last two seasons. A 10-18 record and eighth-place finish in the 2021-22 season was bad enough for a team hoping to contend, and it was followed by the team’s worst record in 20 years with just eight wins. Even worse, they were wracked by off-court instability and drama, cycling through three different head coaches and even briefly using general manager Sam McKinnon in that role. It was a messy situation that further added to the bleak picture being painted on the court.

Amongst all of that, Sobey struggled to replicate the highs of his breakout season. His scoring numbers dipped, first to 16.1 points per game in 2021-22 and then to 15.3 last season, as he shot below 40% from the field in both years. Any thoughts of him as a perennial MVP candidate or First Team player were gone as quickly as they’d arrived; instead, it looked more and more like his superstardom was just a flash in the pan. Add to that a rookie head coach and a roster lacking top-end talent around him, and expectations were reasonably low for both player and team heading into this season.

It’s been all the more surprising, then, to see Sobey back among the league leaders and Brisbane in the thick of the finals race.