The Heartland Rebuild Project

After a worst ever finish since their inception, the South East Melbourne Phoenix have had one of the most intense overhauls of any NBL team this offseason.

As the saying goes, ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’

The South East Melbourne Phoenix have had some success in their short history. They made a semi-final series in their second season, had a play-in game in their fourth season and were looking like a real contender in NBL24 before injuries completely derailed them. But the reality is that for the last three seasons, they’ve failed to make the playoffs, and their inability to stay healthy and keep their best players on the floor has been a big reason.

Their end of season review was quite telling and resulted in a lot of change in how the Phoenix, entering their sixth season, were to be constructed both on and off the court.

But health was certainly holding them back and needed to change. There were other factors too. Under new head coach Mike Kelly, they also needed to get better defensively and a little bit quicker, and that meant a more deliberate set of skillsets to target in free agency.

“One of the big factors after going through that review was health, to be quite frank,” CEO Tommy Greer told The Pick and Roll last week.

“We really needed to dive into that space from a number of different areas. From how and who we recruit, how we’re resourced, through to how we’re structured in the performance department. Top to bottom, how do we give our athletes the best chance of staying on the floor.”

Greer and his staff calculated that their roster missed 63 games last season. By contrast, the two grand finalists – the Tasmania JackJumpers and Melbourne United – missed a combined 29 games. It becomes very difficult to win basketball games if you’re not keeping your talent on the floor.

Their review also identified a need to get younger, especially at their import spots, where they’ve traditionally recruited proven guys who have played in Europe.

“That generally comes with a higher age tag, so we’ve shifted our focus to a younger athlete and you’ll notice that with Joe [Wieskamp] and Matt [Hurt] coming in in that mid-twenties age bracket, coming into their prime, rather than holding onto their prime.”

The Phoenix also made a conscious decision to stay away from anyone who had any signs of chronic issues, or any resemblance of a significant injury history. They’ve bolstered their medical staff, invested more heavily in the physio space, and brought in a new high-performance manager too.

“A big focus of mine has been to invest in the culture of specifically the performance department and breed a high-care, high-challenge environment within that department,” Greer explained.

“We’ve invested a lot of time and resource into that this offseason and it’s something that we feel internally is already having a significant impact.”

But there was an even bigger change was also identified, one didn’t come out of the end of season review; it had actually been in the works for a while.