The Melbourne Tigers are a proud basketball club, one of the most recognised and successful teams in NBL history. They’ve won four titles, played in eight grand finals, made the playoffs sixteen times, and had three players win ten MVP awards.
The home of basketball in Australia is Melbourne and while other teams have come and gone, the Tigers have remained title contenders since 1984.
They are a team regularly sitting at the top end of the NBL ladder. That will not be the case this year. The Melbourne Tigers are destined for failure because they have made two critical errors in recruiting: they have gone too tall and they have wasted their imports on players not up to the job.
Al Westover is a sharp coach and he has a fine basketball mind but he may have outsmarted himself this season by thinking he could rebuild the Tigers with big bodies and a dominating inside presence. Through two games, it has been a disaster.
The NBL has long been regarded as a guard’s league and that is exactly how it is playing out this season.
In the season opener against the reformed Sydney Kings, the Tigers were awful in offense.
They struggled to move the ball, there was little player movement and the passing game was almost non-existent. Under constant pressure from a more athletic Kings outfit untroubled by a predictable and easy-to-defend Tigers offense, Melbourne scored only 68 points on 38 per cent shooting from the field.
Astonishingly, the Tigers were beaten 38-30 on the boards, picking up only two offensive boards through the first three quarters despite having nearly 89 total minutes from players 210cm or bigger.
It only got more wretched against Perth. The Tigers were again outhustled on the boards, gave up an unbelievable 31 turnovers in only 40 minutes and scored a record low 66 points in a 25 point drubbing on home court. The Tigers four big men- Cameron Tragardh, Luke Nevill, Matt Burston and Wade Helliwell- combined for only 36 points in 100 minutes of playing time.
In both matches the Tigers players looked lethargic, unenthused and confused.
Not one of their big men went after the ball hard on the boards, defensively they were often left standing in cement as the sharp Perth guards blew right by them and on offense there was almost no movement or rotation.
The only issue that would be of more concern to coach Al Westover and the Tigers faithful would be the heinous play of import guards Eric Devendorf and T.J Campbell. Neither has settled in well.
Devendorf was signed by Melbourne after a promising but turbulent college career at Syracuse but has gone only five for 23 from the field and has only three assists to go with his five turnovers. He has made it to the charity stripe only three times and he has displayed very little ability to pass, shoot, organise or defend.
Campbell has been just as bad. Six turnovers, 26.7 per cent from the field including 20 per cent from beyond the arc and a failure to get to the line even once only begins to tell the story of how poorly he has played in two matches.
The Melbourne Tigers are in a lot of trouble. We are only two games in but they look built for failure. It is doubtful even the most strident critic of the Tigers recruitment could have envisaged the cesspool of mediocrity in which the team is drowning.
The Tigers are bound to finish closer to last than first this season. That you can bank on.
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