NO MORE NBL NICE GUYS FOR POWERHOUSE
ENOUGH is enough. No more shooting blanks.
The Brisbane Bullets were once famous for collecting NBL silverware – not wooden spoons.
So back-to-back last-place finishes in their first two seasons back from the wilderness do not sit well with the proud club.
Brisbane was a major player in the free-agency period, luring Boomers trio Cameron Gliddon, Jason Cadee and Matt Hodgson to the Sunshine State along with championship-winner Mika Vukona.
Former Chicago Bulls forward and Rio Olympian Cameron Bairstow returned to the Brisbane fold after missing the entire 2017-18 season with a serious knee injury, while 417-game NBA veteran Alonzo Gee was also picked up by the Bullets.
On paper, the squad looked good. A horror run of injuries and international commitments have all but decimated the pre-season campaign, which has featured a string of losses with the squad only getting
together as a whole before last month’s NBL Blitz preseason tournament.
But nobody at the Bullets is in panic mode ahead of their season-opener against New Zealand in Auckland this Thursday.
They did not recruit a team to win pre-season matches.
“We’ve had some results in the pre-season that we are not happy about,’’ Vukona said. “But we’ve come together as a group with a really tight-knit bond so we all work together on resolving things or changing things that have to change.”
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