With a minute yet to be played on court and Scott Roth keeping quiet on his lineup, its difficult to tell what combination of players will be in starting the JackJumpers 21-22 season. We touched on potential lineups in our roster analysis, and its fairly likely we’ll see the three imports starting, along with Magnay who is far and away the best option at Center. The last spot is likely to come down to matchups and form, but it will be we are things it a battle between Nikita Mikhailoviski, Jack McVeigh or Sam McDaniel.
Although the imports will have a large say in how the JackJumpers fortunes in 2021/22, it’s the 2nd unit that is going to define not only the debut season, but also the futures for the first three seasons due to the nature of their contracts.
When looking at bench depth in the NBL, you only have to look back to the Perth Wildcats 2021 playoffs campaign to see how injuries can test team. With MVP Bryce Cotton going down with injury right before the post season began, many people put a line through the Wildcats championship hopes.
Going down 1-0 and facing elimination on the road in versus the hawks, the wildcats lifted for an unexpected road win. They took the series back to Perth where they ultimately won 2-1 and advance to another Grand Finals series. This wasn’t about one player stepping up, this was development players Luke Travers moving to the starting lineup. In this role his averages jumped to 10 points and 7 rebounds before he also succumbed to injury (missing first 2 grand final games). Kevin White also stepped his game up, and Mitch Norton elevating his role as a defensive anchor of the team.
Although this is extreme example, but for all teams the 2nd unit needs to be ready to step up.
The JackJumpers have approached this in an interesting way by looking at the longer term, with the majority players in the 2nd unit being signed to multiyear contracts. On the positives of this approach, this provides player stability, they don’t need to come in and worry about their stats and playing for a contract in their first season. This approach gives the group two to three years to really develop their role, work around the imports and star players and work their way into the larger role or potential starter roles into the future.
On the flipside, if the 2nd unit doesn’t fire at all this season, the JackJumpers will be stuck with a multi-season headache. With little room to re-tool the bench in the next few seasons, there is no plan B to address the issues in the short term.
An underperforming bench also has a significant impact on the starters, who could be forced into playing longer minutes each night. This isn’t bad from the odd stretch of games, but will slowly wear players down over the season.
How is the bench looking this year? Well its looking quite thin at the moment
Scott Roth many times has used his time at the Wildcats as the standard of what an NBL team should, lets hope he can bring that same mentality to his 2nd unit at the JackJumpers.
