Protecting the rim without Will Magnay

The loss of Will Magnay for three to four weeks while he recovers from knee bruising is a tough break for the JackJumpers, who were on a 4-game winning streak when their starting centre went down last week.

Their first game without him against the South East Melbourne Phoenix showed what an important role he plays in the offence, but also protecting the rim. The Phoenix dominated inside scoring 44 of their 83 points inside the paint and won the rebound count 44-38 on their way to a 83-71 figure victory.

Will Magnay’s big 2022

Prior to the injury, Magnay had been playing his best basketball of the season, heading back to the levels that saw him signed by the New Orleans Pelicans in the 20-21 NBA season. His performances were a large part of Tasmania’s recent 4 game winning streak.

Having entered the season under limited preparation following off season foot surgery, we saw glimpses of his great play in December before he was struck down with COVID.

But since returning from COVID isolation he has taken his game to another level. From January 23 onwards, Magnay has averaged 9.4 points at 56% from the field, 6.6 rebounds, 1.2 steals, and 2.6 blocks in 25 mins a game.

Despite the small sample size, his performance across those 6 games exceed his numbers from his initial “breakout year” with the Brisbane in 2019-20.

Filling the hole left by your 208cm starting centre is big ask for Tasmania, especially for a team that is already one of the shortest in the league. When constructing the team last year Roth showed a lot of faith in Magnay by not signing a genuine back up centre. But Roth is confident his team is able to cover it.

“You just show up with the guys that you have and you just try do the best you can and give guys opportunities to go play,” Scott Roth said in Sunday’s post-game press conference, when asked how the team will go forward without Magnay.

“We’ll just have to do it by committee and that’s fine. What a great opportunity for these other guys to get in there and play.

“It’s exciting to see them go out there and battle, compete and play. Im excited to see what happens with these guys and we’ll be better when Will comes back because these guys have gotten more opportunities to play,” Scott Roth said.

The JackJumpers “other guys”

As we mentioned earlier, the JackJumpers are not a big team. More specifically, their taller players on the roster currently don’t play a huge amount of minutes. So their depth is going to be tested over the next month, and one game in Roth has already shown he prepared to throw out all sorts of player combinations.

On Sunday against the Phoenix Roth started development player Jock Perry, in his first minutes since December 23. During the game Roth also gave extended minutes for Mikyle Macintosh and Fabian Krislovich, while Jarred Bairstow saw his first game action after three games on the sidelines

These four big’s will fill the void during Magnays absence, who will miss up to six games if he is sidelined for the full four weeks. We have a look at what impact each player could bring over that time.

Jock Perry (216cm) – As we mentioned earlier, the first year development player was surprisingly thrown into the starting lineup on Sunday against the Phoenix. This was mostly to counter the Phoenix starting center Zhou Qi and limited his impact early in the game.

We have seen very little of Jock so far this season, a total of eight minutes across three games coming into Sunday. However, we did see a lot of him during the pre-season blitz where he was capable of spreading the floor and knocking down multiple threes. Defensively he is ok, but tends to rely on his height with his rebounding. Needs to get in better positioning to box out and compete for the boards.

Fabian Krislovic (203cm) – Fab’s number have been slightly down with the JackJumpers after three seasons in Cairns. But these are mostly due to a drop in minutes. He has shown he can bang in down low with bigger opponents and this will likely get more court time against teams with strong post players. His low post game is solid, and has a nice hook shot he can go to if needed. He also isn’t afraid to shoot from outside, where he is often left wide open by his opponents. But he’s shot a respectable 5-13 from outside so far , knocking down a few more may see him drag the bigs out to defend him.

Jarred Bairstow (201cm) – He has already started a number of games earlier in the season while Magnay was on limited minutes and will be relied upon again to help fill the void. Jarred is out there setting screens, boxing out, defense and doing all the small things that help the team that don’t show up on the stat sheets. He averaged 12 minutes across 38 games for the Wildcats last season, including playing in all semi and grand final games. So he’s more than capable to step and play a larger role when required.

Mikyle McIntosh (201cm) – Probably the one with the most gain is McIntosh, who recently has had some good game after being called out by Scott Roth to lift his game. Already strong in the power forward role, his strength in defending taller players will see him shift as an undersized centre in small ball line-ups. We’d like to see him move to around 20 mins a game (currently averaging 15 mpg) but a lot will come down to his ability to stay out of foul trouble.

We look forward to having Magnay back, but hopefully this stretch of games will help the confidence of some of our bench players and lead them to finish off the season strong.