Attitude Pleasing in Pre-season Opener: Lemanis

Brisbane Bullets coach Andrej Lemanis was pleased with his club’s attitude in Friday night’s preseason opener against the Adelaide 36ers.

The Bullets fell to the 36ers 93-75 but despite the scoreboard, Lemanis says the players maintained a positive mindset during the game and understood it will help them grow towards the regular season which is due to commence in mid-January.

“What I did like about tonight was our attitude was good in terms of how we stayed together as a group and understood that this was part of the process and we kept working on the process…that was pleasing,” Lemanis said.

Anthony Drmic (17 points, six rebounds) and Harry Froling (10 points, seven rebounds) impressed in their Bullets preseason debuts, with Lemanis commenting they “both showed signs of why we recruited them…they’re good players and they’re going to help us”.

Tanner Krebs was another player who made his Brisbane preseason debut on Friday night. The returning college star had 12 points and did a “nice job and played with great poise” according to Lemanis.

Two other Bullets the coach was pleased with were Callum Dalton and Tyrell Harrison, who had an opportunity to test themselves against the 36ers’ imposing duo of Daniel Johnson and Isaac Humphries. 

“Having two young bigs like Ty and Cal come in, I thought they played with really nice energy and poise for their age,” Lemanis said.

“Both of them worked really hard in the offseason, so to come in and get that opportunity tonight to play against Daniel Johnson and Isaac Humphries, to get that experience and opportunity was good.”

Another positive from the performance was Brisbane having a chance to gel and mesh together as a group.

“It was a good opportunity for us to start to understand one another, get some of the new guys integrated, see how they perform at this level and obviously it is the preseason, so it highlights some things that you need to work on,” Lemanis said.

“Really good first hit out for us and pleased to be back playing.

“As expected, the offensive rhythm was a bit jerky tonight but again first game together as a group, lots of new guys, some practice guys as well, so we haven’t spent much time together, we only really started on Monday.

“There are some good learnings there in terms of some adjustments and teachings that we can have as we continue to grow this thing towards the start of the season.

“It was really good to be back playing. It was a lot of fun to be able to do what we do and that’s play basketball games.”

Brisbane will be back in action against Adelaide on Sunday at 1:00pm AEST at the Titanium Security Arena. The game will be live streamed for free on NBL TV and on the NBL’s Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch channels.