Better ball movement one easy Bullets fix

The reality is that the Brisbane Bullets aren’t getting the time to practice as a full group right now but coach Stu Lash is seeing things that can be easily fixed and better movement is one of those.

While nobody at the Bullets wants to be making excuses including Lash, the reality is that in the opening minutes of the season they lost their heart and soul leader Mitch Norton to a knee injury.

Then in the opening minutes of the second game they lost one of the league's standout defenders Sam McDaniel to an ankle complaint, and now import wing Javon Freeman-Liberty played just two games.

Throw in that Jacob Holt not only hasn’t played yet, but hasn’t hit the practice floor with a hip injury and then there was Casey Prather missing a game and crucial practice time with concussion protocols.

Add in that gun centre Tyrell Harrison has had to battle foul trouble in games and there's been a lot to deal with for the Bullets across the first five games of the season with four of those all away from home too.

The positive is that they have been a good chance to win four of those five before things did get away from them a little against the Illawarra Hawks this past Saturday night with the eventual 27-point defeat.

It's not about making excuses, but it's dealing with the reality of the situation that at no point so far in preparation for the season or during the season have the Bullets been able to get a run at practicing with their full group available.

It did catch up with them against he Hawks in Wollongong and Lash was realistic about the situation afterwards ahead of Wednesday night's clash with the Wildcats in Perth.

"I'm a big believer that your games are won in what you do in the week of practice," Lash said.

"We're down bodies, we've got guys trying to play certain things that aren’t even reported and we're not practicing to the level that we need to during the week to build ourselves into the game.

"That's hard to do and there was protocols that Casey was in so we had to bring him along, and we're obviously going to follow those because we care about our players deeply.

"When you're short bodies and you only have nine or 10 actually active to practice, and two or three of those that you are managing, you're running the risk coming into a game maybe not as sharp as you want to be.

"The intent is there from the guys and they are upset, and want to fight and compete, but this is a tough league and if you aren’t at your best, this is what can happen."

It wasn’t a good shooting night for the Bullets in the loss to the Hawks on Saturday with them going 43 per cent overall as a team and hitting just 3/22 from three-point territory even though they did well going 26/33 at the foul line.

Lash is happy with the shooters that the Bullets have on the team, but it all comes back to creating the right shots to take and the ball movement is where it all has to start from.

"It's not that we're not good shooters, it's the type of threes that we're generating, that's the problem," Lash said.

"When it's coming off one pass and a shot, and it's coming quick, and when you get down early, we have competitive guys and they want to win.

"Sometimes you can fall in that trap of trying to get it back too quickly. And if you do go down early by a lot, it's better to have that early in the game and you have time to stick with it and chip away at it.

"I just felt like we put too much pressure on ourselves to get it all back and then that resulted in the amount of pressure put on our defence in transition. We talked about it during the game, when the ball doesn’t move for us, we're putting ourselves in a really tough position."

One thing the Bullets did well with in preparation for NBL26 was to have insurance policies in place and that's meant that Cal Dalton has been able to step in for the absence of Holt, and Lamar Patterson has done the same for the now departed Freeman-Liberty.

Given Patterson is coming off an MVP season in the NBL1 North with the Ipswich Force and is a previous two-time member of the All-First Team in the NBL with the Bullets, there's no doubting his credentials.

And he showed that he still has a lot to offer in the NBL on Saturday night when he produced 17 points, five rebounds, five assists, two steals and two blocked shots on the back of 8/14 field goal shooting.

"Lamar's a pro and has been in this league, and knows what it takes," Lash said.

"He was a bit of a release valve for us and was able to give that second unit a bit of a go-to guy. I'm happy with that for Lamar personally because I know he's worked really hard to put himself in this position and he's making a big sacrifice for us.

"But just collectively as a whole, we just need to understand that if we're going to play a certain way offensively and we don’t stay consistent with that, we run the risk of putting tremendous pressure on our defence."