Bullets take stock after home stand

Two games into his NBL career and the signs are exciting for what Dakota Mathias can bring to the Brisbane Bullets with coach Stu Lash looking to tidy up his team's ability to take care of the ball and start games better.

The Bullets completed a run of three home games at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in a week with a big win against the Cairns Taipans back on Thursday night but with defeats in consecutive Saturday nights to the South East Melbourne Phoenix and Sydney Kings.

There were trends in those two defeats including giving up the first six points this past Saturday to the Kings with Sydney ending up leading 35-17 by quarter-time. Seven days earlier and South East Melbourne opened up that game with a 14-1 run.

Across those two defeats, the Bullets coughed up 30 turnovers to 14 from their opponents while only having 20 offensive rebounds and giving up 38 which ultimately meant the Kings and Phoenix combined to take an extra 33 field goals.

Those are all the areas that Lash and the Bullets coaching staff will be heavily focused on heading into Saturday's road clash with the JackJumpers, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t positives.

New import Mathias is now two games into his NBL career and he showed good signs both against Cairns and Sydney putting up a combined 27 points in his 53 minutes with eight rebounds and three assists while knocking down five of his three-point attempts.

"It's just the comfort level of getting to know your teammates and the spots that you know you can be effective," Lash said.

"He's a professional and has played international basketball, he's played in the NBA and he's been effective in the G League.

"He understands what we're trying to do and how we're trying to play so we're pleased with his performance, but he'll be the first to tell you that there's areas he's got to improve on as he learns the personnel of the league.

"That's probably the one area that as you come in mid-season and he's watching the film and doing all the work, but until you actually play these teams and get a feel for everybody, that's where he'll continue to really make his mark."

Speaking after Saturday night's loss at home to Sydney, Lash lamented another slow start and knows that trying to play catch up against good teams is a problem the Bullets don't need to be giving themselves.

"It was a tough game and we certainly wanted to come out with a better effort, and the start of the game is continuing to be a trend for us," Lash said.

"We need to figure that out and figure it out quickly because if you want to compete with teams that are vying to be in the top four in this league we need to be better."

A big reason that Lash identified for the tough start on Saturday night against Sydney was their turnovers.

The Bullets are now averaging 12.8 turnovers a game to be the second worst in that category across the league. He knows it's something they need to tidy up, especially not trying to force things and stick to their plans when things are getting a little stressed or challenging.

"A lot of it was really concentrated in that first quarter and we may have had nine or 10 in the first quarter, and that just ignites their transition," Lash said.

"They feast off live ball turnovers and just get downhill with every guy on that team able to put heat on the rim in transition.

"It's something we talked about and we have a tendency when we get into a crowd of taking one extra dribble to get a little too deep, and then not kicking it out to the shooters as efficiently as we should.

"Then they just swarm on us and a turnover happens and we have multiple guys in the paint, and are not getting back quick enough.

"It just puts stress on us and then we come down offensively after that, and we start pressing a little bit too much offensively and getting away from what we want to do in terms of ball movement.

"It just spirals from there and it's just an area that we have to get to work on this week, and continue to try to get better at.

"The guys know they have to be better in the space and if you want to compete with teams that are legitimate top four level clubs, you have to put together 40 minutes of solid play. You can't just have different segments of the game where you play well."

Having played 11 games which is the equal most across the opening seven rounds of the season, the Bullets now have until Saturday when they take on the JackJumpers in Hobart.

Lash is looking forward to the preparation time.

"It's a full week without travel for us after we had six of the first eight on the road, and we've certainly had some injuries like everyone else, but I think there's a bit of mental fatigue probably," Lash said.

"You get to that 10-game marker and it's about a third of the season and you want to kinda take a little bit of a deep breath about where are we, who are we as a basketball team.

"There's still a lot of confident about what we're doing, how we're going and the way we're trending. There's just some areas that we really need to improve on and improve on quickly if we want to be fighting for a top four spot, which is one of our goals."