DMac wants Ty to reach his potential

Tyrell Harrison's impressive numbers didn’t quite tell the story of his imposing presence on Saturday night for the Brisbane Bullets with Darryl McDonald continuing to push him to become the NBL's best centre.

Harrison has always shown he has the potential to be a dominant five man in the league right throughout his career with the Bullets and to start with it was just about getting over his injury curse, and then about having that self-belief.

Harrison delivered 23 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks in the narrow loss to Melbourne United on Saturday night with interim coach McDonald wanting him to believe in himself that he can become the best centre in the NBL.

"Coming into the season the plan was to get him to be the best centre in the league and dominate your position you know what I mean," McDonald said.

"He's had some really, really good ones and he's had some games that hasn’t been so good, but for him since I've taken over I want to give him an opportunity to be the best big in the league.

"We're going to come to you, man, we want you to make plays and we want to put you in pick-and-rolls, and defensively we want you to be solid and win your position.

"We didn’t win this game, but I thought he won his position against (Jesse) Edwards."

He was reaching his potential last year as the league's Most Improved Player before a late season concussion and then had a big off-season including playing at the Summer League and knocking on the door of an NBA roster.

That meant coming into NBL26, the chance was there for Harrison to continue to take the next step that his coaches at the Bullets have been pushing him to get to whether that's been Andrej Lemanis, CJ Bruton, Sam Mackinnon, James Duncan, Justin Schueller, Stu Lash and fellow centre Greg Vandejagt.

Now interim coach McDonald is in a second year as part of the Bullets coaching staff to be working with Harrison and ever since he's arrived, he's been telling Harrison that there's no reason he can't turn himself into the best centre in the NBL.

There has been dominant performances throughout this season from the 26-year-old Tall Blacks big man, but on Saturday against Melbourne United he really showed how dominant he can be.

He hit his first triple of the season to give the Bullets some momentum going into three quarter-time and then he was at the forefront of a 15-2 run that saw them take the lead in the fourth quarter.

He had a powerful dunk, two massive blocks on Milton Doyle and Chris Goulding in that stretch, and finished the game with 23 points, 11 rebounds and three blocks on 10/15 shooting with those numbers only partly telling the story of his impact.

McDonald does feel that in his understated way, Harrison has that belief in himself and he also thinks the arrival now of import point guard Hunter Maldonado will help him for the rest of NBL26.

"I don't think he knows how good he can be, but I've been telling him this for two years and Vandy tells him, and I tell him that you can be the best centre in the league but it's gotta be something that you want to do, and that you crave it," McDonald said.

"You have to want to come in every day and get your work in, and you have to hit these games and want to dominate these games, and there's just a part of him that he doesn’t see but we do see it as his coaches.

"We've just gotta put him in a position to be effective and he's got a bit of a cheeky smile, and he's actually a funny dude and I just don’t believe he knows he can do it, but coming from us we actually know he can.

"For us now it's about putting him in the position to be more effective and I think Maldonado coming in is going to help that because he's a good pick-and-roll player, and he can get Ty some easy buckets.

"Right now Ty has to work for everything whether he's in the paint and hands are everywhere, and he had four turnovers and some of them I won't put on him because it's hard when you've got so many hands around.

"I just think Maldonado will help us with getting him some easy baskets."

While McDonald liked a lot of what Harrison did, he does want to see him be stronger keeping the ball up too especially given Melbourne guard Tyson Walker has had 15 steals now in the two games against the Bullets at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre this season.

"Ty is one of the best in the game and one of the best centres here, and we're trying to make him a focal point and you can't go to him all the time, but we want to go to him when he can go to the rim," McDonald said.

"He does need to stop putting the ball on the floor because every time he puts it down they're coming and we had that problem with them last time played them because defensively they're really active.

"Once you can get two feet in the paint you establish yourself, but as soon as you put the ball on the floor they're like piranhas in there so we have to be able to take care of the ball as one thing.

"Then we talk about o-boards and kick outs. We had 18 offensive rebounds ourselves and we had four second chance points. That's a bit of a problem, come on now, 18 o-boards and four second chance points.

"That's a tough one and we talk about when we're warming up and in training, and if you don't have a point blank layup or dunk after an o-board, kick it out for a three and we want to get up as many threes as possible."