Shooting has to catch up to improved effort

Brisbane Bullets coach Darryl McDonald couldn’t fault his team's vasty improvement energy and effort on Sunday, and now he just wants them to be confident and smarter with their shooting to get another win before the end of NBL26.

Even though the losses have been mounting in the back end of the season for the Bullets, given the personnel situation with the number of key players sidelined, at least McDonald felt he could bank on his team competing.

That's not what he saw on Friday night in Hobart in the 44-point loss to the Tasmania JackJumpers even factoring in losing Tristan Devers and Alex Ducas to injury before half-time.

So coming home to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Sunday, McDonald's non-negotiable was them to compete and they certainly did that against the Cairns Taipans by getting up 25 extra shots and pulling down a massive 25 offensive rebounds.

Shooting the ball was the problem with the Bullets going 36 per cent from the field and 3/24 from deep, but McDonald couldn’t fault the effort level.

"Off the back of the last game, I just didn’t think we did (compete) and I thought the one thing I would get with this group is that we're going to be competitive, and that we're going to compete," McDonald said.

"That's what I kinda went off like I did with my pre-game, and we didn’t win the game, but they competed and I have absolutely no problem with the way we competed today, but we just need to be able to score the ball and make some shots.

"Lately over our last four or five games, I don’t know what we're shooting from three but it's not great and we went another 3/24 in this game, and it just makes it hard and you're only going to put scoreboard pressure on teams if you can knock shots down.

"That changes the way they defend you and it was to a point they wasn’t even defending some of our guys at some points, but if you hit one or two of those shots it changes the way that they defend.

"You're going to get 25 o-boards when you shoot 35 per cent from the field, but the effort to go and get them is something I was happy with especially after having a chat to Terry and Holty about doing that.

"If we're not running an offence for those guys, that's another way they can get points and they did that."

Hallelujah, that was McDonald's instant reaction after power forward Terry Taylor produced his best performance of the season by being more aggressive on his way to 25 points and nine rebounds with 12/22 shooting and even making one of just threes from the team for the game against Cairns.

"Hallelujah, that's exactly what we've been wanting from him and if you're an import in this league, man, get up 22 shots especially when we need you to score you know what I mean," McDonald said.

"With the big fella Tyrell out, with Smack out, Casey out and a lot of guys out who score for us, and we just don't have nobody who can put the ball in the hole and that's the one thing he (Taylor) can do.

"I tell him that even somethings you've gotta force some stuff and he had a couple of drives on McVeigh early and I just wanted him to attack him, and if that's what you have to do to get us some points then you gotta do it.

"I don’t want to have to draw up plays for you every time, go get your own sometimes and that can be going to the offensive glass, sometimes breaking out of plays and getting on the rim, and it was just good to see him getting up 22 shots.

"I told him when he first got here and I said I need you to get up 15 to 20 shots a game so to get up 22, if he can do that then he should be doing that every time. As long as he's getting them up, that's the main thing."

McDonald isn’t sure why the Bullets are struggling to make shots like they are because he knows it's not from a lack of putting the work in or talent, but he's no longer keen on just telling them to shoot because he's realising there's no point shooting, if they continue missing.

The numbers are damning with the Bullets shooting a league low 27.5 per cent from three for the season but over the last five games since they went 12/38 against the Sydney Kings, it's really fallen away.

They have gone 28/138 at 20 per cent and McDonald knows if they want to get a win to close the season, that must improve.

"You just have to be able to knock them down and you look at our roster, and we've got guys who are supposed to be shooters and when the shots come, and you're open, you have to be able to hit it," McDonald.

"It's easy to say shoot it, but you actually have to be able to hit it and we have some guys who are getting looks like we want them to, but then when the shot gets up you've got to be able to put it in the hole.

"It's been something that's kinda hurt us all year you know what I mean, and it's hard to explain because it's not like we don't shoot and we have our own facility where guys can shoot every day.

"I guess it's different once the lights come on and there's fans in the stands and things like that, but to be honest, I don't want to make excuses but it's a tough one when you aren't knocking shots down."

It might have happened in patches previously in the back half of the season, but the other aspect that became apparent with the way the Taipans defended the Bullets on Sunday was that they were daring both Hunter Maldonado and Mitch Norton to take a three.

You could understand why when they are shooting a combined 14/88 at 16 per cent from three-point range as Bullets teammates, but at the same time, there are ways that McDonald can see for them to use it to their advantage.

After all, he's perfectly positioned to know that because early in his 486-game NBL career, teams did similar to him and he ended up going from a 20 per cent shooter who made nine threes in his first season in 1994, to a best of making 42 in 2002/03 at 35 per cent.

"I was trying to get him (Maldonado) to instead of running on-balls, just run zooms and that's just a dribble hand off at Ducas or Taine, but I don’t think he understood what I was saying and his whole mindset was that he didn’t want to get a foul doing that," McDonald said.

"He wouldn’t get a foul, all he had to do was head hunt his man who was sagging off him, and he would get wide open shots after that hand off, but maybe I didn’t explain it well enough and we'll work on it this week.

"It's what teams are going to do so it's about helping your teammate, and he also wanting to run some gets action where he goes to Holty, and then has a pin down for Ducas but Holty wasn’t understanding what he was saying so we were in between a rock and a hard place.

"That's why we ended up taking contested shots or bad shots, but it's little things like that and if you watch a guy like Shea Ili who has done with Chris Goulding for years, and even Tyson Walker's doing it now and Delly was doing it when he was at Melbourne.

"Those are the ways that if a team is playing off you like that, you can get teammates shots by just doing that and it's something we'll be talking about over this week going into Perth because they'll probably defend us the same."

On top of McDonald wanting to work on how to handle things if a defence is sagging off Maldonado and/or Norton, he also doesn’t want his team just to settle for an early three at the start of the offence.

With the full knowledge that they could still get that same shot later in the clock, he wants his team to run the offence first and see if they can create a better look, and if not then you can come back to that shot you might have been settling for 20 seconds earlier.

"I also told them to not take shots too early in the shot clock, that's what they want us to do and take those early threes, and we work on these shots every day so you should be confident, but you can get that same shot later in the clock," McDonald said.

"You're always going to get the ball back, that's what I was trying to explain to them, it's not like they're going to deny you and they are still going to get under you so you can get that shot with a bit more rhythm later on instead of jacking up the early ones.

"For us, playing fast is probably not a great idea because we're limited on bodies and we can't just run up and down with teams so put them in different actions, get it to one side and the next, and it will come back to you.

"Then you step into your shot and you knock it down, it shouldn’t be too hard."