Vickerman breaks down unbelievable offensive stretch

Across the first 16 games of the season, no team has been better offensively than Melbourne United.

This has been particularly evident over United’s past five outings, where they have averaged 128.6 points per 100 possessions.

Boasting seven players in double figure point totals in each of Melbourne’s Round 11 victories, Dean Vickerman joined Julian De Stoop on SEN to talk through how his team has found so much success. 

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“When we built this team, we were trying to be more of a Euroleague team or have kind of a national team concept where there is a depth to the roster and we’re trying to play defence at a really high level and that means a rotation is required to try and keep that effort on the floor,” he explained.

“We saw some people not shoot the ball well in the first half of the year and now we’re starting to see Tanner Krebs come through and we’re starting to see Shea Ili come through, as well as Luke Travers, those guys are going to be really important to us in the way that they shoot the ball in the second half of the year.”

As mentioned by Vickerman, United’s stars have been dialled in from downtown in their last five games, averaging 12.6 three-point makes on 46.7% shooting as a team.

Leading the way in this category is Chris Goulding, who has accounted for 5.6 of these makes while shooting an astonishing 56% from deep.

Vickerman said this has led to so many open looks for the rest of MU’s stars as team’s focus all their attention on Goulding.

“We continue to look at the quality of three-balls that we’re getting and obviously the way CG has been shooting the basketball, he’s opening things up for other people to score.

“Then we’re looking at the cheap points we can get. How are we going in fast breaks and are we getting to the foul-line enough and over the last five games we’ve been going pretty well.”

Leading into what looks to be one of the biggest games of the season on Saturday evening against the Perth Wildcats, Vickerman talked through what it’s like to coach under the stars in the Open Air Game.

“I think it’s magnificent. You see the pictures from the game, people in the NBA have spoken to me saying ‘oh wow, what’s this game about’.

“It gets us recognition for our league being innovative and being able to do different things.

“To be able to walk out there with still some light in the stands and then to see the stars and have a different feel, have a little bit of a breeze coming through is amazing.”

Less than 500 tickets remain for the Open Air Game, so make sure you don’t miss out and secure your seat today!