If nothing else, following the fortunes of the Melbourne Tigers is an eventful, unpredictable pastime. The team's season has now reached a tipping point, with some remarkable symmetries to date almost giving them a fresh start from this point forward.
The Tigers' win/loss record stands at 9-9. They have scored 1,445 points and equally allowed 1,445 points by their opponents. They have played nine games with Patty Mills and nine games without Patty Mills. Precariously, they sit in fifth place, just outside of the Finals placings.
And for a second straight season, an overhauled roster at the start of the season then sees additional major changes during the season.
Once upon a time, the Tigers were the always-steady, reliable and mostly unchanging franchise of the NBL. Lindsay Gaze was at the coaching reigns year-in-year-out, with his son Andrew filling it up night after night, connecting on alley-oops with Lanard Copeland and feeding the likes of Mark Bradtke and Dave Simmons inside. That combination seemingly was in place for decades, by today's standards in our ever-changing sports landscape.
The 2010/11 season for the Tigers started with somewhat of a science experiment, as the core of the roster consisted of import guards Eric Devendorf and 5'9" TJ Campbell on the perimeter, contrasting with four giants in Cam Tragardh, Matthew Burston, Wade Helliwell and Luke Nevill. The league sat on the edge of its collective seat, waiting to see how this laboratory combination would unfold.
Five games in, Campbell was gone, in favour of enigmatic Corey "Homicide" Williams. By February, Devendorf and coach Al Westover were axed. Not much later, Nevill was in Russia. The Tigers finished 10-18, with much disappointment and all eyes looking toward 2011/12 for renewal.
Once again, a major recruiting drive netted huge results, as the Tigers signed Cairns Taipans Finals trio Ron Dorsey, Ayinde Ubaka and Daniel Dillon. In addition, they lured swingman Liam Rush from Sweden. Then came the biggest of all signings in Boomers star Mills, a gift of the NBA lockout.
With Mills at the helm and with Tragardh scoring in bunches, the Tigers jumped out of the gates at 5-1. By the time Mills was released to sign a lucrative contract in China with the Xinjiang Flying Tigers, the Tigers were 6-3 with Mills' final game being a loss to the Adelaide 36ers.
The team then went on to lose three in a row, before getting the ship back on track with three straight wins. The Tigers' most recent three games have been another downhill slide, with three straight losses, albeit against tough competition in the Perth Wildcats, New Zealand Breakers and Gold Coast Blaze.
During those first nine games of the season, with Mills, the Tigers scored 82.8ppg and allowed 79.7ppg. Post-Patty, the Tigers have scored only 77.8ppg and allowed 80.9ppg. That's a 6.2ppg negative turnaround in points differential. Of course, part of that could be put down to schedule, with the Sydney Kings and Blaze being the Tigers' lowest ranked opponents in that second set of nine games, whereas they played both Adelaide and Wollongong in the first nine.
There definitely appears to be a negative trajectory that the team is taking of late. Either way, it was decided that changes needed to be made and Ubaka was given his marching orders after the most recent home loss to the Blaze.
Ubaka, the team's third average leading scorer, behind Tragardh and Mills and second in assists to Mills, obviously is an integral part of the Tigers' offence. Who the team brings in to replace him, and how soon it happens, will be vitally important to how the Tigers go the rest of the way.
Unlike last season, the Tigers are not stacked with big men, but rather have a range of athletic swingmen to play with. With Ubaka out the door, point duties in their entirety fall to Dillon. He is more than capable of handling the ball, but without any assistance, may be out of his depth over the course of 40 minutes. Do the Tigers replace Ubaka with a like-for-like guard, or do they go for a bigger import to bang the boards? The advanced statistics at very well-written New Zealand-based NBL blog Lob Pass To Abercrombie will tell you that whilst the Tigers can shoot the ball well, they could do with some help in the rebounding department. In fact, the Hawks are the only team that pull down less rebounds per game than the Tigers.
Lady luck has not been too unkind on the Tigers the rest of the way this season. With 10 games remaining for coach Trevor Gleeson to get the squad into gear for a Finals berth, the Tigers are fortunate enough to have four of those games against the lowly ranked Hawks and 36ers. On the other hand, the Tigers have their fate in their own hands, as four of their games are against top four squads the Breakers, Wildcats, Taipans and Crocodiles. With six of the ten games on the road, it won't be a walk in the park, but the Tigers certainly have a good shot at pushing either Townsville or Cairns out of that elite Finals club.
Where things go from here in Tigerland will be interesting to watch.
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*The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect those of the National Basketball League.
