South East Melbourne coach Josh King intends to flout convention in his bid to blunt NBA superstar Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans.<\/p>\n
And Melbourne United counterpart Dean Vickerman suspects his own approach might bend the rules.<\/p>\n
But the two tacticians will need to get creative if they are to upset the Pelicans in this week’s historic “NBA x NBL” exhibition series – the first of its kind in Australia.<\/p>\n
Williamson will be the headline act as the Pelicans become the first NBA team to play Down Under in games against United (Friday) and the Phoenix (Sunday).<\/p>\n
“Everyone always says you can’t press in the NBA, but we’re at least going to try it like once or twice, just to see what it looks like,” King said with a smile.<\/p>\n
“My assistants tell me not to do it, but we’re going to try it. There’s our game plan.”<\/p>\n
In a serious tone, King said he has huge respect for the Pelicans and two-time All-Star Williamson.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to be able to put a game plan together to stop him,” King said.<\/p>\n
“We’re just going to play our game and work on some things that we need to improve upon, and just have fun with it.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully both teams stay injury-free.”<\/p>\n
Melbourne (3-0) lead the early season NBL standings but face a different test against the Pelicans and a slimmed-down Williamson.<\/p>\n
The former No.1 draft pick has said he feels physically as good as he has since college, and is expected to pose a greater threat to NBA rivals this season.<\/p>\n
“We may get called for illegal defence,” Vickerman said, drawing laughter from the assembled press pack.<\/p>\n
“We might try to build a wall there to try and stop him getting to the rim, but our guys are looking forward to it.<\/p>\n
“In scout they were talking about matching up on him and how we try to slow him down or contain him in any way. It’s a great challenge.”<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen how much court time New Orleans head coach Willie Green will allow Williamson and fellow members of his starting rotation in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
But Green hopes the “NBA x NBL” series is a tough early hit-out for a revamped Pelicans outfit as he attempts to steer the team back into play-offs contention this season.<\/p>\n
“It goes back down to continuing to go out and compete in every game,” Green said.<\/p>\n
“We had some good practice time in New Orleans before we got here and we’ve had a couple of days here since we’ve been in Australia.<\/p>\n
“We know these (NBL) guys have been playing, but we want to start our games extremely competitive, sharing the basketball and really have a great time doing that on the floor.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South East Melbourne coach Josh King intends to flout convention in his bid to blunt NBA superstar Zion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[7,4500,6807,6811,6805,6,478,470,4073,4072,67,6808,6806,6809,675,6810,447],"class_list":{"0":"post-315822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-daily-news","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-inkl","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-new-orleans","15":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","16":"tag-neworleans","17":"tag-neworleanspelicans","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-news-app","20":"tag-news-headlines","21":"tag-news-today","22":"tag-pelicans","23":"tag-today-news","24":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115301017642885337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}