John Brown

I felt like Skylar Mays was really impressive early, but he faded late with seventeen, five, and seven.

I think the question I have for you, Toby, is, are we underrating the loss of John Brown III from this lineup? Because he brought a level of accountability and high, high standards and professionalism into this team.

You saw how often they strapped for every loose ball and strapped for every ball off the glass.

They played with a hard and physical edge.

Uh, yeah, I think in the first week, we likened Schwartz to a unicorn, and we haven't seen any of that.

And then, y-yeah, it's good to have three options at center, but if you were to get rid of a Janice Moran and get someone very similar to John Brown or even get someone who is just a-another scoring option, I think Hunter and Ekachala are good enough to hold down the five.

So yes, definitely missing John Brown III a lot.

Yeah, and like, as, as you mentioned, like who do they go to? So Tanner Krebs was scoreless.

Sure did.

The big f- out to me is John Brown.

John Brown, offensively, he was solid, but what he did-

Mm

... defensively was outstanding.

Anybody who's seen him understands this.

But then also looking at Deshaun Schwartz and Yanis Morin in particular, um kind of coming in and and really being on a hiding to nothing because people are kind of automatically comparing him to john brown who was incredible for you guys last year defensive player of the year on nbl first team or all that stuff but i just wanted to sort of get your thoughts on kind of the the process around um how you were building with those three guys Um, and what your thoughts on them, uh, so, you know, what, how they've been, uh, incorporated into the group, how they're, uh, contributing and all of that stuff.

Yeah, I think we've got tremendous Australian depth of talent, I think.

And that's been our priority when we've been building teams is to continue to build through Australian talent.

He's been a little bit mis-advertised, incorrectly by the media and we don't expect when people to have a great understanding of the players when they come in.

Firstly, I'm going to say this.

There is only one John Brown.

John Brown is a population of one.

He dropped 26,000.

The only import he's had any luck with since being in this league is John Brown III.

And he was recruited two years prior by Perth.

So it wasn't like it was really all on him.

And if you look at last year when they were so competitive, a lot of pundits at the start of this year expected them to be right there at the end of the season.

But you take out Wes Iwundu, you take out John Brown, and then you take out Ian Clark, and then you bring in Schwartz, Morin, and Mays.

You can see now, is this team going to struggle to make the top six unless they make some changes? Because, I mean, I'm concerned.

I know it's too early to panic, but those are three hard guys to replace.

So it was nice to see him find some level of comfort within that game.

Also, John really was not messing around.

He played all his starters 30 minutes plus.

He cut down his rotation to a playoff number of eight.

He was not messing around.

He treated that like a postseason game and he let those guys run.

So just on that conduct from John really alone, it tells you how important that game was last night.

Yeah, incredibly important.

Yeah, I really tried to fit him into my own NBL first team, but I was like, I've already got Cole there.

I was like, can you squeeze in two United guys? I know there was two Phoenix guys last year with obviously Nathan Sobey and John Brown.

And let me say another thing.

Due to the fact that Illy is hurt right now and Cole Anthony may not be 100%, This will put an extra pressure on Travers to perform well early if United want to get off to a good start.