Tonight we’re set to see the second meeting between the NBL’s newest franchise, the South East Melbourne Phoenix and Melbourne United.
Throwndown II, as it’s now know, will see a match-up between two of the league’s most offensively talented stars with John Roberson and Melo Trimble going head to head.
The last match-up between the two saw the Phoenix came away with a 91-88 victory where some Mitch Creek fourth quarter heroics delivered the NBL’s newest team a victory in it’s first game ever and star guard Roberson is keen to make sure he walks away with a 2-0 Throwdown record tonight.
Prior to arriving in Melbourne, Roberson has bounced all around the world. His career has seen him make stops in Slovenia, Switzerland, Sweden, Hungary, France, Russia and even the ABA, a tiny semi-pro league in the USA.
Trimble, who went undrafted after four years at Maryland University, dived straight into the NBL to start his pro career. Although he lacks the years of experience Roberson has as a pro, he has an advantage through having already played a full season in the league, last year averaging 22 points for the Cairns Taipans before being signed by Melbourne United as a replacement for exiting star Casper Ware.
Roberson’s lack of NBL experience hasn’t limited his production however, winning the MVP of the league’s pre-season Blitz tournament and averaging 22 points and 5 assists in his 5 games so far.
“It’s been a good experience so far. I’m still trying to gel with your team and get that comradely and get that chemistry in.” Roberson said.
Roberson seems to be gelling well with his Phoenix teammates and head coach Simon Mitchell who brings a very different approach to some of the coaches Roberson has dealt with before. Roberson played under the legendary but volatile coach Bobby Knight at Texas Tech before embarking on his professional career.
While he was quick to laud the teachings of Mitchell so far he wasn’t able to share too many coach Knight stories, but it was clear many of them included some colourful language.
“Some I things can’t tell, it was crazy sometimes under Coach Knight, but he was really big on discipline, focus and old school coaching. He prepared me to be coached by anyone. If you can be coached by Bobby Knight you can take on any coach you had to be locked in all the time. It really helped me as a freshman and it was my first year, it helped me grow up a lot.”
Having carved out quite a journey already, Roberson has also enjoyed sharing some of the things he’s picked up along the way with 18 year old Phoenix rookie Terry Armstrong who is part of the NBL Next Stars program.
“Compared to my first year I was the only American on the team, the coach spoke broken English, it was hard to figure out what’s going on. Terry has it much easier than I did my first year in Slovenia” said Roberson.
Melo Trimble wouldn’t have made his way to Melbourne if not for the exit of United fan favourite Casper Ware, but an off-season discussion with his long time friend Shawn Long also played a big role in him becoming part of the United squad.
Trimble won Bronze alongside Long while playing for USA in the 2015 Pan America tournament.
“It has been planned for a while, We both came out here last year (Trimble at Cairns and Long with New Zealand) and as soon as the season ended we began looking at ways we could link up on the same team and it worked out.” said Trimble.
The last time the two team’s met it was the beginning of a three game losing streak for United which has seen the club begin the year with it’s worse start to a season ever.
“Our start in the NBL is completely on us, I feel like we had those games were in our favour to win, but we just came up short in the very end.” said Trimble.
Trimble will be looking to even things at Throwdown II and it kicks off tonight at 5:30pm (AEDT.)