Perth Wildcats coach Rob Beveridge is not bothered about Patty Mills – NBL Update
Few days back, award winning coach, Rob Beveridge who guided his team Perth Wildcats through an unbeaten December, was offered an extension deal with the club. He acquiescently accepted the offer.
However, Wildcats first game after Rob’s extension deal was not what Rob would have wished for as Perth had to taste defeat in a close encounter at the hands of Melbourne Tigers, the team which recently acquired the NBA’s Portland
Trail Blazers point guard Patrick Mills.
The game was played in front of a sell-out crowd on Friday night and Patrick Mills made sure the crowd go back home satisfied as he put up a brilliant show scoring match high 28 points including six breathtaking three pointers
along with four straight clutch free throws to stamp the victory.
It was his outstanding show that also earned him NBL player of the week award later. Melbourne Tigers coach was pretty ecstatic with the win and Mills performance but what about his counter-part, Rob Beveridge?
Beveridge job security is not a problem for another two years but inclusion of Mills in the Tigers might be giving him sleepless nights. When asked, whether Mills has been causing him nightmares, he responded:
“No, none whatsoever. We’ve got a lot of respect for everybody in their team, they’re probably the most gifted team offensively, with (guard Ayinde) Ubaka, (forward Ron) Dorsey and (209cm big man Cameron) Tragardh. If we pay too
much attention to Patty that will take away from them. I’m not losing sleep over them, I’m just focused on our guys, on how well we’re doing and setting ourselves an enormous amount of goals with what we do. It just happens to be that we are playing Patty
Mills this week, (who we have an) enormous amount of respect (for)”
Beveridge is a seasoned coach and with the statement he made about Mills just confirms he is mentally tough too. Though Mills inclusion has strengthened the Melbourne Tigers but it will not affect the fibrous Beveridge.
One of the major strengths of Rob throughout his lavish career has been his ability to spot and then groom the talent. He is confident; Wildcats will be able to keep displaying Western Australia’s best youngsters in the coming
years.
He is a smart operator and knows where to place each and every roster in the court. His perfect allocation of positions for Wildcats former players Ricky Grace, James Crawford and Kevin Lischs just shows how good he is with the
job.
He probably has already started working on how to hold Mills which for obvious reasons he did not disclose when he was asked about it. It will be interesting to see his strategy against Mills when Wildcats come face to face with
tigers in future.
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