Dellavedova finding "balance" for United

Melbourne United head coach Dean Vickerman has praised the basketball IQ of star guard Matthew Dellavedova, and believes the 33-year-old has a “great balance between scoring and facilitating” as the end of the regular season approaches.

Dellavedova finished Melbourne’s one-point Round 15 win over New Zealand with 10 assists, and fell one assist shy of a double-double in each of United’s two prior games to the win against the Breakers.

A pair of lobs to Luke Travers were the pick of the former NBA champion’s dimes against the Breakers, and Vickerman believes Dellavedova helped swing the tight game in United’s favour.

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“The basketball IQ is off the charts,” Vickerman told SEN.

“I thought the other night in a challenging defence New Zealand gave us where they put Cheatham on him and they were happy to switch, Delly just continued to have these big guys on him and just to be able to work it out as the game went along.

“You go back and watch the replay and he hits Luke Travers for two alley-oop dunks in a row that gets us a little break in the game and he’s probably going to end up leading the league in assists which is something we really want from him.

“We saw what we saw in the Blitz and earlier in the year when he was just on this scoring run and now I think he’s found a really good balance between his assists.

“I think he’s got a great balance between scoring and facilitating right now.”

One player Vickerman has earmarked for further offensive opportunities is star wing Chris Goulding, who is beginning to re-establish the offensive level that saw him labelled a genuine MVP candidate earlier in the season.

Goulding shouldered a drastically higher offensive load while the likes of Dellavedova, Ian Clark and Travers battled injuries earlier in the campaign, but the return of some of United’s other scoring threats saw his ball usage drop.

Vickerman says there has been a noted effort to ensure Goulding puts up as many good three-point attempts as possible in United’s offence.

“He's in really good form, there was a period there where we had a lot of people out and he was somewhere between 12 and 15 three-point attempts per game,” Vickerman said of the club captain.

“Then we got some people back and people have really been keying in on him. That level dropped for a little while where he only got six or seven, so we’ve made a real point to say ‘let’s get him 10 great threes if we can’.

“He got nine up the other day and we only had 18 attempts from the three-point line.

“It’s such a part of our offence and his threat just opens up other people, so we have to keep putting him in the right positions.”

Melbourne next hit the court on Friday night when they face the Tasmania JackJumpers.