Time to usher in the Coach Yim era at the Sharks
Thursday night will be the first chance for new coach Yim and his team to put down a marker on the national stage after a couple of weeks training together.
The Jonathan Yim era at the Southland Sharks will officially get underway on Thursday night - in Greymouth of all places.
The Sharks will take on the Taranaki Airs in Greymouth as part of the National Basketball League’s preseason Westside Blitz. The game will tip-off at 7.30pm.
It will be the first chance for new coach Yim and his team to put down a marker on the national stage after a couple of weeks training together.
Yim has joined the Sharks in New Zealand after working as an assistant coach in the D-League in the United States. He also had roles with NBA organisation the Portland Trailblazers.
He has publicly stated he has NBA head coaching ambitions and wants to build some head coaching experience with the Sharks.
Southland was initially set to play its first of three games at the preseason Blitz against the Indian Panthers on Tuesday.
However, the Panthers withdrew from the preseason Blitz pointing to visa issues with some of their Indian players.
As a result, the Sharks will now play just the two games during the trip to the West Coast. The second game will be against the Franklin Bulls at 3pm on Friday, also in Greymouth.
Yim wasn’t fazed that the game against the Panthers had to be canned.
In fact, he quickly found a positive from the change in schedule.
“The game that was going to be happening [on Tuesday], it was going to be a tough one because we would have travelled [from Invercargill] the same day as the game.
“I actually felt a little bit more relieved that we ended up not having to play that game. What it ended up doing is we were able to have a really tough practice on Monday and then that meant we could come in [on Wednesday] and have a nice shoot around-practice, and today we did a school trip and did some kayaking.
“So, we are relaxed and much more ready to go for the game [on Thursday night],” Yim said.
Thursday’s outing against Taranaki will be the Sharks’ first official outing under Yim’s watch. Although on Saturday a Southland Invitational team - put together by Andrew Wheeler - lined up against the Sharks in a scrimmage at ILT Stadium Southland in Invercargill.
“It was a good scrimmage for us. The guys we played, a lot of them had played in the NBL before, so I thought it was a good first test. After playing for two weeks against each other it was nice to beat up on someone else,” Yim said.
All 13 players in the current Southland Sharks roster of 13 players are in the West Coast for the Blitz as the Sharks countdown to its 2025 NBL competition opener against the enemy up the road - the Otago Nuggets.
That season opener will be played in Dunedin on Friday, March 14.
Yim is pleased with where the preparations are at nine days out from that showdown against Otago.
“We’ve had a really good training camp leading up to the Blitz and we’re hoping to build off that and then go to get ready for our first game against Otago.”
The trip to West Coast will be an import piece in helping to continue to help build the “togetherness” in the group off the court and connections on it.