Inside the free agency meeting that made Dellavedova a King

Matthew Dellavedova has to be in the conversation for the top 10 Australian basketballers of all-time.

Where he sits exactly is debatable. But he's one of our greatest to put on a Boomers jersey and to put on an NBA jersey.

You look at guys that have had longevity in the NBA. Patty, Luc Longley, Joe, Baynsey and myself. Now, we have some young stars in the making coming up the pipeline, but as of today, Delly is top 10.

And now, Delly is a Sydney King.

We're excited that we managed to get him over some other suitors. Perth and Brisbane were probably the most notable, Melbourne reportedly weren't really in the mix, but the other two were and we got it done.

NBL fans and readers are probably wondering what a free agency meeting with someone like Delly is like and how we got him over the line. Well, first and foremost, it was answering a lot of questions from Delly because he's diligent. He had questions, more questions than teams did, to be quite honest with you. That's how he works. He's going to ask you about everything.

That's what's admirable about him, he's super detailed, super motivated, super driven and he wants to win.

I think he felt like our roster with what we could put around him was probably the best chance to get to the NBL playoffs again, so that was a big part. We obviously need to be smart with managing his body and making sure that he's there at the end of the season. There's no secret, he's getting older, so we will have to sometimes save Delly from himself.

He's a guy that plays to exhaustion. The rumours that people hear in the media about him throwing up and all that, I've played with the guy, that's true. With the national team at times coaches would have to tell him to take a break, slow down a bit, but he just cannot do that. If he is on floor, it's 110%. He can't play any other way.

Sometimes you almost have to protect him from himself, which means a practice rest day, a game rest day, sometimes in the junk of the season. We'll look to make sure that we monitor him properly, so then hopefully we make a final push where he's as fresh as he can be.

A guy like Delly brings a lot. I mean, he's not declining for his age, it's quite unbelievable. He's a guy that, if you talk about a guy that could probably play close to his 40s, he's the guy you'd back just because he's super diligent with everything off the court, culturally, weight room, physio, whatever it is, he does the extra. He's always doing extra stuff, looking to better himself.

What really hit me now in our free agency meeting with him was he still thinks he has room to grow. He's that kind of guy. People will look at him like and say "mate, you're 34, 35" and he's like "no, I can get better". It's an admirable quality for him and we think he's going to work wonders for our group, both on the court, off the court, even on the business side, to an extent, he's a very switched-on guy.

If we can fill in our other plans that we have that are confidential at this time, if we can get the next guy on our list, which we're working on right now, I think we're in a really good spot.

We moved away from a US point guard really because it's going to be very hard to find a pure point that is a US import. We thought the US guards generally are a hybrid scoring guard and we felt if we can find some scoring somewhere else and have Delly at that one orchestrating our offence, we're in a really good spot.

It's kind of, even though he's a marquee, we see him as taking one of the import spots. We have no imports on our roster as of now. We're looking to fill that up in hopefully the next week or two but we decided to go that way. United's gone a similar way the last three or four seasons with really emphasising local talent and it has had them in two grand finals in two years, albeit being both times.

We just didn't think we'd find an import that is settled in his career like Delly is and happy to play the role the team needs for him, which is to run an orchestrated offence and we're not going to demand too much scoring off him. There will be times where we go to him to score, that's something that he's really grown into.

Now, he's kind of a guy you can throw it to at times in crunch time to get you a bucket and we like that mix and we just thought it was a no-brainer. We know him and sometimes it's better to get into someone in your locker room that you know fully. You know the pros and cons of what you are getting.

There's not really any cons with Delly. The only one people noted and we noted, is that he's getting older, but we felt comfortable that he's still in very good basketball shape and will maintain that for his tenure in Sydney.

Securing the signature of one of Australia’s greats is a massive step towards us getting back to being championship contenders.

NBA Champion Andrew Bogut is a columnist and contributor for Basketball.com.au. He is part owner and assistant coach of the Sydney Kings.

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