Award winner: Adris Deleon
Wollongong Hawks import Adris Deleon has captured the club’s first NBL Player of the Week award for the 2012-13 season.
After pouring in 33 points in Friday night’s road loss to titleholders New Zealand, Deleon scored a game-high 28 in Sunday’s big home win over Townsville.
He also had five assists against the Crocodiles and zero turnovers.
The 180cm guard averaged 30.5 points for the weekend on 57 per cent shooting. He was also near-perfect from the free throw line, hitting 10/11 against the Breakers and 6/6 against the Crocs.
Deleon almost won the POTW award twice when the Hawks were regularly winning earlier in the season but narrowly missed out.
This time his numbers couldn’t be overlooked.
If he maintains his hot streak over the final five games of the regular season, Wollongong are a good chance of snatching a finals berth.
‘‘I’m getting real comfortable with the offence and I know what I’m doing, so when you do that, you can pick and choose what I want to do, and then I can just dictate who I want to give the ball to,’’ Deleon said after the thrashing of the Crocs.
‘‘Before I didn’t know what I was doing and I was listening to other people telling me what to do, but I feel like I can run my team now.’’
Deleon said he wasn’t any more motivated than usual against his old New York playground rival and former Hawks star Gary Ervin.
Ervin nailed his first shot of the game from the three-point line but finished with just 11 points on 5/13 shooting.
‘‘The whole time I was just thinking how important the game was for us,’’ Deleon said.
‘‘The guys got me in a good situation where I could just play my game. I know [coach] Gordie [McLeod] got a little mad at me at the end, but I was being aggressive.
‘‘Coming back from New Zealand, we knew Townsville was a big game for us, and we did a good job on defence and offence.
‘‘To come back home and play with that energy, we reached deep inside and played real hard. That shows a lot of character.’’