Feature image via: Judd Green
The back-to-back NBL1 North Defensive Player of the Year Erin Bollmann has explained just how important the “other side” of the court is to her success.
After winning the award in 2023 with the Darwin Salties, Bollmann has now won her second consecutive Defensive Player of the Year – averaging 9.4 rebounds, 3.2 steals and 1.3 blocks per game now with the Northside Wizards.
She explained her focus on the defensive end has been a priority from the start of her basketball journey.
“And this might come from my coaching background with how important defence is to me,” she said on the Ball Don’t Lie podcast.
“If offence is so important, but if you're getting scored on on the other end, then it doesn't matter how good you are at offence. So I think every game I approach it with, the person I'm guarding, the match-up I have, they're going to get less than their average.
“It's just a mindset in my opinion… When you focus only on offence, that's half the game. And defence is the complete other half. And sometimes you play defence way more than you play offence. And if you can get stops, then it leads to an amazing transition offence.”
Inspired by her favourite player, Kobe Byrant, Bollmann puts a lot of emphasis on the mental side of playing defence, describing the process of getting steals as like a game of chess on the court.
“It's almost like it's an art form versus just how to play,” she said.
“I'm trying to make the offensive player think that everything's open when it's not.”
Due to their top-of-the-ladder finish, the Wizards automatically advanced to the Semi Finals, and will now face the winner of the Quarter Final, the North Gold Coast Seahawks, on Saturday night.
Going into a weekend without a game, the Wizards played the men’s QSL team in scrimmages to ensure they didn’t become complacent. Bollmann explained their height and athleticism gave Northside a different kind of challenge, which will help them in the coming Semi Final.
“Our main focus is that what we've been doing has been really great stuff. So it's not like we need to make any big adjustments. There's just refining and keeping our main goals in check and moving towards that in practice,” she said.
“I think our mentality is really good right now, but the loss against South West (Metro) Pirates (in Round 12) really kicked us in the butt a little bit. Sometimes you get comfortable with winning. And that loss made us put a fire under our butt and be like, ‘No, we have to keep giving it our all. We can't take days off, we can't take weeks off’.
“These last couple of practices, the last couple weeks since that loss have been really beneficial – so I'm excited to see what we do in our Semi Final game.”
The Northside Wizards will host the North Gold Coast Seahawks in the NBL1 North Semi Final on Saturday from 6:00pm AEST, streaming live and free via Kayo Freebies.
