Chris Anstey will be a definite starter come September 23 at ‘The Cage’ after recovering from a knee injury. Anstey has missed a large chunk of the Melbourne Tigers pre-season training due to partially tearing his MCL (Medial Collateral Ligament).

Despite being unable to represent Australia at the recent world championships, Anstey will be raring to go for round one of the NBL season as the Tigers take on the Cairns Taipans. Anstey, however does admit that the injury has been somewhat of an annoyance stating that it has “been a little frustrating”, but the knee “just needed a break”.

However, the positive signs are there after the reigning NBL MVP played 3 halves on the weekend at the NBL Blitz and also played 18 minutes in another pre-season match against the Brisbane Bullets.

“The game against Brisbane was obviously the best one. I pulled up best from it and pushed myself the hardest. I’ll definitely play round one, if Al wants me to play 30 or 40 minutes I’d love to be able to do that, if he wants me to play 20 I’m fine. I just want to be 100% I don’t want to get out there and not be right”.

Anstey would appear to be of great importance to the Tigers, even if not at 100%. He managed to score a phenomenal 24 points in just 18 minutes of game time in the victory against the Bullets in Maroochydore on the weekend as the Tigers managed to pile on 135 points in a high scoring game.

“We just shot the ball really well in the first half. Brisbane are really really talented, but they’re also really small without Bradtke. So we got a lot of easy stuff around the basket. The numbers were probably a little bit flattering, but I think we executed our stuff well. Personally it was the best I’ve played this pre-season”.

While most experts have so far tipped the Tigers and the Bullets to be the early front-runners for this season’s NBL championship, Anstey disagrees the notion that the Bullets will be the Tigers biggest and only competitor.

“I don’t know if you can just narrow it down to only Brisbane. I think we’re going to have to go through Perth again, they match up well with us, they’re probably the only team in the league that matches us with size. Sydney are always going to be there. I’m sure there’ll be a surprise somewhere along the lines, I don’t know if you can narrow it down to 2 or even 4”.

The Tigers were disappointed that they were unable to take out the NBL Blitz over the weekend in Coffs Harbour, however, Anstey believed there were still plenty of positives to take away from the tournament.

“It’s always disappointing to lose a game, but I think we can take a lot more positives. We were lucky to get through to the 2nd round after losing to West Sydney. Having said that we played the last three games without myself, DT (David Thomas) and Tuck (Rashad Tucker), so for the boys to win two in a row with just seven players was a fantastic effort”.

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