While Shane Heal, Brent Hobba, Jacob Holmes and Joe Ingles have been signed for the new season, the futures of imports Rosell Ellis and Kavossy Franklin and local athletes Matt Burston and Adam Quick are still to be decided.

Frank Drmic will not be re-signed to the club.

Dragons coach Shane Heal said while the decision-making process had been difficult, the club would benefit in the new season.

“We’ve had an unbelievable year but we’ve got to a certain stage now where we have to be able to make decisions to try and get to the top four and with that comes hard decisions, and ones that I’ll be judged by and the club will be judged by,” Heal said.

“I think if we can put the right pieces in place and continue to build then the decision will be justified, but now we have to go and replace some of those players and it’s not easy to do because everyone is trying to do the same thing.”

Heal paid tribute to US imports Rosell Ellis and Kavossy Franklin, whose talent and work ethic played a significant role in helping the Dragons to their first playoff series. The futures of both imports are yet to be determined.

“Without Kavossy or Roe there’s no way we would have won probably half the games we won,” Heal said.

“They both have an outstanding work ethic and I think that rubbed off on the other guys.”

While Ellis played a major role in the Dragons’ inaugural line-up, the club will consider extra height for its list ahead of next season.

“Rosell is a total professional,” Heal said.

“He understands that he’s 6’5” trying to play a centre spot and every night he’s fighting out of his weight class.

“This year it was even more difficult because we had Matt Burston miss 20 games so there was even more pressure on Rosell, but it also emphasised the fact that you need a big American.

“The conversation with Rosell is that we don’t know what’s going to happen down the track. He’s going to do his thing and we’re going to try and target some players overseas, so if we can get those players then great, if not then we’ll sit down with Rosell again at that stage.”

Ellis departed Melbourne late last week to contest the Philippines’ national league. His return to Melbourne for a second season will be decided in coming weeks.

Kavossy Franklin has also departed Australia with talks regarding his future to continue through the off-season.

“Again, Kavossy is a professional and I’m sure there are going to be four or five teams that will be chasing him, we just have to wait and see what happens and whether we do actually get this player or not.”

NBL veteran Frank Drmic was advised last week that he would not be re-signed.

“Frank was a really difficult one and probably a really emotional one for me because I’ve got a real history with Frank,” Heal said.

“He’s somebody that I would call a friend and a good teammate and it was probably at the stage this year that for the points he was on, he probably didn’t give the output that we needed and with Hobba and Jacob on the team it was probably a luxury that we couldn’t afford.

“That decision was a really hard one for me, I didn’t sleep very well the night before I spoke to Frank. I think this is probably the hardest time to be a player-coach, it’s been a tough week dealing with it.”

Matt Burston and Adam Quick will remain on the club’s shortlist for next season. Quick will continue to train with the team throughout the winter months.

Heal said the arrival of the new Gold Coast team would see fierce competition for new players.

“With the Gold Coast coming in now they’re going to target similar sorts of player because (coach) Brendan Joyce is used to success, so it’s going to be difficult competing for players with them.”