Atiba Lyons pinpoints Sheffield Sharks' shortcomings in disappointing SLB season
Head coach Atiba Lyons has pinpointed his team’s propensity to “lose focus” as one of the reasons Sheffield Sharks fell flat this season.
Sharks’ 2025/26 Super League Basketball campaign came to a shuddering halt on Sunday when they saw a slender first-leg advantage over Leicester Riders in the first round of the play-offs overturned in a meek surrender.
The early exit followed a 16-16 (win-loss) record in the league - albeit good enough for fourth place - and similarly short stays in both the Trophy and the Cup competitions. Given they won the Cup last season to snap a nine-year silverware drought, many expected Sharks to kick-on this year.
But it has not turned out that way, and Lyons admitted coming into the second leg in Sheffield with a slender three-point advantage was part of the problem and symptomatic of a disappointing season.
“That’s been a tendency of ours all year, we have a good win and then we’ll lose focus, take our foot off the gas,” acknowledged Lyons.
“When we’ve lost a couple, we’d start to play our best basketball but then we could never keep that momentum and keep that run going, that’s just some of the things we’ve struggled with all year.
“I thought Leicester came out (on Sunday) and did a job on us playing with intensity and being physical.
“And that was mixed with us not shooting the ball well, which makes it really difficult to do what you want to do.
“That’s a combination of some of it being unlucky, some of it just Leicester doing a good job and playing with intensity and we just didn’t respond well.”
Asked for his summary of the season, Lyons said: “Difficult, one of our most difficult seasons, for numerous reasons.
“It obviously didn’t go as well as we planned, we finished top four which is good but we weren’t playing well enough to win any silverware so that’s disappointing.
“I think it was just people coming in and out, injuries, different kind of situations. We were never really able to be as strong as a team to grow together. We just kept having setbacks and that wore us down the longer the season went.”
Lyons also suggested that the summer excursion to Kansas to take part in The Basketball Tournament (TBT) - an invite only 64-team tournament with a top prize of $1m - had a knock-on effect on their preparations for the domestic season.
Sharks took players like Prentiss Nixon with them but also signed players on one-off deals.
“We tried something different with the TBT, we tried to be innovative” said Lyons, “and I think that might have had a knock-on effect on the start of the season.
“It was a risk. It’s not always successful when you try something new, it didn’t work out how we would have liked but we don’t regret doing it; it was different, it was fun, it was something for the league to see. If it worked it would have been cool but it did set the season up in a strange way.”
Lyons will now conduct meetings with every player as planning begins for the 2026/27 SLB campaign.
“The players will go back to their respective homes and figure out what they want to do, for us we’re just going to let things settle and start again.”
On whether he is planning a complete overhaul or just small changes, Lyons added: “To be determined, we’ll see.”