Atiba Lyons reveals reasons for abundance of guards on Sheffield Sharks' team

Atiba Lyons says Sheffield Sharks’ speed and movement when attacking teams in Super League Basketball justifies the amount of guards he is deploying on the court at any one time.

A traditional five-person basketball formation is two guards, two forwards and a big centre, but the long-term injury to 6ft 10in Bennett Koch - which will now see him out until towards the end of the season at the earliest - prompted Lyons to go in a different direction in the summer.

At stages this season, Sharks have had four guards on the court with three or four more on the bench.

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Some of it has been necessitated by injuries, and it may mean explosive players like point guard Prentiss Nixon is not getting as many minutes as he would have done last season, but Lyons insists it was all part of the plan from the summer.

Sheffield Sharks head coach Atiba Lyons (Picture: Tony Johnson)Sheffield Sharks head coach Atiba Lyons (Picture: Tony Johnson)
Sheffield Sharks head coach Atiba Lyons (Picture: Tony Johnson)

“We can play with a lot of small line-ups and we can play a little bit big as well,” said Lyons.

“It’s showed that it can work when we move the ball and get hot, that we can put a lot of points up. These were all conversations we had when the players signed that this was the team we were going to have and this was the plan so everyone was aware of what we are trying to do.”

And he reports that all his players so far are buying in.

“I’m sure everyone wants to play as much as they can but it’s not anything that should surprise anyone having had these conversations in the summer,” said Lyons, who added that they were monitoring the market closely for a replacement for Koch, but are “not panicking”.

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Sheffield’s win-lose start to the season continued last weekend when they triumphed impressively at Leicester Riders on the Friday night only to squander a 23-point lead at Cheshire Phoenix two days later.

“We almost put together a really great weekend, fell a little bit short of that,” said Lyons, whose Sharks host Leicester on Sunday. “We were maybe a little tired from four games across two back-to-back weekends and it caught up to us but we’ve got to be more consistent.

“We’ve got to come out hard against Leicester because they’re a very talented team, we got one at their place even though we didn’t think we played our best game.”

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