{"id":149465,"date":"2025-09-17T09:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T09:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/149465\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T09:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T09:51:09","slug":"wildcats-recruit-compared-to-club-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/149465\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildcats recruit compared to club legend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wildcats guard Mason Jones may be only one pre-season game into his Perth tenure, but he\u2019s already being compared to a club legend.<\/p>\n<p>That legend is none other than four-time NBL champion and two-time NBL MVP, Ricky Grace &#8211; whose number 15 jersey had been retired by the Wildcats.<\/p>\n<p>During Wednesday\u2019s episode of NBL Now, fellow Wildcats legend Damian Martin was full of praise for the former G League star.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHearing Mason Jones speak, it\u2019s all about the team,\u201d six-time NBL champion Martin said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s team-first and he\u2019ll bring whatever is required to help his team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt reminded me of Ricky Grace &#8211; who did what was ever required for the Wildcats to win.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you need to be the leading scorer in the night, he dropped 25 [points].<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you need to get others involved, you get 10 dimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they\u2019re lacking defensively, pick up full court and create three, four, five turnovers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s the ultimate pro and has already spoken about winning a championship for the city of Perth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Echoing Martin\u2019s sentiments was NBL expert Peter Hooley, saying he is \u2018all-in\u2019 on the former Sacramento Kings guard, Jones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[Everything from Mason thus far] has been awesome to see and I\u2019m very excited to see what he can do this season,\u201d Hooley said.<\/p>\n<p>The Wildcats open their Hungry Jack\u2019s NBL26 campaign on Saturday, with a RAC Arena clash with Tasmania, from 8pm AEST.<\/p>\n<p>The opening round fixture will be broadcast on ESPN.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/68b6a2875d98c926a0d5fa93_espn.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildcats guard Mason Jones may be only one pre-season game into his Perth tenure, but he\u2019s already being&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-149465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}