{"id":334960,"date":"2025-12-08T13:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/334960\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T13:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:25:10","slug":"taipans-bite-back-with-big-man-boost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/334960\/","title":{"rendered":"Taipans bite back with big man boost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cairns star Sam Waardenburg is set to make his return this weekend, after a long spell on the sidelines due to injury.<\/p>\n<p>Waardenburg hasn\u2019t played all year as he\u2019s fought to overcome an ankle issue, but the club has confirmed he\u2019ll be fit to take on Tasmania on Saturday night in Cairns.<\/p>\n<p>The former Next Generation Award winner will be a huge addition for the Taipans, having averaged 14.5 points and 7.3 rebounds a game across the NBL25 campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The news isn\u2019t as good for young gun Reyne Smith, who will have to wait until Round 15 to make his return from a plantar fascia tear.<\/p>\n<p>Marquee man Jack McVeigh missed Cairns\u2019 win over Illawarra as he awaits the birth of his first child.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765200310_768_690bcc0056be21e70a98dcf8_Updated NBL26 banner.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cairns star Sam Waardenburg is set to make his return this weekend, after a long spell on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-334960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334960","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=334960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}