The Brisbane Bullets’ horror NBL season has become even worse with ex-NBA player Alex Ducas injured during their 98-66 thrashing from Melbourne United.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old Australian wing went up the tunnel with an apparent leg injury during Wednesday’s second quarter in Bendigo and did not return.<\/p>\n
Ducas watched from the sidelines as the last-placed Bullets dropped a 14th game from 15 starts.<\/p>\n
They have lost to every NBL team since that dismal stretch began in the second week of November, bar Tasmania, who they have not played since beforehand.<\/p>\n
United, meanwhile, have claimed back-to-back wins for the first time since November as they look to emerge from a slump that had threatened their post-season hopes.<\/p>\n
Finn Delany drives to the basket during Melbourne United’s clash with Brisbane Bullets.\u00a0Photo by Graham Denholm\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Tyson Walker (17 points, five assists) led the scoring for United, who have jumped Sydney into third spot on the ladder with a month left in the regular season.<\/p>\n
They have also moved into second place on the ladder for the Ignite Cup, the NBL’s new in-season tournament.<\/p>\n
United began the game on an 11-3 run that started with local boy Dash Daniels and ended in a tip-in dunk from Jesse Edwards, forcing a Bullets timeout.<\/p>\n
The Bullets hurt themselves when the game was close; they missed six of their last seven field-goal attempts for the opening quarter to fall behind 10 points at the first change.<\/p>\n
Brisbane also only hit five of 14 free-throw attempts for a first half that ended with a spectacular buzzer-beater from United’s Tyson Walker at the half-court.<\/p>\n
Walker’s second half-court basket from as many games put United up 21 points at the main change and effectively ended the contest.<\/p>\n
Had Milton Doyle not bungled an audacious attempt at a trick shot to dunk in the final minutes, and Kyle Bowen not missed an early open lay-up, the win would’ve finished as United’s biggest of the season – currently 35 points.<\/p>\n
Jacob Holt was a shining light for the Bullets against United with 23 points on nine of 10 shooting.<\/p>\n
But Ducas’s injury compounded a season to forget for long-time strugglers the Bullets, who lost imports Casey Prather and Lamar Patterson to season-ending injuries earlier in the campaign.<\/p>\n
A failed stint for fellow American Jaylen Adams and Stu Lash’s equally underwhelming cameo as head coach have also worked against the Bullets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brisbane Bullets’ horror NBL season has become even worse with ex-NBA player Alex Ducas injured during their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-427471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427471","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=427471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}