Taipans retain both league award winners

The CQUniversity Cairns Taipans are pleased to announce the club has retained both league award winners, with the NBL’s Most Improved Player Keanu Pinder and Rookie of the Year Bul Kuol both taking up their mutual options for a second season in orange.

Head Coach Adam Forde recruited both talents for his first year at the helm of the Taipans, recognising their untapped potential – and that foresight has paid off for both players and the club.

Pinder was named Most Improved Player thanks to a breakout campaign under Forde – his former WA U20 Nationals, State Basketball League and juniors coach.

Their reunion in Cairns saw Pinder improve from 4.8 points and 4.3 rebounds per game to 10.8 points and 7.5 rebounds and take out the highly coveted award.

Pinder put up back-to-back double-doubles for his first time in the NBL career - scoring 21 points on 9/11 shooting with 12 boards against the Phoenix, and then 21 points and 10 rebounds over the Breakers.

The 26-year-old also set new career-highs in scoring (24 v Perth) rebounding (15 v Sydney and Adelaide) and assists (5 v Breakers) as he regularly generated highlights on both ends.

Alongside him, newcomer Bul Kuol was a relatively unknown NBL1 player last off-season – playing with the Knox Raiders after graduating from Detroit Mercy when Coach Forde recruited him to the last spot on the Taipans roster.

In an injury-riddled season for Cairns, the 25-year-old found himself elevated to a starting spot which led to the team-high 26 starts and the team’s second-most minutes played over the season.

Against Brisbane, Kuol memorably scored 8/10 threes to set a career-high of 26 points and joined the likes of Anthony Stewart and Stephen Black as just the third Taipan to ever register eight threes in a game. 

He went on to make history by registering 64 threes across the regular season, beating Shane Heal’s longstanding 1988 record for the most three-pointers by an Australian rookie. 

Kuol also became the first rookie in NBL history to ever finish inside the Top 5 for three-point makes in a year, earning the Rookie of the Year accolade with a landslide 72 votes – the biggest winning margin of any other NBL award this season.

Keanu Pinder and Bul Kuol join Majok Deng and Mirko Djeric on the 2022-23 roster. NBL Free Agency will open this Friday 20 May.