The Waardenburg Effect: How Big Sam's Return Changes the Taipans Dynamic

When the Kenfrost Homes Cairns Taipans tipped off this NBL26 season, the plan was simple enough. Build around dynamic offensive weapons Sam Waardenburg and Jack McVeigh and unleash a backcourt full of slashers and shooters.

Then the ankle went.

An injury on the brink of the season forced Waardenburg into surgery and onto the sidelines, robbing the Taipans of their most complete big and leaving Head Coach Adam Forde to go off script and improvise his way through the first half of the year. 

The numbers tell the story. Heading into Round 12, Cairns ranked ninth in the league for rebounds per game (39.5), ninth for opponent points per game (95.2), tenth for bench scoring (17.3) and tenth for points per game (82.1) — despite five consecutive games with 90+ points. 

But with last season's club MVP set to return this Saturday against the Tasmania JackJumpers, who was in career-best form before he was struck down in September, the Taipans now have a platform to build on for the second half of the campaign.

If Cairns are going to flip their season, Big Sam will be a key part of the resurgence.

‍Mind Over Matter ‍

The longest-serving active Taipan averaged 14.5 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game last season. He then went to Puerto Rico’s BSN, where against former NBA bigs DeMarcus Cousins, JaVale McGee and Hassan Whiteside, he backed that up with 17.2 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists on 53.8 per cent from the field and 36.6 per cent from three.

But it starts with the mind, not just in his stat line.

Ask Taipans Lead Assistant Coach Will Lopez what separates Waardenburg from most modern bigs and he doesn’t start with length, shooting or rebounding.
“IQ is his biggest trait,” Lopez says. “He’s the smartest guy on the floor in whatever line-up we have.”

Offensively, the simple layer is five-out shooters stretching the floor and a pick-and-pop threat. The deeper layer is that he reads the game like few big men can.

“Think old school point guard in a 6ft 10in body,” Lopez says.
“He makes everybody else’s life easier, because he sets screens off the ball to get players open, can make plays and reads off the bounce and he can manipulate defences with his vision to create opportunities for everybody else."

Those instant reads — where to screen, when to cut, when to move the ball on — are the starting point for the Waardenburg Effect. Dropping that brain back into the middle of this group, everything else begins to slide back into place.

Domino Effect‍

The first teammate who feels that shift is Andrew Andrews.

The Snakes have leant heavily on the Portland point guard to bring the ball up under pressure, initiate the offence and still carry a major scoring load. When teams have picked up full court, there hasn’t always been a safe outlet.

Lopez is blunt about what Waardenburg changes there.

“We had 12 turnovers over the weekend and five were in the backcourt,” he says. “Five of those turnovers don’t exist with Waardenburg there. He’s essentially our secondary ball handler”

“We call him the ‘pressure release’, there hasn’t been a lot of relief for Drew to bring the ball up the floor. Now it takes pressure off Andrews and the rest of the guards. If the opposition presses too hard there is an outlet pass to Waardenburg.”

He can catch, handle and advance. Few bigs can pressure him 94 feet and if teams switch a guard onto him in the open floor, that creates its own mismatch.

Without the New Zealand international, Forde has utilised forwards Admiral Schofield and Kyrin Galloway to soak minutes as small-ball centres, wrestling with bigger bodies and carrying physical tasks that blunt some of what they do best.

Waardenburg’s return takes away the pressure and gives everyone a more natural lane.

With Sam at the five and Galloway at the four, Kyrin can be the mobile weak-side defender and secondary spacer he’s built to be, instead of wrestling primary bigs.

With Sam at the four and centre Marcus Lee at the five, the Taipans suddenly have a ‘twin tower’ look with Lee rolling hard to the rim and Waardenburg threatening on the perimeter.

Crucially, Lee can slide into a high-energy role. The Californian has been the lone rim-running anchor, often playing extended minutes and battling foul trouble because there wasn’t another true five. Now his job can be simplified into high-intensity minutes — sprinting the floor, setting bone-jarring screens, attacking the glass — knowing Waardenburg can close at the five if the game demands it.

That flexibility extends down the roster unlocking different combinations and line-ups Forde can tailor to specific opponents.

The extra attention and gravity McVeigh and Waardenburg will command opens up that extra half-second for the outside guards.

“Kody Stattmann, Mojave King and Reyne Smith, who can all shoot it, are going to have that extra half-second window to let it rip once it comes,” Lopez says.
“Our cutting principles are all in place anyway. But I’d like to think that Waardenburg creates more opportunities.”

The other big offensive shift is structural.

“Around one-third of our offensive sets were designed for Waardenburg to play with McVeigh and Andrews in that dynamic three-man game,” Lopez says.
“We can now bring those plays back in because he’s back in the line-up.”

Andrews, fresh off an equal season-high scoring night against Illawarra. McVeigh, in career-best form. Now, that threatening trio is finally available.

Defensively, his combination of size and mobility gives the Snakes options they simply don’t have without him. But it’s the switching that really excites the coaching staff.

“Our confidence in switching one through five goes way up with Waardenburg out there,” Lopez says.

He points to last season’s match-up against the Perth Wildcats.

“We trust Waardenburg to switch out and guard [five-time NBL MVP] Bryce Cotton,” Lopez says. “If he can do a job on the best player in the league, we’re confident he can stick to a scout and contain anybody.”

Being able to switch more actions without instantly conceding a mismatch simplifies things for the group.

And the extra body in the rotation matters just as much.

Reality Check

There is a catch.

Waardenburg isn’t stepping back into last year’s team. This is a new-look Taipans group: McVeigh, Andrews, Smith, Schofield and King — all with their own rhythms and tendencies. The NBL has shifted too with JaVale McGee and a wave of new imports altering the ecosystem of frontcourt match-ups.

Being dropped into the middle of the season after ankle surgery means it will take a handful of games to re-calibrate to NBL pace and physicality. He’ll need to rebuild trust in the ankle — planting, jumping, landing, changing direction — before his instincts completely take over.

There will be rust. There will be possessions where he turns down shots he’d normally take or arrives half a beat late at the rim.

But a crucial piece to Forde’s Taipans puzzle is finally available and ready to be put to the test. A big man whose shooting warps defensive schemes, who can play the four or the five and guard in space while still protecting the rim is now back at the Taipans disposal.

For a team sitting last with nowhere to go but up, he’s exactly the kind of player who can turn “mathematically alive” into “annoying wildcard no one wants to see in February”.

If the ankle holds and the rhythm returns, the Waardenburg Effect might be the difference between a lost year and a genuine second-half surge.