Coach King 'not in a rush' to sign new import

• Listed: All 165 games of the 2025-26 NBL season
• 2025-26 NBL Team Lists and Roster Tracker
• Magnificent 7: Biggest must-see games of NBL26
• NBL26 Power Rankings: Five-time MVP Cotton puts 36ers in pole position

South East Melbourne Phoenix coach Josh King revealed it was the "best thing moving forward" to part ways with import Vrenz Bleijenbergh on the eve of the NBL season.

The 24-year-old Belgian arrived at the Phoenix with significant hype but struggled to fit in during the preseason, leading to a mutual parting of ways earlier this week.

"The preseason is always a time to see what you have on your roster, Vrenz is a super talented guy, he's a he's a really good guy, and I think at the end of the day It was an evaluation period for everybody," King told basketball.com.au.

"It just wasn't the right fit for our team... like every coach in this league, everyone is worried about their team the most. There's no bad blood or hard feelings, it was a mutual decision between both parties that it just wasn't the right fit for Vrenz and for our team.

"The best thing moving forward is if we just went our separate ways. It's one of the things where we could have probably played in the sandbox until November or December but we just felt like it's probably better if we just went our separate ways now.

"I think he would have been the best pick and roll passer in this league, he's the best I've ever been around, but again, for the team and for both sides, it just was best to go in another direction.

"He's got a young family and and he's going to be successful somewhere."

King, who is in his first full season in the NBL after taking over from Mike Kelly during NBL25, said it just wasn't the right fit for the Phoenix and Bleijenbergh.

With their season opener at John Cain Arena on Saturday against a revamped Cairns Taipans roster, followed up by a Throwdown against local rivals, Melbourne United on September 25, King said they would see what they needed to address after those two games before deciding on an import replacement.

"We're not in a rush," he said.

"I think a lot of times I think people just think like everyone's gone through this before a lot of times and it's like one player goes in and one comes out.

"It's like two ships passing in the night, right, like they might even see each other in the facility.

"But we've got two games coming up here and then we have a week break for the NBA game. We have a whole week and then we don't play for a whole another week, so I think I think we're going to take a look and see what we have on these first two games and then make a decision after that.

"To be quite honest, we could go a bunch of different ways with it, so let's see kind of what we think we need after we play a couple live regular season games."

After turning around South East Melbourne's defence in such a short time, King said he was looking forward to seeing how elite his team could be on that end of the floor in NBL26.

He also said a season-opening match-up with the firepower of Adam Forde's Taipans on Saturday was the perfect chance to see the steps his team had made during the preseason.

"Obviously, they got Jack McVeigh who's coming back from the NBA, he had a great year in Tassie and the last year he was in the NBL, he was a champion," he said.

"They have guys like Admiral Schofield who've played at a high level and is a big-time offensive shooter, Reyne Smith is a gun, he can shoot and they have a lot of really good shooters.

"We're really going to have to do a great job on the defensive end if we want to have a chance to win the game.

"I think it's a great opponent for us first to test our defence and see where we're at but I'm definitely excited to play against Forde's teams because they're always going to be playing hard on both sides of the ball."