Melbourne United CEO Vince Crivelli has declared the club’s interest in acquiring former Dallas Maverick and Australian representative Ryan Broekhoff.
Broekhoff was waived by the Mavericks on Tuesday to make room for new signing Michael Kidd-Gilchrist after a season spent largely on the bench.
Crivelli revealed on SEN's Dwayne’s World that he’s put a call into Broekhoff’s management to express United’s intrigue in his situation.
“We’ve reached out to his representation just to understand where he’s at,” Crivelli said.
“Every club in the NBL would’ve made phone calls over the last 24 hours, myself included, just to understand where that process is at.
“If there’s a way of fitting it in, we’d fit it in. We would absolutely be one of those teams that welcomes him with open arms.”
Crivelli conceded however that it would be difficult to sign him given the NBL’s imminent finals series compared to the longer seasons in the NBL and EuroLeague.
“The interesting thing right now is that he would still be in a mode to compete immediately, and our season is winding down,” he said.
“In the case of Olympiakos, they can bring him in for the run home in their competition and then continue that contract for another season, the same thing with the NBA.
“With us, we’d have to contract him for next year and in his mind and his agent’s mind he’s more focused on what opportunities might exist in the here and now.”
After a disappointing second half of the season, Crevilli pledged to go hard in the off-season to improve United’s roster and will look to Broekhoff and other similar overseas players.
“There’s other guys that are in the NBA or thereabouts,” he said.
“There’s Jonah Bolden, who was recently waived by the 76ers, there’s Isaac Humphries and Deng Adel that are probably on every team’s list to work through in the free agency period”
“We’ll certainly be aggressive through that period.”
United take on the Cairns Taipans in their final home match of the regular season on Thursday.
Listen to the chat on Dwayne's World below