Anthony living up to his brief, says Chance

Melbourne United coach Jacob Chance says star signing Cole Anthony is doing exactly the job the team expects of him.

Anthony has been a dominant scorer, averaging 24.8 points a game and dropping 40 against Cairns on Saturday night. Some pundits, however, have pointed to his 2.5 assists a game, a number that could seem low for a player of his calibre running the point.

Chance says the assist numbers don't tell the full story, pointing out that Anthony is creating 10 potential assists a game, the most on the team alongside Joe Ingles.

The coach's view is that the problem isn't Anthony's passing. It's that his teammates aren't knocking down the shots he's setting up.

"I think our effective field goal percentage might be last in the League and if you're not making shots, you don't get assists," Chance said.

"His role is to score for us and be aggressive first and foremost. And he's making the right play majority of the time right now.

"He's got hockey assists, too. Those kind of things, that's way more important than us than a direct assist number.

"For the most part, you're seeing … generating corner threes for Ticket [Malith Machar] in transition or Joe in transition. And hopefully we can get a bit more out of that pick and roll game with the bigs, too.

"We want him to be aggressive and make plays for himself and for others."

That aggression was on full display on Saturday night, with Anthony pouring in 16 points in the third quarter as United built a 12-point lead over the Taipans.

Melbourne still led 81-72 at three-quarter time, before Cairns opened the fourth with 11 straight points and piled on 35 for the quarter to run away with a 107-95 win.

The result leaves United at 1-3, a slow start for a side that entered the season as one of the strong championship favourites.

Chance says the group has settled on one word as it looks to turn things around.

"There's obvious disappointment, right, with the lack of probably 'urgency' is the word that we're leaning on a little bit right now and how we can bring that to the table on Wednesday night," Chance said.

"We accept we're one and three, we're right where we're supposed to be. Those things will look after itself."

Melbourne won't have to wait long for a shot at redemption, hitting the road to face Adelaide in the Ignite Cup on Wednesday night.

Chance has liked what he's seen in patches, but he knows it now has to last for 40 minutes.

"We've shown in glimpses that we can be really damaging, but glimpses just aren't enough right now," Chance added.