Tough lessons to guide Phoenix

South East Melbourne Phoenix coach Mike Kelly is happy to cop the lessons on where his team needs to improve from Friday night's loss to the Perth Wildcats, as they look ahead to next week's Throwdown.

The Phoenix opened their season at HoopsFest in Perth on taking on the hometown Wildcats. While they came away with an eight-point loss, coach Kelly is taking the positives even with the aspects that didn’t go well.

Giving up 19 three-pointers to the Wildcats certainly wasn’t in the script for Kelly. Even though they were willing to live with Keanu Pinder's four makes for Perth, they wanted to make life more difficult than having Bryce Cotton knockdown 8/13 from deep.

Conceding 15 offensive rebounds for 13 second chance points was an unacceptable aspect of the loss for Kelly, as well as the fact they ended up taking 11 fewer field goals and lost the possession battle.

Even in those negatives, they are lessons that Kelly is glad for his new group to be learning so early in the season with only Matt Kenyon, Ben Ayre and Owen Foxwell returning from last season.

New guards Derrick Walton Jr and Nathan Sobey will continue to figure things out, along with former Sydney Kings pair Jordan Hunter and Angus Glover, while there's also new imports Joe Wieskamp and Matt Hurt, along with Next Star Malique Lewis.

While falling down 21 points in the fourth quarter was far from ideal, Kelly also takes heart from the Phoenix finishing the game scoring 21 points to eight from that moment.

"This is good for us, all that is good for us. We hadn’t been in an arena like this together, we had nine new players and we have a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old in rotations," Kelly said.

"We have two new Americans and every day is a good experience for us, and when we respond, I think it's a positive.

"If we just say that we went to Perth and got our butts kicked and move on, then we don’t learn anything. But if we can learn from that all of that, at least those guys know who Bryce is, and we can move on from this better for next week."

One positive sign throughout the evening for the Phoenix was how good some of the pick-and-roll situations with new centre Jordan Hunter worked with either star guard, Walton Jr or Sobey.

Both guards are more than willing and capable passers, and Hunter could well be the best rolling big in the league so Kelly will look to continue to utilise that threat as much as possible.

"I think we have a lot of different players that can get going a few different ways," he said.

"Sometimes the pick-and-roll is going to be good for Jordi, sometimes it's going to be good for Sobes or D-Walt getting downhill, and other times for guys perched in the corners.

"I think if we can just try to put teams at a disadvantage and take what we can get from that, we can be good offensively. We weren’t that good offensively and still scored a lot of points, so if we fix our defence we can be pretty good."

With having a starting back court of Walton Jr and Sobey, there's not always going to be a lot of minutes there for the back up points guards like Owen Foxwell and Ben Ayre on this Phoenix team.

With Sobey also able to play the one spot to give Walton Jr a breather, and then for Angus Glover or Matt Kenyon to replace Sobey as shooting guard, there will be times they don't get a lot of minutes.

That was the case on Friday night with Ayre not getting on the floor at all and Foxwell only getting a run late where he actually played a big part in South East Melbourne's strong finish, with 10 points in six minutes on 4/4 shooting.

But overall Kelly is happy with the combination of guards he has at his disposal and will figure out how to best use them all.

"Sobey's going to play some one and so is Owen Foxwell, and when those minutes come can be at different times," Kelly said.

"I thought it might have come a little earlier for Foxy, in the end it came late and he was great in those minutes.

"He is definitely going to play some and I feel really good about having Derrick, Sobes, Foxy and Ben Ayre all with the ability to carry the ball so they are all going to get opportunities there."

New Phoenix centre Jordan Hunter was a shining light in the season-opener with the former Sydney championship winner producing 19 points and seven rebounds in 20 minutes.

He already can't wait for his first Throwdown against Melbourne on Thursday.

"It will be great and I'm hearing it's sold out so it will be fun to be back in John Cain," Hunter said.

"I love playing there and it will be my first time with the boys in green so it should be a great game.

"We'll have a great few days of training after getting back from this to gear up for that, and I'm sure the boys will be excited to respond to this."