Bunbury's Gliddon named NBL rookie of the year

Bunbury basketballer Cameron Gliddon has declared he can build on his outstanding debut season for Cairns and return to the NBL a better player next summer.

The bold statement comes just days after Gliddon, 23, was named the league’s Rookie of the Year.

Signed as a little-known shooting guard in May last year, Gliddon developed into the Taipans’ trump card, playing all 28 games and breaking into the starting five.

He averaged 7.1 points, four rebounds and 2.8 assists in a sparkling professional debut.

Defensively, Gliddon was ranked third in the league for steals averaging 1.4 per game.

He described the year as a “big learning curve”.

“I definitely don’t want this to be my only award, I want to keep getting better and hopefully get a championship one day,” he said.

The former South West Slammer is the region’s second Rookie of the Year, after Mark Worthington took out the gong in 2006.

“No one knew who I was this year so I was able to get away with doing things,” Gliddon said.

“Next year, they’re going to know what I’m good at. It’s about adding things to my game in the off-season and coming back better.”

Gliddon hit double figures in the points column nine times this season and enjoyed the Taipans’ contests against arch-rivals Townsville, were he scored 17 points on November 2 and 16 on February 9.

But the young star saved his standout game for Perth Wildcats, the club he grew up supporting, earlier this month draining a career-high 26 points.

“That game everything fell into place and every shot I took seemed to go in,” he said.

“I was always in the right place to grab rebounds and get steals.

“In saying that, the next time we played Perth they shut me out and I didn’t even score a bucket.”

Before joining the Taipans’ roster Gliddon spent five years honing his skills in America at Concordia University in the cut-throat NAIA National Championship.

He said he had been overwhelmed with a flood of Facebook messages and phone calls from family and friends in Bunbury over the course of the year.