Despite the devastating news that Sam Mackinnon's season appears over and career is in jeopardy with a blood clot in his lungs, Melbourne Tigers coach Al Westover was delighted with his team's effort to beat Perth in Darwin.
The tremendous performance to down the Wildcats 108-95 was overshadowed by the news on former league MVP Mackinnon.
Mackinnon joined the team in Darwin after the loss to Townsville on Wednesday night where he played 42 minutes, but was rushed to hospital in the top-end on Friday.
It was revealed he has a blood clot in his lungs, the second time he has had such a condition, and while he was on hand to watch his team beat the Cats, that is expected all he will be able to do for the rest of the season.
It is still too early for Westover to know for sure the long-term prospects of Mackinnon making a return, but for now he will stay in Darwin until he can fly and his health is the only priority.
"It's happened to him twice now so hopefully he's not done for his career," he said.
"They don’t know why it happened again, they thought it was all cured. We spoke to his surgeon in Brisbane and he can't think of why it would come back either," Westover said.
"The only thing we can think of is the flight, but he didn’t feel right in Townsville the other night. He didn’t mention it, though, and I played him 42 minutes. We just hope he has good health and it's a scary situation. Hopefully he can play again but we have to wait and see. He will have to stay here until Tuesday as he can't fly and is on some heavy medication."
Following the tough overtime loss to the Crocs and news of Mackinnon interrupting his team's preparation, Westover couldn’t have been happier with his team's response.
"I was very proud of our guys after a heartbreaker the other night and we lost Sammy before the game, but everyone stepped up," he said.
"Stephen Hoare stepped up to have his best game of the year, Nathan (Crosswell) was great and so were guys like Tommy (Greer), so it was a great gutsy team effort."
In Mackinnon's absence, Stephen Hoare got the start and was superb with 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting. Westover will weigh up whether to continue to start Hoare, Greer or a small like Crosswell depending on each opponent, but he was delighted with Hoare's output on Saturday.
"Hoare was the obvious choice to start against Perth because they are such a big team with (Shawn) Redhage, (Alex) Loughton, (Ben) Knight, (Isiah) Victor and (Jeff) Dowdell, so we couldn’t have played small ball with them," he said.
"I always like him off the bench because he knows our stuff so well and he's very good within our structure. He's not quite the same player Sammy is, but he's better with what we do because Sam is still learning that. We got more out of our structure with that, so that was huge and without him we wouldn’t have got that result."