The Slingers may have won their first game in the 2010-11 season convincingly, but don’t pop the champagne just yet.

The 25-point win may be crowd-pleasing, but it masked a few unpleasant facts.

Fact number one: the players on the PBA team Rain or Shine had other things on their mind. Some of their players were even overheard inquiring before the game, “Where is Brewerkz?”

Apart from that trifling inconvenience, there are other pressing issues for coach Neo to keep in mind.

Acquiring Leo Avenido for Marcus Ng looks to be a step up for the team (sorry to all Marcus Ng’s fans – just refer to the stats!), but signing Marcus Skinner for Michael LeBlanc seems a gamble.

It is still early in the season to assess the potential of Skinner, but the Slingers will surely miss the offensive output of their top point scorer for last season. In quite a few situations, LeBlanc was the go-to guy when the game was on the line, and his ability to create opportunities one-on-one against opposing defenders will be sorely missed.

Skinner, on the other hand, looks active at the boards currently, but may find it a tough proposition to step into LeBlanc’s shoes completely. The Slingers might have to create more team offensive set plays to plug in the gap left by LeBlanc’s departure.

One of ex-Slingers coach Frank Arsego’s mantra for the team was defensive intensity and new coach Neo should probably continue in the same vein. It will be one of his greatest challenge, as well as achievement, to hone the team into a cohesive unit helping each other out in defense and denying their opponents space and chance to execute their offence.

It may still be early days, but the ease with which the Slingers allowed their opponents points in the paint and offensive rebounds in the game was worrying. If Rain or Shine’s relatively shorter centres had managed to break down the home team’s interior defense repeatedly, opposing centres like Nakiea Miller of Satria Muda BritAma will relish such opportunities.

Another feature of the ABL as observed in its maiden season was the ability of teams to innovate and change their game to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses. The Slingers should use the pre-season training sessions to hone their play against opposing zone defenses which troubled them too many times last season.

Yet the positives are there to be seen as well.

Forward Steven Khoo may have garnered all the praise for his eye-catching performance in the game, but local point guard Wong Wei Long impressed with his steady control of the game as well.

Some may have noticed that Wei Long actually contributed 15 points in the game and was not inhibited in his shooting, especially from beyond the arc. His new-found confidence auger well for the team, especially giving coach Neo a few more options like playing Al Vergara as a shooting guard off Wong.

In the final reckoning though, coach Neo will need his key players like Kyle Jeffers and Al Vergara to be fit and healthy throughout the season and work on fitting in the rest of the pieces well. It is also imperative that the rest of the team steps up, seeing that the Slingers’ most improved local player Hong Weijian may be out for some time due to his knee injury.

The good news is, Neo has a month for that before the season begins.