Australian sports fans love a good nickname, and Cairns head coach Adam Forde may just have tagged his newest star – Bobi Klintman – with one of the best nicknames in the NBL - 'The Prototype'.

Klintman, a sharpshooting wing who stands at 208 centimetres, has joined the Taipans as a Next Star, having previously been labelled a top 50 talent of the upcoming draft by ESPN's experts. 

“He’s the current NBA obsession,” Forde said of Klintman’s abilities. “He’s the prototype.

“A 6’10” wing who can shoot the three and defend multiple positions.

“He’s got so many intangibles that are going to create so many mismatch problems for the opposition, so to have him in our lineup alongside everyone else we’ve got – there’s a lot of length, a lot of youth.

“We’re going to go faster, we’re going to run harder, we’re going to go deeper into our bench.

“It’s going to be really fun.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Oooh Bobi ??<br><br>The <a href="https://twitter.com/CairnsTaipans?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CairnsTaipans</a> have secured the signing of Swedish Next Star Bobi Klintman for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL24?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL24</a> ??<br><br>Read more: <a href="https://t.co/RLAL2bRS3E">https://t.co/RLAL2bRS3E</a> <a href="https://t.co/Oucx6bpjv9">pic.twitter.com/Oucx6bpjv9</a></p>&mdash; NBL (@NBL) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBL/status/1668411537088970760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 13, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

While Klintman’s signing for the Taipans acts as a huge tick in their favour, following the departure of key stars this off-season, there’s still plenty of water to go under the bridge for the side to, once again, put a competitive side together.

Following the addition of Klintman and re-signing of Bul Kuol, Forde says the Taipans are set to continue their raft of high-profile additions.

“We’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline,” he said. “We’ll pretty much be pulling the trigger on an import in the coming days, and then the final spots will wait until Summer League.

“There’s some exciting talent. There’s a deep free agency of players who are still available from the local side of things, so we’ll make sure we do our due diligence.

“We wanted to get this piece done first to know what the balance of the roster is going to look like.

“Now, with Bobi, we’ll probably be targeting more of a forward/big at Summer League to fill out that last import spot, then the Aussie is going to be best fit/best available and getting someone who suits our identity.

“This is the direction we wanted to go in and to bring Bobi on now, it just creates a real level of enthusiasm to draw up a new playbook, explore some new potential halfcourt sets, and how we’ll look on defence with someone as dynamic as him.”

Cairns will play New Zealand in its opening game of the NBL24 season on Saturday, September 20.