Very interested to see this game,36ers by 9 points.
The crowd = 5131.

No Groves hey? I think that could work in Dragons favour, or atleast Ingles...he didn't seem to work to well with Groves on court at the same time Wed Night. When Joe did get it going in the 2nd half....Groves went MIA. Either way the 36ers should snap out of that BS last week and smash South. 36ers by 19....but considering Maher's testimonial by 24-29.

adelaide by 25

is there a curtain raiser tonight?

Sixers by 10-15... Heal to be Heal (ie: a total tosser), Horvath to be schooled by whoever is guarding him... and hopefully some good dunks by anybody being guarded by Heal, especially on the breakaway.

And the biggest prediction (in a good way): Chappell to get at least 15pts and 7reb.

Anon #151549, Horvath wouldn't know what "Defence" was if it punched him in the face (infact your whole team is pretty defensively challenged) and Heal is an arrogant little prick. Your teams in trouble& Get used to losing buddy.

In a way it's a petty Willie won't be here to jump right over Heal and throw one down.

LOL at Anon's mod.

It was meant to be a 'double entendre'.

I think it depends on which Phil turns up. If "proactive/professional Phil" turns up, win by 15 .. if "2006 Phil" turns up - loss by 10

Your in denial aren't you? 'Hammer is very close to 'past it', if he is your hope this season.... then im worried about another new team in the league, and how long it will last!

sixers by 8 crowd to nudge up towards the 6000 mark for maher, 5812 to be exact :P

I liked it how Boti Nagy described Nick Horvath and an "offensive force and defensive farce". In a later write-up he described Horvath as "offensively magical and defensively mythical". By the looks of the Perth game the Dragons seem to be all-round mythical at the moment. Go Boti! Go Sixers!

Sixers by 10+ Maher to produce some 3 point magic.

Adelaide to do it for their inspirational captain,Davidson to top score with 23, Sixers to edge them out by 5pts in what I think will be a close game.Nick I couldnt agree with you more about you said bout Heal.....

Dragons by 13

adelaide have lost the plot as usual

Adelaide is up by 1

Interstate and couldn't make the game. NBL live scores have N.Herbert with 15 points. Is that correct? Dragons up by 2 with a quarter to go.

7 mins to go sixers 96 play dragons 89.
Herbert 21 points

Is Herbert actually Herbert or Groves?

Great statline from Ingles.

36ers look like they will hold on for the win.

Its Herbert with no name on his singlet/
Adelaide win 115 to 108.

Well Done Boys
Congrats Brett

Wish I had have gone now instead of listening to it on the radio.

Herbert the rookie with 23 points...

Ballinger got 27 and Mottram played alright. I am dissapointed i can't be there, maybe next time ;)

Best for Adelaide Ballinger amd Maher.
Best for Dragons Ingles and a rookie..Herbert.!

Fantastic game! One of the best i've seen in a few years. Ebbed and flowed throughout but I thought the Sixers looked the better team. May have been a different story had Groves played...but who expected Herbert to light it up for 23??

Really enjoyable to watch both teams make incredible runs where they just could not miss! Crowd was up from the first game and they were making some noise too! Some shocking calls from the umps...a couple of charges and non-charges had me out of my sight yelling!

Mottram played a top game, probably in our top 3 tonight. Hussled on every play and I thought his only mistake was his first possession where he turned it over. Ballinger got busy when we needed points, Maher was on fire in the 3rd when we made our run, Davidson was busy but was hesitant to shoot tonight, Chappell is still not 100% and Copes was on fire early and faded late.

Our defense was the big improvement for mine. May have just been because our opponents weren't as good offensively as other sides, but our rotations were much, much better tonight.

Thought they could have put more effort into the Maher 'presentation' because he is, after all, the greatest sixer of all-time. It was just a bit amatuer the way it was handled and I was a bit dissapointed the crowd did not stay on their feet, but not to worry!

And Isaac, I've mentioned on here a couple of times some simple things like getting a wave going before the game to get the crowd going...well tonight the MC got one going which was fantastic...do the sixers management read this forum?? Would have been great had he done it again at half time too. Might be a bit corny but at least it gets everyone's attention.

Great game all round!

Great work music man for playing the smash hit of the 80's 'You're so vain' whenever Shane Heal was subbed in.

Hate him you may but the NBL will be poorer when he hangs up the sneakers..

Dragons started well with a Jacob Holmes hot early (anyone who saw him shoot against Perth on Wednesday will know how much that pisses me off), and Ingles getting upstairs for a massive lob dunk off a Heal feed. Adelaide responded through a Mottram monster coming down the lane on a fast break. Horvath drew three early fouls and was a non-factor throughout. Copeland's injection (read as Chappell's removal) triggered a nice run with three triples to Lanard and 2 to Ng. Dench's dunk on the buzzer gave us a 33-28 lead after one.

I'd probably prefer to forget that the second period even happened, we were that shit. South hit about 7 3s for the quarter, and Nathan Herbet was brilliant. Heal found his stroke, and Ingles was a handfull. Herbert's 3 on the halftime buzzer gave South a 62-48 lead.

Adelaide came out strong to start the third, Chappell finally hit a f*cking three pointer, and Maher got white hot for 12 points in the quarter. His three from the corner tied it at 68, and Copeland's fourth triple gave us the lead a minute later. Annoyingly, after Chappell had played his best 5 minutes as a Sixer, he was benched. Ballinger was terrific throughout, and Cooper's cameo tonight was so good that Dench spent the entire second half anchored to the bench between Dodman and Burdon. Adelaide had the lead out to as much as 5 on a Matt Sutton bomb, but threes to Holmes and Herbert saw the score notted at 81 after 3.

After Ingles' 18 footer openned the last Ballinger scored back to back baskets, the second plus a foul following a sweet feed from Maher. Ballinger scored again then Davidson stole a lazy pass and went all the way for a 92-86 lead. His three with 5 minutes to go gave us the lead by 10. Despite some trademark incompetence from the officiating crew Adelaide held the Dragons off for an important 115 to 108 win.

Ballinger was excellent for 27 points, Maher shot beautifully for 19 (after a quite first half), Mottram had his best game as a Sixer with 12 points on perfect shooting and 7 rebounds. Copeland's spark off the bench was crucial, as was Cooper's. Davidson again ran the show, and while this wasn't his best game shooting the ball, he hit some big shots in the fourth quarter when it mattered. Chappell remains the weak link. He couldn't even manage to guard Matt Shanahan tonight, and again shot poorly (2-12).

For South, Ingles was brilliant, and though he cooled somewhat in the second half he had 25 points and 10 assists. Herbert had a great night (he had 23 and I don't think he had scored in South's other two games), and to be honest I think he was so damaging he more than covered for the absence of Groves. Holmes overcame his 3-3 start to shoot 2-12 thereafter, though he continues to be the best rebounder for his size in the NBL. Heal hit 5 threes, but had some bad turnovers and was exposed a number of times on defence.

The officiating was quite good in the first half, but just a joke in the second. A couple of calls which went against Mottram were terrible, and Geoff Weeks missed a mugging on Davidson RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM with 2 minutes to go, an effort that was so bad that he should be fined.

Not Adelaide's best win, but the 21 point turnaround in the second half was encouraging. Mottram's progress was great to see (a couple of his post moves were fantastic). If we can manage to get anything out of Chappell we will be ok. If not, the 4 game road swing could be pretty ugly.

Great write up Mutley, however I disagree with you about Chappell. Definitely his best gane as a Sixer - can clearly see his fitness is improving and getting in sync offensively. He look slow, but his first step is unguardable. How many shots rimmed out, or even when in and popped out for him. That's happened all games for him so far. I'm sure once his back is right, his legs are under him, that shot will be going down consistently for him - it has for 8+ years of pro ball. Defensively (when I was watching him properly) he was the only one that could seal off Jingles quick first step on his drive, forcing him to pass, so don't know if we were watching two different games or I didn't focus on his D enough, but he looked pretty solid to me.

Great game, great crowd and the refs were terrible for both teams as per usual - where is the consistency? Thought it was a bit tasteless to boo Heal EVERY time he touched the ball. Think we need to have a bit more class than that as 'the most knowledgable' fans in the NBL.

I agree with you cavolo. Chappell moved better tonight. He was more balanced and a presense on the boards as well.

I thought Mottrams hussle in the 3rd turned the game however, and the opportunities he created was the difference between the two teams. Ng looks very settled in his well defined back up shooting guard role, but dominance of the boards by the 36er forwards in the second half was the difference between the two sides.

Does anyone know if Axel is injured? surely he has got to be a better option than Cooper can present? Or was it more because of the match ups...

yeah also though Chappell had a much better game, his shot is still not falling but he looked better out there got a couple of good rebounds. I think he should just go to the hole until his shot naturally comes rather than forcing it a little. Never thought i would bring myself to actually appreciate davidson but i thought he was real good pushing the ball up when they started to press in the last quarter. We are so bad when teams press and he seems to have the ability to just run at them and break some lines. Overall a great game to watch, we did it hard to get the win but it was good to see the boys bounce back and keep at it.

Cavolo, I agree with you about Shane Heal. He is loved to be hated in Adelaide but the fact of the matter is that he comes to play basketball and he does that very well. People may not respect him as a person but as a basketballer he deserves better from a crowd that prides itself on knowing the game. I think the behaviour of the crowd towards him is quite childish. I am a culprit of this behaviour myself because it bugs me how he is so arrogant, but he backs up this arrogance with his game. Love it or not, he does know how to play, and manages the head coach role at the same time.

Davidson and Adam are very tough and so very consistent.

I may have been watching a different game, but i thought Chappell was rubbish, didn't have an effect at all on the game. I know he is coming back from injury, but how long do we give him to get it sorted?

Well back injuries can take weeks, even months if its disc related to fully heal. Then lack of match fitness would take another couple of weeks.

Yeah, Motts was awesome with his hustle and smart post moves inside - didn't force it. His rebounding was great and so was Cooper when he was on - haven't seen that aggressiveness in a few years on the boards.

Re Chappell - think we are forgetting that he was injured on the way over, so he hasn't trained much with the team, and a back injury prevents almost all training, running, shooting, weights etc, so he is still finding his place in the team, the shot is starting to warm up, but the hustle was there, and I think like an earlier comment said, a little less forcing, and the game will come to him as his fitness and strength returns. I like how we have quality back-ups to evry starting positions this year which gives us so many more options.

On defence, Motts always fights the screens, and if he does have to switch, he always looks for the opportunity to switch back. And often does successfully. He really disrupts an offence.

I was very impressed with Mottram, Ballinger and Daivdson, they all seem like great recruits and wow how hard do Mottram and Daivdson hustle its great to see, and Ballinger was best on court for me, along with Maher!
Chappell seemed to play hard and hit the boards hard and seemed ok defensively to me his shot just wasnt quite dropping, once he gets his shot back i think he will be a great fit and will easily give us somewhere along the lines of 15-20 points and 5-10 rebounds. I just hope the 36ers are able to win most of there games for the next month and give him time to get right, else the tough decision may have to be made, but i would personaly like to see him given another month atleast to get back into it and i reckon he will be a great fit for the team. Atleast he is a import who trys hard on both ends, and doesnt give up even when he is carrying a injury!
How come Dench didnt get much court time??? i guess Mottram was doing so well they gave him the minutes instead.

In your face #151549.

Dragons have started 0-3 and have three of the top four sides coming up. Will need some luck to avoid a 0-6 start - deja vu!

Well personally I think Mutley should take over from Boti in the paper.
As for Chappell, well of course it was his best game, he actually scored for a start and could he have been any worse than the first 2 weeks?
As for Cooper, it hurts me but I thought he was great last night and I am assuming too that was the reason for Dench being benched (it has a bit of a ring to it doesn't it!)
Ng shot well in the first half but once again his inability to defend is too big a liability.
Back on the subkect of Chappell, his warm up shooting, as was the case last week, was deplorable. Did anyone notice this again?
I will be at the game in Auckland in a week or so's time and will report back in due course.

Sidenote: was that the WORST national anthem ever ? I was pissing myself ... not a very good advert for THAT singing school.

Chappell showed a flash or two of the silky moves, but he's still restricted. Why not give him the time off to be 100% ?

Two badly missed calls in last 2mins - that charge that davidson drew middle of key that was no-called, and left jingles open for a three .. then, as mentioned, the midcourt mugging on davidson that gave jingles the breakaway dunk.

Is anyone worried about that second quarter? that looked remarkably like the 6ers of last season - lack of commitment on D, leading to confusion and selfishness on offence ..

oh, and i've been converted - i'm now a Mottram fan. Hustle was outstanding.

Interesting to hear Mark Davis comment at half time that the Dragons were hot in the second quarter,but will cool off,then when that happens,we've gotta go for it.
He seemed to be pretty right.
(Chappell will be fit for game 4)

Mottram was brilliant last night. Melvin, we kinda can't give Chappell the time off because he's the only small forward we have. You have to wonder how his back will handle the flight to NZ though.

My earlier criticism of Chappell last night was primarily based on his first half. He did show some signs in the second half. But we were down by 14 at the major break, and it would have been much worse had Copeland not had the impact he did when he replaced Chappell. And we just can't be relying upon a 42 year old to have that sort of impact. He did v Wollongong, and we won. Against Melbourne Copeland couldn't hit anything, and so we got NOTHING out of the small forward position for the game. But he has to be an add-some and not a key cog in our fortunes.

Absolutely correct re the anthem: stop f*cking around with it and sing it as written.

Also agreed re the second quarter. The main difference though was that South made their jumpers in that quarter, and we didn't. The didn't get in the lane too much. It does worry me however, that with all the post players we went out and got in the off season that we can still struggle to score like that against a team with NO height. Mottram needed more than the 5 shots he got, and if we ever consistently pass Ballinger the ball for 4 quarters he could toss in 50!

EC, completely agree we should respect Heal...but I think we do, or at least I do. I boo him because I love to hate him. People forget his past actions so quickly! Do you not remember him as a young Bullet running downt the court giving the Powerhouse crowd the finger??? Any player that does that deserves to be booed.

Just because we boo the man, does not mean we lack respect for him. Adds a bit of flavour to the game as well!

What did people think of the Half Time stick fighting?

Was there any skill involved in that??? Did anyone see the welts on the Tall Guy in the middle? OUCH!!

Wasn't impressed really, the first 2 weeks were good but really didn't think much of it. I did see the welts, it would hurt that is for sure but didnt think much of it

I agree with you completely sixersfan, Whenever a game comes up in Adelaide that Shane Heal will be involved in I immediately look forward too the match. I love to sit in the crowd and listen to evryone boo him because he is one player i love to hate. Although i love to hate him i still respect him as a basketball player. On the offensive end he can still light it up as shown in a game against New Zealand last season when he scored 37. No matter how much we boo him he will still be a good player and will always be one that i love to hate but respect because of his on court abilities.

Official Crowd: 4959

I was only 150 off.

I was actually impressed with Smyth's coaching for a change! This game he seem to put on the right people at the right time. I was a bit skeptical of Mottram starting but that worked out to be a great move and I think we will see him starting from now on infront of Dench.

Also I think you will find that Dench's lack of court time came because the Dragons are a pretty quick team so Dench's game wasn't suited last night. So it was good to see Smyth recognize that and give him limited minutes. I also saw the play where Dench was posting up Martin and couldn't believe my eyes when he was unable to score on him or even pass the ball over him.

I think the key to our bigs is to not have Cooper and Mottram on at the same time as their offensive game is limited.

Also another thing to note from that game is we pretty much got rid of that stupid man to man switch defense. I saw us running it once during the game but that was it. Good to see that we have learnt a few things from that Tigers game.

The only thing I can question though is that we make too many subs. but all in all it was good to see from that game anyway that perhaps we might be going in the right direction if Phil continues to go with the players that work well together.

Great write up Mutley. Agree with everything you said, but also to some extent agree with Cavolo re Chappell.

Chappell in the one on one was defensively shutting down Ingles entire game. I was very impressed with his defence in this situation. However, he also had some piss poor team defensive efforts when he didn't try at all. I put it down to a fitness thing (it had better be).

The second quarter is poor, but remember we played tonight with four new starting 5 players. That is essentially a completely new team, and for that reason I think we have some hope that this team can get it together to challenge the Bullets and Tigers of the league. Did anyone notice that at one stage in the first quarter we also had the entire second team on the court at once (Ng, Sutton, Copes, Cooper and Dench). Surprisingly, this rotation worked pretty well. I guess Smyth is still experimenting a bit.

Adam Hills' national anthem

King James,
if that 'stupid man to man switch defense' was what you saw in the second quarter, then i think that's the defence they call the 'match up zone'. The Tigers loved playing against it, and Jingles is pretty keen on playing against it also.

Fortunately with a centre with Defensive skills like Mottram, i don't think they are going to need that switching keyway defence much anymore.

151638,
if your talking about the free throw that gave Cooper a three point play then yes i saw that too. Also he seemed to really disagree with one of the calls that were made as he argued for a while with the referee.

I wondered about that. On what grounds is he allowed to berate the umpires for >30 seconds? None of the other players or coaches can without drawing a T.

I would suggest that the next game in New Zealand, Chappell should not make that trip. His current form suggests he would do little to help the team and why risk aggravating his injury. Instead I would be inclined to keep him at home and practice shooting everyday as well as taking part in training with the team when they are at home. I thought we would get a bit more out of him last night because starting him suggested that Phil had confidence in him. I was somewhat excited at that prospect but at the same time apprehensive about what he had achieved over the week.

> What did people think of the Half Time stick fighting?

I asked Weeksy about it afterwards, he said he didn't see any contact at all.

Other thoughts:

- Shane Heal's nickname is Hammer because he's a tool with a big head.

- The correct tune for the national anthem is the theme music from Gilligan's Island.

- It's a long season, Chappell will come good.

- We got killed in the second quarter by our poor rebounding at both ends. We were also too quick to collapse into the key to cut off drivers, leaving three-point shooters open with their feet set. The Dragons did a good job of recognising this and finding the open man, who made us pay. After half time we did a better job of defending these drives and playing the passing lanes to force turnovers, and also we hit the boards harder. Once we reeled them in, we also worked the ball inside more for high-percentage shots.

Why are we putting up with Chappell having far below average games?

Time to be ruthless Mal and do your job; cut him now.

You dont have to spen big bucks, just get some young kid that is going to give his all!

Give one of his 3 brothers a call up.

Ian, Greg and Trevor are all ledgends!

If I were Mal, I would explain that I am not cutting Chappell at age 29, just when he is about to come good.
Do u want me to cut Maher at 34 and Davo at 33
Cooper,Dench are 30, Ballinger 28.
Some want Dodman cut at 19 !
I ain't cutting anybody.

Mantis, off course Weeksy didn't see any contact in the stick fighting, he didn't see any of the muggings on court either.

Well done for explaining their joke EC!