Containing Grizzard will be a task. Will be intersting to see what Phil decides to do with the startin lineup. Id like to see Burdon get some minutes over Sutton. This is just one of those games u gotta win if your gonna be a decent side.

Hopefully this bring a mate promotion will ring in the numbers too...

Lets see some banners!!! Joke Joke!

crowd 5285 sixers to win by 9
Ballinger to go off, give him more of the ball!!

Good chance to get back on the winners list but on the other hand, it'll be disatrous if we lose. The Slingers are Helms, Grizzard, Knight plus a bunch of SEABL quality guys (Janev is reasonable though). There seemed to be a few people who refused to come to Sixers games untill Chappell was sacked so with any luck they'll be back on board now. Davidson is an excellent defender so I'm hopig he can do a good job on Mike Helms. Hopefully plenty of people bring a mate and we get a crowd of 5,000 plus. We need all the confidence we can get going into Melbourne on wednesday.

Sixers by 15

Crowd 4200, Sixers by 18. Going to be a lot of people with Christmas shows this weekend.

is tip off at 7 30 tonight?

If the Sixers play like we saw them play in the last qtr against the Kings then 36ers by 18 points.

If they play like they have the majority of the season, 36ers by 7 points.

Should be a bigger crowd tonight as its members bring a mate for free night.

Crowd 4,600. 36ers by 15. Will have no direct defender for Grizzard, but team defense will contain him and the Slingers won't have enough talent to keep it close.

Crowd 4710

Sixers by 9.

Crowd 4900, 36ers by 18.

Zone I guess.
Maybe sixers 120 to slingers 95, , crowd ; 4890.

Way off topic, but not worth a new thread and it sort of relates....

Sitting at home watching Fox hoping it is the 36ers V Slinger just before heading to work and the p**icks were showing the Hawks v 36ers Semi-Final and the bullsh*t Lowry flop due to some technical error with Fox who advertised they are showing the Dragons v Tigers.

I was surprised just how much that still pisses my off. I watch it, chucked one cushion across the room, shouted abuse at the TV, turned the TV off before the little flopper takes the free throws and lobbed the remote across the room.. Missus is looking at we with wide eyes and as I storm out of the room she simply asks "was that a foul"........

It then took me 10 minutes to compose myself before coming to work.....


and I'm still not happy...

Surprising no Chappell, really thought they were going to play him for one last game.

Cooper starting in his replacment, WAT THE HELL PHILL!

36ers 58 Singapore 38

Ballinger 24 POINTS.

Half Time.

TR, i remember watching that match live years ago and i got pissed off, they showed it earlier this year aswell on a technical error, still haven't got over it.

Fox certainly knows how to piss off the Adelaide fans.

Half time Sixers lead 58 -38.

Ballinger 24
Maher 9
Davidson 7

Grizzard 15
Helms 8
Knight 6

NBL Live scores *not working*

Yes it is working.

It comes and goes. Sorta like Herpes. So I've been told. Anyway enough of that.

Two minutes left in the third quarter Adelaide up
81 - 51.

found some stats - best points for ballinger previously was 39 vrs kings in '05 or so with the hawks - as far as i could find

We really have to stitch up Ballinger for the long term, signed him long term now and fingers crossed he's still looking at naturalising.

I hope the bench gets a run esp Dodman and Gerlach

Young or wat.

On court:
Dench
Dodman
Sutton
Burdon
Gerlach.

Damn nbl.com.au livestats....
Any word on how many Ballinger has scored?

Balls finnished on 46.

36ERS WIN!

Sixers 104 - Singapore 77.

46 before he got taken off to give the bench a run

Pity really.. i wanted him to get 50 points..

Yer 50 would be good but atleast phill gave dodman and gerlach a run. That was awesome!. Nice job phill!

46 with a sore back, that's his highest, so didn't mind coming off as can look forward to getting 50.

I think Phil misunderstood Sapwell's comment on "Run the Bench" to be "Run the Dench".

With a lot of road games coming up in a short amount of time, important to run everyone. Incredibly Dench was the second highest rebounder, and the 4th highest scorer.

Jordy Dodmann, emerging cult hero.. with his effort burst tonight at the end, he is going to get more and more popular.

Ballinger was simply magnificent. His mid range jumpshot was pure as silk all night. He was literally everywhere, bombing threes, blocking dunk attempts, and his thunderous slam coming down the lane was fantastic to watch.

Cooper was inserted into the starting lineup and Adelaide looked a little offensively unbalanced at first, but once they got going they never stopped. Defensively we were excellent, Davidson in the passing lanes and Mottram, Cooper, and Dench in the middle. Copeland again provided a spark from the bench, hitting a rare four point play straight after his insertion. 29-12 Adelaide after one became 58-38 after two, with Ballinger's 19 point second peiod. Dench had a couple of good moments, though some of his turnovers are a really disturbing combination of stupidity and laziness.

Rod Grizzard is a star. I hadn't seen the guy before but his game was fantastic. He's deceptively quick and explosively athletic. A couple of times he looked basically asleep on defence but managed to get his hand in the passing lane where it didn't look like he had an angle.

Our third quarter was again the Ballinger show as he added another 10 points to his tally. I kinda kept waiting for Helms to go on a tare and hurt us, but he did practically nothing all night. Grizzard had 25 after three, and we were ahead 81-51. In truth, it wasn't that close.

Ballinger continued on his merry way in the last, finally being subbed out to a standing ovation with a career high 46 points. He just oozed class in everything he did last night. The biggest roar from the crowd came with 5 minutes to go when Jordy Dodman rose from the bench and removed his warmups. He bricked a couple of free throws but took two good charges and looked comfortable enough to suggest he could contribute something to this team. Erik Burdon and Brad Gerlach also got a run, and Dodman's turnaround from the post closed the scoring on what was a very interesting night from a Sixer's supporter's perspective.

Sutton continues to struggle badly with his shot, though he was notably more aggressive last night. Dench had an odd night: he does do some very creative things but seems to struggle to make decisions quickly enough.

Finally, I actually thought Phil Smyth got everything right this time. From the opening lineup, to the defensive rotations/matchups, to player substitutions, to finally running the bench players.

A couple of quick comments on Singapore: Hayden Allen is the worst starting point guard in NBL history. His backup Shane McDonald is no better. Chris Cameron a log, Blagov Janev had a DOG of a night, but I'm led to believe he is better than that. Grizzard, Ben Knight, and David Donaldson were really their only contributors.

Last night was a return to something of Dome games in years past. We would beat good teams, but we would DESTROY bad teams in our building, and that is what happened last night. Terrific stuff!

4414

Has anyone seen a worse NBL team then the Slingers? They were terrible and made us look really good (Not taking away credit from the sixers we did everything right as well. It was a bit of both) However, it was a game we really needed, to get everyone's confidence up.

The only thing of concern is that defensively we are focusing on that zone. I think against the Slingers, Dragons and Hawks it will work fine but against the other teams in the league they will destroy it. Hence why the better teams in the league don't use that tactic as there main defense.

Ballinger continues to show us that he needs to be the main scoring option. There should be more plays run for him specifically so that he gets a miss match in the post and then can go to work. I would say he is close to the best import in the league but the only reason why he isn't the best is because at times he is too unselfish. The guy is a scoring machine and at times looks to be unstopable!

King James i agree about the zone. When you are 30 points up against the bottom side why not at least practice another defence. We also have some excellent man defenders in Davidson and Mottram who are just wasted in a zone. Lets get back in their faces.

Gordie mentioned that the 36ers had done their homework with their zone defence & rotations on them.
He saw it, I saw it, where were you guys?
If it ain't broke, leave it.
Having said that, & as parochial as I am, I do agree, the Slingers looked crap, for whatever reason.

Hey, maybe someone can answer this: A charging foul often goes into the stats as a turnover, so why doesn't drawing a charge count as a steal?

DDFan, I would believe when Sydney got the lead out to 30 points against our zone that would count as broken!

Fair call against the Kings, but against the Slingers it worked. I'll admit, it's a faint line between whether our defence was that good, or the Slingers were that bad, but I'm an optimist. ; )

I enjoyed last night immensely. I too liked the 3 bigs in the starting line-up, I felt it took a lot of pressure off of Motts & gave Balls a lot more freedom. Scoop made the defence cover him out further, after he hit a coupla buckets, & it opened up other scoring avenues.
Thanks to the good work of Mutley, there's not much more I can add, except to agree that Grizzard was as impressive, as Janev was disappointing.
Also, a proud moment hearing the applause for the new bloods when they entered the game. Nice. : )

Yeah, Gerlach was given a standing ovation, awesome stuff! There were a whole load of guys yelling at Phil in an unfriendly manner telling him to give the rookies a go and there was also a loud Dodman chant that started well before he hit the floor. Also seemed to be a Cooper fan club who yelled his name everytime he did something. Good to see local boy Michael Wong getting a run at the end aswell. He was the only Singaporean, or even Asian on their team...stupid really. Great night of basketball.

Slingers are really not a very good team at all and after finally seeing them play, I'm surprised they've managed to beat anyone except maybe the Hawks. Helms' poor game never helped.

Mutley, Allen doesn't normally start - I think for most of the season they've started McDonald up until the last few games. Allen was decent against Brisbane, I think it was, but is more of a shooter AFAIK.

Commanding game from Ballinger!

As has been said, crowd was 4,414 and that included 450 or so people taking up the Bring-a-Mate offer. Hopefully any newcomers could overlook the poor opposition and appreciate Ballinger's game.

Nothing to do with the game but while on the subject of crowd numbers, how are they counted. Is it the number of people who come through the doors (swipes a ticket) or the number of seats that have been paid for? This would include season ticket holders whose seats are paid for and reserved for them but do not attend.

It's a count of those coming through the door AFAIK. Some other venues might count sales all up (which would count season memberships who don't show) I think.