I think any of the current top 4 have the ability to win. It all really depends on how the final standing are and who the matchups are. The most likely would be NZ at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if any of the other 3 got the trophy. I don't think Perth can beat NZ at the moment but if Adelaide knocked over NZ and Perth beat Cairns in the semis they would be a good chance. I'd love to see Cairns win the title ( apart from Perth of course )

If I wasn't naturally paranoid I'd say Cairns, but I can see NZ win it because they want to spite me personally :C

Wollongong in 2001 was the last time a regional ( not a major city) team won an NBL championship. Would be huge if Cairns won.

Cairns has to be right up there. Any series with 2 games in Cairns should be theirs for the taking. Let's say they finish 4th and Perth 3 rd, I reckon that would go Cairns way. Let's assume it's NZ v Adelaide on the other side and Adelaide get up, the Cairns v Adelaide series would go to 3 games

I am an Adelaide fan. But that is not the reason I am saying Adelaide. We just have more horses. We are deeper. We are strong and deep at every position and we are scary on the open floor.

Jack : do you mean Cairns finish 2nd (not 4th) ? Because I think it's impossible for Cairns to get any lower than second. :)

Cairns have the best combination of a guy who can close games and a stout team defense IMO.

Having said that, they don't have the championship pedigree and finals experience of Perth and NZ.

The head says its going to be close this season and until the top 4 is settled I'm not going to speculate.

The heart says the Adelaide 36ers are going to win their 5th NBL Championship.

Right now I'd probably guess NZ over Adelaide, but obviously a lot can change over a month.

Adelaide 36ers too much talent, and the ceiling has no where near been reached, Will be the team to beat, come finals time.

I think the best possible result for us would be to finish 4th and play off against New Zealand
I think we match up against them better, we are bigger and go deeper in the bench and we would win a series against them
Then would we win home court advantage? Because if we did I think we would win no matter who we played whether it was cairns or Perth although I prefer it to be Perth for payback from last year

As much as I would love to see Adelaide in the finals I'm not going to make any predictions until after Melbourne's completed its sunshine swing.

Anon : as far as I'm aware, the highest ranked team will get home court advantaged . So if Adelaide finish 4th and beat the top seed the Home court advantage would go to the winner of 2nd vs 3rd ( even if 3rd won the series ) :)

Correct, Train.
If 4th beats 1st, they do not receive 1st's home court advantage. It remains set by regular season standings.

NZ haven't played their best basketball yet and have players who are experienced in closing out finals games.
If they can't win it I hope the Taipans can pull it off.

I have a feeling that we could see a Perth v Adelaide rematch.

If Adelaide make it they will be hungry to atone for their last game perfomance in the GF last season.

They are better than last year and the form team at the moment.

However, all of the above means nothing in Finals.

i hope Cairns wins it. Have spent half the money of all the other big clubs. Just goes to show how well they are coached with the resources they have!

Adelaide are playing great, but I don't buy this optimism that they are true Championship contenders.

The Sixers are still a real risk of not making the finals at all. Teams who lose 7 in a row don't tend to win Championships (see Townsville in that year they had a great run, Wollongong last year). I believe there is also some crazy stat that the NBL has been won by a team in the top 2 every year since the current finals format.

I will be happy if the Sixers make some noise in the Semis, making the Finals would be a surprise and a bonus given the year we have had.

Cairns=well coached=hahaha good one. They're talented and have had no injury woes this year. They've under performed for years so about time they deliver.

Yes I agree Cairns are well coached. Has just taken them a few years for this group to grow together. They finally have had a couple of years with the same players and its coming together. They can't just go and buy two marque players like Adelaide did just because they stunk. Plus Fearne has never cut an import before and has done well with what money allows him to buy!

I reckon Adelaide will hit their stride just before the finals and do it on their dicks, but would like to see Cairns get the money. With DJ and Motum in, Adelaide are just too talented.

Motum doesnt seem like a top bloke but he is a top player.

Plus you have the great Gibbo bringing the ball up the floor and getting in the opposition's earholes. They should be considered favourites.

Perth, NZ great teams but this isn't their year.

If Cairns won it would be a great story and i think the media would be more into it than if it was just the same old clubs winning it. Wouldn't mind if they won.

Adelaide? FMD
And they say Perth fans are arrogant.

DEFENCE wins finals, and that's the one thing Adelaide lack.

A fully fit and functioning Perth could shake things up. I think they are the only team to potentially threaten, but on balance I can't see it.

Given the "evenness" at the top, I think it will come down to home court advantage. Hard to see NZ dropping their semis, and if the have home-court advantage for the grand-final I think they will be unstoppable.

Cairns are also looking dangerous, and at home will also be formidable. Definitely looks like a 2-horse race at this point.

It would be GREAT for Cairns and The NBL for them to win.

Since when does anyone on this forum give a coach a few years to get their players to click?

DEFENCE wins finals

" DEFENCE wins finals


[citation needed]"

Like anything on here, its an opinion (based on personal observation) but I would cite last years GF series.

The first two games were relatively even, somewhat free-flowing, with neither team getting on top defensively. I suppose you could argue that had that trend continued, defence might not have played a stand-out role. However in game three the big difference was the Cat's defence. Their score was only one point up from game one, and their top scorer was Redhage with 16, but they held Adelaide to only 59 points.

Go back another year, and both GF games were an ugly, dour, defensive struggle. The Cats were held to only 67 &66.

It's NZ/cairns then daylight. Any other teams are just making up the numbers.

My season predictions are all out the window. At the start Unitigers looked damn impressive to me, and I couldn't understand the hype Wilbekin was receiving in the early games. What was it based on?
While I still love watching Steve Dennis play I now see there isn't a lot of defensive ball pressure in his game, but Wilbekin is pretty extraoridinay defensively. I'm quite happy for King and the Podglodites to remind me I was just wrong all along. Craig has obviously now figured out what the Taipans do and I'm awed by his defensive contribution as well.
Maybe Cairns can bypass NZ in the finals or even defeat them. What i see now though is that no team will be Champions unless they defeat Adelaide.

"It's NZ/cairns then daylight. Any other teams are just making up the numbers."

Adelaide have beaten Cairns twice in a row, I don't think the Taipans would feel like the 36ers are making up the numbers.

I don't think the Cats are making up the numbers either. I still think we'd be a reasonable chance in any series against Adelaide or Cairns. We could potentially still win the thing if we manage to hold onto 3rd spot. We'd just need Adelaide to take care of NZ for us, as that's the one team we don't seem to be able to deal with this season.

Wilson sting, boy beating the hawks by 3 at home is not day light. When u get one good season, u must think ure team are the globetrotters.

"What i see now though is that no team will be Champions unless they defeat Adelaide."

Well that probably rules out the Hawks...

Like anything on here, its an opinion (based on personal observation) but I would cite last years GF series.

I think rather than looking at regular season stats it might be better to examine playoff, and particularly championship series stats. Do championship teams up their defence at the pointy end of the season?

Probably not in terms of DRtg, since they're playing better teams.

Regardless, "defence wins championships" usually comes up in the course of predicting the current season's champion based on whether or not a contender is a good defensive team, so I think my method is an adequate assessment of the claim used in that context.

WilsonSting, im going to hold yopu to that daylight opinion. I think you're very far off. By daylight I assume you mean both teams will sweep their respective semi series, doubt that will happen, as far as the 36ers are concerned, and if Perth pick up maybe in their case too.

"So your argument is that it happened once? That's not particularly convincing."

What, you can only read one paragraph?

As I said:
"Go back another year, and both GF games were an ugly, dour, defensive struggle. The Cats were held to only 67 &66."

That describes most of the league that year.

"Wilson sting, boy beating the hawks by 3 at home is not day light. "

I'm assuming you didn't watch the game and just looked at the stat line.

That game was a good indication of how much more mentally strong and confident Cairns are in themselves this year than they have in the past. Traditionally they would have laid down and taken the loss but they won't stand for that now.

Cairns and Adelaide have had some good tussles this year. IIRC the split is pretty even, and Adelaide have shown they can win in Cairns.
IF (and its a big if) The Wildcats are back at full strength then I think either they or Adelaide could give Cairns a good shake in the Semis.
Keep in mind that in the finals Cairns won't have the advantage of getting teams on the back of a stupid road-trip.

I don't know exactly when the first games will be scheduled, but Adelaide play their last game on the 20th, giving them a two day buffer over Cairns and NZ.
(Perth play twice in the last round.)
So a Cairns v Adelaide SF could be very interesting.

Its hard to say who has the hardest road home out of Cairns and NZ, so it could well come down to that last game. NZ would need to win by around 24+ to take the split, so its not impossible for Cairns to take the Minor Premiership and play-off against Adelaide. (Assuming MU don't mount a comeback.)

I wonder, if results fell the right way, and Perth in the last game of the year, knowing the result of the NZ game, faced a "choice" of playing Cairns or NZ in the semis. Would they have a preference, and would they act on it?

On Balance, I still think the final four will be:
NZ
Cairns
Perth
Melbourne (maybe Adelaide.)

Dazz, every team plays their last game on Sunday 22 February with only NZ and Cairns playing one game each in the last minor round of the season.

The NBL website has chopped off the last game Adelaide Vs Gong on the Banner fixtures for Round 20, thats probably where Dazz is getting confused :P

"Go back another year, and both GF games were an ugly, dour, defensive struggle. The Cats were held to only 67 &66."

Go back the year before that and see the high scores. Individual examples don't tell the story though, you have to look at a good sized sample of playoff performances.

"Probably not in terms of DRtg, since they're playing better teams."

Obviously you could compare it to their performances against better teams, but probably the best measure is comparing defensive performance of teams in the playoffs/grand final, that will help decide whether defence wins championships.

greybuoy, just buy me a beer next time you're in Cairns and we'll call it even mate:)

"The NBL website has chopped off the last game Adelaide Vs Gong on the Banner fixtures for Round 20, thats probably where Dazz is getting confused :P"

Oops :-(

Dammn NBL website, but I should have picked up that Adelaide were otherwise one game short.

"Go back the year before that and see the high scores."
Actually, I was going to say go back to 2012, and there was a progression of increasingly tough defence.
IIRC game one was a shoot-out, game two a bit slower, and game three was an ugly defensive brawl.

On Balance, I still think the final four will be:
NZ
Cairns
Perth
Melbourne (maybe Adelaide.)

Obviously you could compare it to their performances against better teams, but probably the best measure is comparing defensive performance of teams in the playoffs/grand final, that will help decide whether defence wins championships.

The other possibility with regard to scores decreasing as grand final series go on, is that the further in you get the more the officiating tends towards "let them play".

The idea that good defensive teams only play good defence in grand final deciders, and pin their hopes on average defence prior to that, is odd to say the least.

"There is no way Melbourne makes it in ahead of Adelaide."

Unfortunately my maths aint what it used to be, and I missed the "invisible" game against the Hawks. I kept looking at the run home and thinking Adelaide would struggle to win more than 14. However I think we can pencil in at least 15.
(That is still doable by Melbourne, but they have been so up & down, it's hard to predict that with any confidence.)

Obviously I would shit myself laughing if Adelaide dropped that final game against the Hawks, but realistically my revised estimate is:

NZ
Cairns
Perth
Adelaide

"But again, it's always something that gets used in the context of "this team is playing really well offensively, but not defensively, so they won't win a title." If you're going to use regular-season DRtg to predict championship success, the correlation of the two should be what's used to evaluate the premise."

I don't necessarily agree. The key premise is defence wins championships, so for me you have to look at the time of year when championships are won.

Off the top of my head a good example is the Adelaide teams of the late 90s, who seemed to produce their best defensive performances at the end of the year. I haven't looked at the data on that though.

Adelaide have a tough run home, Melbourne an easy run home. Who says Adelaide won't drop a couple after winning effectively 10 out of their last 11? Runs often come to an end. Who says Melbourne isn't due for a run?

1997-98 season that's all, is history repeating?