Fat doesn't convert to muscle, it's just most fat people have more muscle under the fat than skinny people because they have to constantly bare the weight of the fat. It just so happens that apparently a lot of Corey's weight was not the underlying muscle, and he was always just skinny-fat. Or there's also the issue of maybe doing too much cardio and not hitting the weight room enough to maintain the muscle he had. As anyone with any background in fitness would know, you tend to burn muscle with excessive cardio, not fat.

Having said that he was never a particularly good player and was probably lucky to be tossed a bone at NBL level. Illawarra really are a team of off cuts, and Corey is an off cut of an off cut.

Cody not playing has zero to do with his strength or lack of it or anything on-court. His situation is close to the Garlepp one in Sydney, Management have a lot to answer for.

8 teams and 3 imports per team leaves otherwise decent players struggling for minutes. I imagine someone like Coenraad was biding his team in Sav's shadow, waiting for his chance to start and get minutes. Had a year where he was MVP in a weak team, now struggling for minutes on the bench.

Jawai played 14 MPG before getting injured.

Garlepp 4 MPG. Young 7 MPG. Ellis 7 MPG (and a string of DNPs now). Moller 9 MPG. Bruce, Teys, White 10 MPG. Deng 12 MPG.

Yeah, looks like he has a contract and they are just keeping him for insurance if someone goes down rather than cutting him.

Credit to him though, he's been supporting the boys on the bench rather than moping...

Pleased to see Cody got a huge man hug from Bevo after Sundays Kings game.
It is not out there yet but owner/manager decreed to our coach that if he played Ellis Bevo could lose his coaching role. WHY? it will come out sooner or later. Cody is a key ingredient to the Hawks final hopes. However even if you don't know anything about our game, if you have the money your the Boss.

Regardless of the King's GM's spin Tom Gartlepp was made aware before preseason that he was not going to play this season. Gartlepp has a year to run on his contract and has elected to sit on the bench as the Kings have not paid hi contract out. Personally I think Tom could have had a winning role fort he team to date as he is a workhorse & capability to rebound and score. VALE the KINGS

Ellis doesn't set the world on fire but I think he would be servicable for about 10 mgp.

The only reason he is not getting minutes that I can see if last year there was Marvelle Harris and Coenraad ahead of him. This year Marvelle has become Conger who should command at least 25 mpg.

Having said that Coenraad seems to be taking a step back already so I would hope Bevo looks to the future a bit.

"Decent" players don't struggle for minutes.

Fringe players who aren't up to the standard struggle for minutes.

Or owners dictating to coaches who to play and who gets minutes. Pointy bits is on the money

Pointybits is right on the money.

"Cody is a key ingredient to the Hawks final hopes. "

Clarke and Conger are what I consider to be 'key'.

Ellis is a part of the team and its success but 'key' is going too far.

Who would you take minutes away from to give to Ellis ?

Nick Kay is in the best form of his NBL career and probably Hawks best domestic player right now
Oscar is shooting 46% from the 3

Can't see why you'd take minutes away from either of those to give them to Cody Ellis.

Sucks to be the 11th man but that is the way it is

I wish he was playing more. Picked him in my dream team, because he was cheap, and I thought, as a player in a contract year who had (apparently) got himself into shape, he may amount to some cheap DT points.
D'oh!

it is not possible the owner told the coach what to do.

the coach coaches the team hence the name coach.

If he is not playing it is because he is not good enough. end of

Didn't Spencely force Jahii Carson on Gordie?

"it is not possible the owner told the coach what to do.

the coach coaches the team hence the name coach."

It's possible for an owner to say absolutely anything. The question is not what an owner CAN do, but what an owner SHOULD do.

Haven't the hawks gone from dead last to SF to GF since he took over ?

That would be their GM Kim Welch who came from Wildcats and is still there and from what I heard they just had a club record seated membership year of 1400 which is at least double what it was a few years back

New York Knicks anyone?

Also attendance for the Adelaide @ Melbourne game was 8,213.

NZ @ Cairns was 4,201 too.

Was it the ILL @ BRIS game that was played out of the Gold Coast rather than Brisbane? Or was that the round before?

That was Melbourne last week.

Sellouts last year? They didn't even sell out the Grand Final.

Before the new owner and new GM there was also never a curtain blocking one end of the court or giant flag covering seats at the other end. But there's floor seats for the posers.

They also used to let fans on the court after all games, which kids loved.

From the Roar article:

Ellis scored 14 points over the opening three games. While his minutes were low, there wasn't anything too unusual. But that’s when the decision was taken out of coach Beveridge’s hands.

Club owners had made the call that Ellis was no longer part of the Hawks’ future and told Beveridge he wasn’t to play him anymore. He hasn’t hit the court for a single second over the past five games.

Reading the Roar article, I really feel for Garlepp and Ellis.

I'm going into this assuming they've not doing anything wrong.

OK fair enough these 2 aren't part of their team's plans going forward but at the most selfish level, these 2 can still contribute on the court for god's sake. The article is right that the Kings and Hawks were just limiting themselves to 10 when all others had 11.

Cutting their own nose off to spite their face so to speak.

At least give them a few minutes every game so they can show prospective teams next year they can still be of value. This is like giving someone a good reference.

Also on the Hawks, broguht me back to why Gordie left.

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/3157832/gordie-mcleod-reveals-reasons-for-hawks-exit/

Here Gordie's reasons were very diplomatic, but I cannot find the other article which suggested it was how the new ownership treated the existing staff and players (pay and entitlements) during the VA.

This should have been bad enough but I supported Hawks (as my second team because of what Bevo brought to the team).

But now with this Ellis saga, it really hits home that the Hawks are just as ruthless as everyone else. Even the Wildcats had the decency to pay out Mathiang Muo his 3 year contract at the beginning of year 2.

I reckon all Hawks supporters should stand up to this.

All Hawks fans should stand up and chant 'Bring on Cody' at each home game.

That will show the ownership this is not how Hawks treat their own.

The Hawks fans should have stood up when Dave Gruber was axed.

Agreed....Dave Gruber is no superstar granted but he fitted the Hawk's blue collar culture so perfectly. The guy wasn't particularly great at anything like handles or shooting but he get 100% and put his body on the line each time against better opposition.

Gerrigong Advocate

3 Hawks fans on niche basketball website work out their multi million dollar budget, professional sporting team doesn't make player decisions based on how good a bloke they are.

"It’s just not how things are done, we come from a blue collar working class town and we expect our basketball team, operating in a professional league to make decisions not based on things like skills, scoring, shooting." Said one unidentified fan

What we want is average players, with good skills but not too good mind you, if I’ve had a beer with him or he smiled at my kid, I demand he plays more, espicially if I have his singlet or he’s in my fantasy team.

I mean we buy bronze tickets every year and yet the club keeps operating against how we think things should be done. It’s exactly like they don’t want to listen to our advise in running the team.

In what most might have seen as ironic, the group of 3 complaining about external influence on playing group and minutes, suggest starting a chant to demand their favourite hard done by average player gets more minutes. “I read an article with no quotes or comment from anyone, so you know, we’ve got to take matters into our own hands.”

“I mean we’re not asking much, we just want to go one better this year and win the championship while making sure we give the least strongest performing players a fair allocation of minutes and get themselves a good reference for next season.” Said another fan who was calling for heads to roll when they were playing like crap in the grand final series.

More to come

Interesting roar article. Thanks

Why doesn't the league boss pull Spenceley in to line??

Hahah no, but I used to work for him, maybe it rubbed off.

That was a Betoota advocate take off and a rather good one if I do say, if you don't follow Betoota advocate you don’t know what your missing.

"Hopefully this "revelation" doesn't mean beveridge will go back to the shit rotations he was using. The "give everyone a go" method isn't always the best."

You mean the rotations that he used to get the Hawks to the GF last year?