I'm not convinced this side will beat anyone, the bench is awful, Deng didn’t even play big minutes for Sixers. Hopefully Noi is as good as he says he is or the starters even have holes in the line up.

Terrible, just a team making up the numbers with no real goal at winning a championship.

same as every season then

Cairns should absorb the old Townsville crocs license, split the ownership and become the northern Taipans playing out if both cairns and Townsville.
They might then become competitive.

that makes about as much sense as a Sydney team combining with a Melbourne team

where would the players live? where would they train? they would only ever have one real home city.

Machado / Kenny / Fisher
Newbill / Djeric
Noi / Blagojevic
Oliver / Deng / Krslovic
Jawai

They're a Jawai injury / foul trouble away from having to play Oliver big mins at the 5 with little options at backup. They run 8 deep with Fisher, Blagojevic & Krslovic being the emergency guys. I think this squad has more potential than last seasons but could all go very pear shaped quickly. Anything other than last would be a positive for them imo..

20 pt plus blow out losses every game.

Cairns / Townsville
Training base in Townsville or cairns doesn't really matter.
half the games being played in 1 town means 15 4 hr journeys by bus or 15 50 minute flights to the other town.
Probably alternate 2 weeks in cairns, 2 games in Townsville, etc etc.
It’s doable and is beneficial for that club. It needs to be more competitive to survive.

Townsville have already proven that they don't even support their own NBL team so there's no way in hell they are going to support Cairn's team. This idea is ridiculous.

I'm slowly coming around to the idea of the north qld taipans. I don’t think they can support two NBL level teams in north qld. I don’t know how the fine details would work but it works in the NRL for the north qld cowboys with a new stadium being built in Townsville. So it is possible for Cairns to host the majority of the home game and Townsville to host the minority of home games.
It’s a lot like Tasmania and the new NBL team, its going to be 1 team for all of Tasmania.

Cairns has the NRL north qld cowboys.
I'm not saying join Cairns and Townsville, it would have to be north qld taipans and they could play all the the games in Cairns and pre season games in Townsvilles 5000 seat stadium plus a heap of government $$$$. It would be the pinochle of north qld basketball, The fans would go up in numbers not down, Cairns fans + north qld fans = more fans
I’d say if it stays the same up in Cairns they will be gone within 5 years unfortunately.

the stupidest thing about this idea is that you assume Cairns are doing badly financially. they get a solid 4000 people to every home game, are at 80-85% capacity and are in the black year on year. they can stay in touch with the league for the time being, it's only if the crowd numbers dip significantly that they might be in trouble. and if Mike Kelly doesn't perform this year they'll bring someone in next year and figure it out.

If they have so much $$$$ why not get better players?

What's the name of the Cairns afl team?
Is Cairns part of north qld?
The north qld cowboys are

Absolute nonsense! Have lived in Cairns and Mackay and both town get behind the Cowboys big time! The Taipans should 100% be the Northern Taipans!!! Sell a game to Townsville, Mackay, Darwin and even P&G councils to get some money in the bank. That lineup would be lucky to if spent 500k. There's 5 guys on minimum on that list!

Townsville basketball are crying out for a NBL team to support! The people saying they wouldn't support it are fools who have no understanding of Townsville Basketball. They hate Cairns! Just like all clubs in Vic hated the Melbourne Tigers! The Bullets are moving away from the mantra that they are a Spartans affiliate cause they train at Carina.

Such small minded people, but most likely Cairns Basketball people trying to protect their little house of tentacles into the Taipans! Gotta think big or you will be gone!

lucky taipans do live in Townsville.

the only time the cowboys come to cairns is when an away team elects to play up here in place of one of their home games, usually the rabbitohs because of the indigenous connection. lots of cowboys supporters up here but most of my mates will go down for 2 or 3 games a season, its just too far for more than that.

it's a stupid idea that goes around before very season, one that is clearly dead on arrival to anyone who has spend any time up here.

example: where the fuck does this team play in Townsville? half the problem was that locals stopped coming to townsville entertainment centre because the empty lot next door got redeveloped meaning no more free parking, and they couldn't make an economic case for the location on the numbers who would come. they then moved out to townsville basketball or the rsl or something similar which was way out on the fringes, meaning even fewer people came. they were getting 800 per game right at the end there. that and the 12% unemployment rate there right now and it doesn't sound like a city that is going to get behind a new nbl team anytime soon.

40%+ of taipans tickets for each game are season ticket holders. you split the team between two cities and you lose most of them, or best case scenario you keep most of them on half the revenue and have to go find the same number of people again I fresh territory.

townsville has a small but loyal basketball community but the majority of the population has moved on. the general mood up here in Cairns amongst the long term season ticket holders I know was that last season sucked, but everyone was also getting a bit tired of fearne ball year in year out. If anything that was more of a put off than one bad season. 2 or 3 like last year and I'll be worried but I'm not sure there's so much to worry about just yet.

"Such small minded people, but most likely Cairns Basketball people trying to protect their little house of tentacles into the Taipans!"

that's one of the stupidest things I've seen on this forum for a long time.

So the NQ cowboys have played in Cairns and if you're friends go to 3 games a year, that’s good support for the NQ cowboys.
And Cairns has QRL feeder teams for the NQ cowboys. Being called the NQ cowboys and not the Townsville cowboys brings the team more government support witch filters down to the feeder teams in the area e.g Cairns and other NQ feeder teams. And it also cements the NQ cowboys as the only NRL team in north qld. And as we speak a shiny new stadium is being built for the NQ cowboys, more government funding. NQ taipans wouldn’t need to play any regular season games in Townsville, pre season , schools ,camps and being the one and only NQ bball team maybe the qld government might pay to get the NBL blitz and share it in between Cairns , Townsville and other NQ towns.
Don’t worry about the car parks let the council worry about the car parks with government funding.
If you can get people from Townsville going to Cairns to see the NQ taipans 3 times a year that = more fans = more $$$$
NBL1 needs to expand and Townsville other NQ teams could compete and be a grate feeder teams for the NQ taipans.

Stick to the thread tittle

Stay in your lane bro we are discussing the taipans . Knucklehead :)

Strongest to Weakest?

1. Melbourne
2. Sydney
3. Perth
4. Brisbane
5. Illawarra
6. Sixers
7. Phoenix
8. Breakers
9. Cairns

Thunderjam is just a harmless troll nothing too see here.

What's the over/under win total for the Snakes this year? 5?

Perth behind Melbourne and Sydney lol.

Perth haven't bettered their roster in ANYWAY so it makes sense they fall behind Melb and Sydney who have added more talent. Perth have taken a step backward losing Brandt and replacing him with Majok Majok. Perth to scrape in the 4.

Every one writes Perth off every season, they'll be fine. Melbourne are injury to Barlow or Goulding away from being back to the field. Sydney are a lot deeper this season but like Melbourne injuries to Bogut or Ware will see them back in the field. Illawarra will be the surprise if they can settle down and play team first, I’d be more confident with Bevo coaching though.

Oliver out then cairns, but reports say newbill to hawks