NBL Finals 2025

What a shame the JJs faded last week in Melbourne. If they'd held on today we'd have United playing to get 2nd spot, the Phoenix playing to avoid heading to Perth for the Qualifier, and the JackJumpers playing to sneak into 6th. Would be a couple of awesome games.

Oh well. Now, barring Melbourne getting completely pantsed today we have the first week of the finals featuring Perth and SEM playing for a spot in the semis against United, and Sydney hosting Adelaide in an elimination game.

Both of those are quality matchups. Perth are 3-1 over the Phoenix this season, but that's all homecourt wins thanks to the incompetent NBL draw giving the Cats three games at RAC. Had SEM got another home game and won it they'd be in 3rd place.

Of course, this game will likely be at the old Jungle, how does that change things? Not sure, but the 100-99 contest they played a week ago suggests this will be a cracker, to use the parlance of the times.

Adelaide might have underachieved with all their talent this season, but not against the Kings where they're 3-1 including two Ws in Sydney. In fact, the Sixers are a mighty 6-1 against NSW teams and a stinky 7-15 against the rest of the comp.

If they can topple the Kings and pull off an upset in the play-in game they'd get their bunny Hawks in the semis. Who knows with either Adelaide or Sydney, they aren't hardened basketball teams but one of them will get at least one finals win.

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Dunkman
A few hours ago

Sixers have had a lot to deal with this season, they have made the six, imo it's been reasonably successful, win in Sydney and it’ll be good. When was the last time Sixers played finals.

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Zodiac
A few hours ago

2018

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word14
A couple of hours ago

Interesting note- before Adelaide this season the last time a team went to the postseason 3 or more games below .500 was the 2012-13 Sydney Kings who got fourth with a 12-16 record.

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Master Chief
A couple of hours ago

It depends what angle you look at it from.

To some, Adelaide are a constant rabble, selectively competitive, poorly coached, and with a toxic culture who should finish in the top 6 on talent alone, and being eliminated instantly would be a failed season, but good riddance at the same time. Plus, some believe that despite the talent, the roster is flawed.

To others, those exact reasons are why sneaking into the 6th is still an achievement and better than not.

I guess the truth lies somewhere in the middle?

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LaPark
Today

It wasn't smooth for Adelaide this season at all, but at the same time it will never be a smooth and easy transition to "normalcy" in these scenarios either. We've seen it this year, the hot/coldness is that of a team trying to break bad habits, slipping back into them, and everyone getting frustrated at times with the whole process. I don't think there's a magic bullet that fixes that in a team, you can't just throw talent at it, or a big coach, and even with all that it still may fail because of leadership above. I've been in those scenarios myself in the private sector, all the effort and good intentions comes undone because the person above you just comes in and undoes everything.

So you can look at making the play-in as a failure, that's not false at all given the talent on the team, but also you can look at the previous disfunction over the last 5-6 years, see, hey they took some steps forwards this year (and some definite steps back too), but this could be the year where the first stages of the positive change happened and next year could be better because of it. Hard to say what way it'll turn, sports teams in Adelaide have taught me not to have too much hope over the last 10 years or so, so I certainly won't get too excited yet.

And of course that could all be true and GK comes in, fires everyone and just tries to throw more money at the problem and throws us back into the cellar again.

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Hoops

NBL Finals 2025

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