Kings beat Cairns despite Bruton shooting 2/11, Worthington 2/10 and Smith 1/11. That's three starters combining for 5/32?! They shot 34% from the floor, lost the boards by 18 and still won the game!

Turning point was a passage in the third quarter where Darnell Mee had three straight turnovers and then other Cairns players had a couple more basically throwing away five possessions in a row.

The Taipans fought back despite Kendall taking over the fourth quarter and were a bucket down after Stewart hit his customary three from the corner and then just before the buzzer Cattalini missed a pretty straightforward jumper that would've tied it. Bad Cat!

i think (and hope) the tigers have enough to get the kings this year. They have the size to attack them with. should be good games.

Had we beaten Cairns last week, last night's game would have been a home game for us. Does anyone else think like me that with Sydney's shooting last night, we would have taken that game away from them? Whether it was enough to see us through a third game against Sydney in Sydney would have remained to be seen, but with the confidence of a win like that it could have seen us progress to the grand final and Sydney tossed out of contention. God I hate the finals format. It robs legitimate teams the opportunity to a championship.

Thats a bit harsh EC, I think that Cairns would say that they wee a legitamate finals team! We knew the finals format, we knew what we had to do! If we couldnt beat Cairns who had 1 days rest before coming to our home court then we were the ones who were not a legitamate finals team! While I agree the finals format aint perfect lets stop looking at is as an excuse and make sure we win the games we need to next year :)

and as for us having a chance IF it was us against Sydney last night....we might have but I can assure you of one thing we wouldnt have had a centre getting 20 points AND 20 boards.

Also for what its worth I hope the Tigers win the finals in 5 with a double OT thriler in game 5 - This has the makings of an epic series with the 2 best teams by far battling it out. Lets hope i gets some good coverage and can sell our great sport to some new fans....

We also wouldn't rotate out to shooters and get hands in the shot pocket like Cairns do. Neither would our help D stop Burton, Barlow and co from ripping us up with penetration.

Face it, if you can't locate a shooter who is subbed in with 3.5 seconds left in an over-time game you are not a legitimate team. Sydney would have killed us.

How much does Smyth get paid again to sit back and watch his players display a lack of defensive fundamentals which most junior coaches work with their Under 16 teams on? Because there are plenty of coaches out there who could probably do just as a pathetic job for half the price.

Sydney are behind our all time championships won, keep it that way, create some new hype in melbourne, especially with a new team coming in next season, Tigers need to stay true to there fan base and give them the title.

Love ya timeouts Goorj, meangingless haha

Please Ball Gods, see the Tigers over the line ... is rather a yawn seeing the Kings there every season.

Go Thomas!

I'm actually more excited about the off-season and seeing where players end up... more importantly, what happens to the Adel team as we know it.

Tigers should take it out...i hope!
It would probably be good for Melbourne as was stated above.
Anstey will win MVP if they do and then head over to Europe next year so it will be VERY interesting what kind of team Melbourne do suit up.

The fact that Anstey knows he's going after this year will spur him on to get huge numbers i think