It doesn't help when one of the assistant coaches and owners for that matter has a son on the team. Brad's a good offensive player but could not guard a dead man. I think Scotty's being compromised in his coaching.

put my name down for the fire Ninnis group. I though good old Phil S. had crept back in and coached the team in the 4th. WHY DO YOU LEAVE YOUR BEST PLAYER AND PG OFF IN THE 4th FOR SO LONG???????

time for a real coach, after the poor effort with the roster we had last season, and a Gilchrist miracle away from being 1 and 4 is not good enough. They dont even have a decent big man, or a real PG, and at home????

Ballinger played over 36 minutes, and your PG sucked...I dont think having them sitting in the 4th cost the game.

No way known would a Sixers team that I remember seeing live (over 10 years ago) be out scored so easily in the 3rd like that. Someone needed to stand up and sit a couple of Tigers on their ass and show some fight but they just rolled over. Very dissappointing.

and as for people whinging about Cooper, at least you know you will get 100% effort every second he is on the court

Pay Burston out his contract, join the que of teams that have taken a punt on the injury prone 'big' and get a big unit willing to knock down a body or two.

Ninnis is a worry, that team had no idea what they were doing at either end of the floor. Shame

I like gilly, but he sucked worse than anyone tonight. Nothing from the arc. No jumper. No penetration. No assists. No defence. Why leave him on?

For the record, I'm equally as pissed at Scotty tonight as anyone is. Just not for benching Gilly.

Statman ,you're dead right on all counts.
Gilchrist should have been benched well before he was. Far too many turnovers , too slow to distribute the ball (shot clock was below 10 seconds a couple of times before he passed the ball) , and to dribble into a trap and have the ball taken off you is under 12 stuff.
Overall , an ordinary performance with no heart.

having not sat in my normaly gold seat, i sat in a championship suite. Time and time again, the tigers got easy baskets by running the lanes and landing easy points. Down the other end, we struggled to do much after quarter time.

While much blame rests with players and coaches, the assistants need to make it clear what their job is and start doing it.

I will always follow basketball, however watching this garbage, perhaps next game I will bring a thermos of coffee and sit back and just enjoy the atmosphere. Very disappointing again!

I doubt if there will be many posts on here tonight, as I feel others will feel just like me, empty and very disheartened. That was a crap performance against a team which only recently got beaten by 35 points by Townsville.
Can someone tell me what the hell Herbert is doing playing for us? The guy is a passenger.
As for our coach, personally I don't think he measures up whatsoever.
Burston, mate if you are going to be injured constantly, take your soft body and go home (wherever that may be) or show some spine and get on that court. Went through a season last year looking at Winitana standing around apparently injured, do not want to see something similar this year.
Could go on, but feel drained and have no confidence for the remainder of the season.

We have an incredibly talented team BUT What do these guys do at training? How many shots do they put up from range per day at training? How many foul shots do they shoot a day at training. .
This team needs to go back to basics!!!! It is no good having all the moves if you cant put the ball in the hoop.

Object of the game--- Put the ball through the hoop.

Back to basics!!!!!

Is there any actual development at training?

I love this game but tonight was a wast of a wed night.

Just to add insult to injury the food at the Dome is total crap this season.
Wheres the baked potatoes!!!!
Wheres the real chips!!!!
Crap!
Hope saturday night wont be a waste.

Herbert busted his ass and was one of the harder guys tonight.

How the hell are you going to blame Burston for an injury? Seriously, the guy has played through pain a couple times for us - that's flat out not fair.

Sixers fans are pissed - fine - god knows I'm jacked off the page - but turning on Burston is crap.

We signed Gilly for big money, and he folded. I like the guy. I think he has ability. But how are you going to take a loss and turn it on a dude with a fractured hand that didn't even play? C'mon.

Average healing time for his injury is 6 weeks. He played in TWO agaisnt Perth.... before Hill accidently hit him. The bones hadn't fully knitted yet. C'mon. Be fair. He was playing with a cortisone shot ffs.

Without a big we are GONE! Is there a way to pay him out and pursue someone else...who is fit and willing to bang bodies. I mean i will take any abled body big before this season is shot.

Gilly sucked tonight and I would have got ng on earlier and ran him at point to keep another shooter on. Gilly was just padding stats at the end, why drive for two when we needed to make up not keep pace with them. It was just such a hollow game with some matador defence at times.

Actually though Cooper did an ok job while he was in as did herbert. Still go away from balls way to much for my liking of he gets it with little time to operate.

The players seemed confused especially in defence, one minute man to man then a 2,1,2 zone then a 3,2 zone and that transposed to the offence - as they said on the radio on the way home, they could'nt shoot from outside, in fact Melbourne looked like they wanted Gilchrest and others to shoot from outside. When Holmes (after all these years when is someone going to teach him you can't shoot/release the ball from over 2 feet in front of his face?) went off the court and Cooper came on, Worthington just went beserk,shot the lights out and more than doubled his score in a few minutes.

Was it 25 points we scored in the whole last half? We could have just double screened for Ng and he would have scored more than that.

The only bright lights were Hill and Groves positive attacks on the basket.

Gilchrest was mentally somewhere else, the only time we looked alright was when we had the combo, Holmes, Ballinger,Hill, Groves and Ng on the court.

Then again, worst shooting game I've seen from Balls and Jacob turned the ball over a number of times after taking good rebounds in defence (its called pivot out of trouble Jacob and a safe pass).

Very disappointing game we should have won comfortably.(and the refs missed at least 10 travels for the Tigers).

Does Gilchrist look like Cuba Gooding Jnr with tatts or what? Played like him tonight anyway. When your top scorer has a team high of 14 points one questions who does the scouting for the 36ers imports.I know the game has been shortened but 9 points in a quarter is pathetic. Deserved to lose on that effort

This sums up my observations of the sixers over the past 3 years.

"Nice going boys you played yesterday's tape"

- Bill Murray - Groundhog Day

I wonder how Adam Ballinger must feel?

Scott is an inexperienced coach. He needs to get assistants who have experience ( best is an ex-head who does not want to be a head coach again), who will be able to tell the first five exactly what to do and who they ( players and H coach) will listen to.

In Smyth and Brehney you had a combination that was quite unique and was very successful, for a long enough time to show it was not a fluke. Like most clubs/cities in such a situation after a while, when the tough times come, it seems the best thing to do is to change the coach. thinking what you have now is not really as good as the "new" stuff you could get. To get a now mediocre program to the top again you either stick whit what you have and support them through the tough bits and allow them to throw it all out and start again from scratch ( Sheedy etc), or you go and get an already successful coach and have them push a broom through the whole organisation , eg, Brian Kerle at Brisbane, BoyGorJ at Sydney and Dragons, Bob Turner at canberra, etc.

Putting Scotty in charge of a new team thats had a few years of underprformance and support - well - that's a Brett Flanagan situation at best - NBL coach of the year first season - history after that.

Herbert & Burston were huge last season. CJ hasn't had a bad season since his Dad coached him at Canberra. Adelaide suck! What would Goorgian do? He would slap that lot of sorry asses into a contender, thats what he'd do. The coach is everything - make a move now.

Ok if Gilchrist is holding onto the ball too long and making bad decisions, should the coach try and actually coach the guy? he should have been on as he is our best creater, our quarterback. The 3rd and 4th quarter we struggled getting good shots and I believe Gilchrist even playing bad could have helped. You can not tell me Herbert is going to give you more than Gilchrist in a 4th quarter.

Herbert may hustle but he is a bust in my eyes.

Wow that was absolutely embarrassing. I have not seen that sort of display since the late Smyth seasons!

Melbourne is an average team. They have Worthington who is a brilliant player. The rest of the team is pretty much average and other then Donaldson, Mackinnon and Kendall, the rest would struggle to get a spot in another NBL team. They have no imports either. Their other star is injured. Yet they beat us!

I would like to say Westover out coached us but I would say it was more caused by Ninnis and the coaching staff with horrible coaching and scouting decisions!

The coaches should have been scouting how NZ and Townsville played against them and copied that. All I saw was a meek attempt at a full court man to man! Only in the last quarter when the game was over did we go to a full court trap!

I have had season tickets for about 15 years and tonight I saw the worst defensive strategy I have ever seen in the 2nd Quarter. It happened 3 times. It was basically when the ball is at the top of the key leave ur man and go half double team the ball. It resulted in them hitting two uncontested 3's and the other time their shot missed however I think this is which started the change of momentum in the game. The second time this happened Gilchrist called the play #2. So whatever play is #2 in defence was absolutely pathetic. It was like the coaches one night where drunk and said we should run that defensive play as a joke as it will be funny. Did anyone else notice this? Why change the defence when it was some what functioning correctly prior to that!?

Herbert is still playing the first 8 minutes of the game and contributing pretty much nothing. Apparently he is a good defender however so is Mark Nash. Perhaps we should bring him back. Ninnis needs to get over his love for Herbert and put in either Hill or Ng whom actually come on and contribute in a big way!!!

Lots of people thought "wow we will be alright we will put Holmes on Worthington he is a good defender!" Yes he did a great job on Worthington! I have never thought Holmes is a good defender. He is too small to play power forward and too slow to play small forward! Also Worthington looked very intimidated by Holmes on him. He must have been thinking "Wow look out I have Adelaide's last seasons defensive player of the year on me I should be very worried about this!" If anyone was going to do a good job on Worthington it would be Ballinger but he couldn't guard him much as he always had to play center otherwise we would have to put an incompetent center on in Cooper. Surely Sturt could have offered more then Cooper!

Our main strength on offence is pushing the ball up fast either on the break or off a rebound. Hill, Ng, Gilchrist, Groves can all run the break well. Yet for some reason we seem to concentrate on bringing the ball up as slow as possible. Then either taking our player on one on one or passing it to another player whom takes his player on one on one. It's all well and good if the shot goes in but as it didn't in the second half that dries up our scoring hence 25 second half points!

If we are going to concentrate on a half court game then Ballinger should be the main focus on offence! Not Groves, Not Gilchrist! Ballinger should be having at least 20 shots a game! Not 11! Not forced shots cos he hasn't seen the ball for a while either!

Credit to Worthington he did a great job on Ballinger in the second half. However, that shouldn't happen as all they have to do is create miss matches. Surely whoever is guarding Holmes will switch on a screen to pick up Ballinger instead when he screens for Ballinger. Then you give him the ball!!! How simple is that! Yet the coaches aren't picking up that we have very talented players yet all u have to do is set screens to create mismatches!

I'm sorry but its time for Ninnis to make some hard decisions and look to replace Groves. Groves played good tonight compared to his season so far. However, he just doesn't fit in this team especially with Ng and Hill really starting to develop. With or without Burston we need someone that can help out the bigs inside! Having Ballinger trying to guard the centers and wasting his energy isn't productive. The same with Holmes, in fact he would be more effective of the bench as he was last season. The reason being is when he gets on he can demand more of the ball. Unfortunately his pride wouldn't let him start on the bench. Currently he needs to start as we don't have any other decent bigs with Cooper being absolutely hopeless.

Also why are we still fouling when we are down by 10 with 40-50 seconds to go??? Is that something Ninnis learnt from Smyth's final season on how to annoy the crowd even more!

I am sure I could continue with this rant but I think ill leave it at that! A hopeless effort tonight and I hope this is a wake up call to the coaching staff and players!

What is also very concerning about Ninnis is that he never admits to any fault as a coach when the team performs badly. In post game interviews, his comments are always the same, they worked their butts off at training all week but came out soft and weak. If the players come out soft and weak, then surely that is a reflection on the coach. I am sick of comments like the other team played harder, or the other team wanted the win more, or the other team played with more heart. Why? Why? Why? If you recognise the problem, why aren't you fixing it? The signs I have seen so far this season are far worse than last season. This is a really bad mix of players. Gilchrist is not the PG the 36ers needed. He was signed after 2 weeks of training with the team. He may have looked impressive at training, but he is hopeless in high pressure competition. He doesn't even behave like he is a force to be reckoned with. Ballinger our star player has dropped considerably in stats so far this season. Where are the 20-10 games you would expect from him? This has to be attributed to the team mix. I can see some success being achieved with Burston coming good and free from injury but I can't see a successful future for the team with Gilchrist at starting PG.

By the way, he has yet to be introduced to the fans in the Post game interviews upstairs. If anyone knows why, please share it.

KJ, Ballinger couldn't defend Worthington - Holmes and Coops were our best bets. Noticed Balls looking a bit lost on defence a few times and Gilchrist a bit also. Defence is not quite Ballinger's strong point.

Very disappointing game though. As soon as the crowd realised there was going to be no clutch game winner, the atmosphere died completely - the players just couldn't hit their shots or reel in the margin. Had to wonder why Gilchrist was driving to the bucket in the last minute; down 10 and fouling to stop the clock, surely the only hope is a miracle run of threes?

Not sure what the scouting/instructions were for Wortho, but you don't let him shoot open threes as he has a good all-round game.

What we lacked was a player to take the team on his shoulders and carry them through. Melbourne gets that from Worthington, NZ from Bruton, etc. Ballinger is a superb finesse player but tends to have games where a double-team takes him part way out of his game.

The lack of offensive structure was extremely disappointing. Groves and Hill did ok on the iso plays, but other than the individual efforts, there were NO structured team offenses that I could identify at all.

Not once in the second half did a Sixer get a clean look with feet planted from the three because of good offensive rotation. No once did the driver spot a good drive and dish to dump the ball down low or the kick out to the corner. Seriously atrocious, and it looks like the team is getting worse with its offensive rotations.

That is not even to start with the mockery that was the Sixer's team defence.

I am afraid I have to join in the growing queue pointing a finger at the coaching staff. If players are not in the right positions on court and don't know where they are supposed to be then the coaches have to take the rap.

Seriously, this team would be better off running NZ's offense and just running Ng all game off of double screens. But for unknown reasons that doesn't even appear to be in the playbook. Every three Ng has hit all season has been when he has created the space himself.

Very poor game all round.

Sixers looked lost at both ends. Saw Gilchrist get upset with Groves for obviously being in the wrong spot after the defence call... Confusion reigns.

I think we are probably a worse team than last year.

I know it is early days, but there is no chenmistry or sense of solidarity at all.

We needed some mongrel down the stretch. I saw Groves niggling Kendall a few times but nothing came of it.

Where has the drive and dish to Balls gone. That was money. I tend to agree with the above posts, best bet is to run Ng off double screens all night, if only Ng could run all night.

In Shane Heal's first season as Dragons coach he ran a Euro style offence with limited player movement, which relied on players reading what the defence gave them. With a veteran team it worked well. With a young team the next year it didn’t work at all.

Similar thing here with Adelaide, it is a pretty inexperienced team - especially without Burston who is excellent at getting into position to receive the ball – who probably need a little more structure and less ad-lib.

You could draw a similar parallel between Smyth’s early veteran teams and his less experienced teams later on (or the 2001 Boomers team).

Isaac - have to agree with your comments and the other comments posted. I was unable to be at the game but watched the game on Foxtel. Was unable to see what happened pre game, etc with regards to warmups or players coming out late but what was evident on TV was the body language or the poor body language displayed by the 36ers. The body language of the coaching staff, particularly the assistants, was also pretty average. It's been mentioned before, but Mr Hill did not look happy with what was happening. The commentators also noted that Darren Ng is the best 3pt percentage shooting player in the NBL in the worst 3pt percentage shooting team!! Yet, as has previously been posted, Darren is hardly getting court time and has to make his own shot. Surely a coach can (or should) recognise a players strengths and run some screen plays to utilise those strengths? Also noticed, as mentioned by Isaac, that Gilchrist held the ball in the last 1-2 minutes when players, eg Darren Ng, were open on the perimeter for the "3". Was this instructions from the Coach or is this the actions of a selfish player or one who thinks he can win the game himself? All in all a pretty average effort, particularly on your home court (I think I might have even heard some boos at the end - were they intended for the 36ers?).

"What we lacked was a player to take the team on his shoulders and carry them through".

From half time on, that's all I could mutter.

agree was so deflating - the team had no spark - i feel so sorry for SOS having to watch that crap
play with some hearts guys
shooting was unreal - how many air balls
and to thwe idiot slagging wortho as shit all nigt youre a dick - all that did was make him focus on making us look like dills
the food is disappointing - if you knew that they are cooking the chips in the old woodville alcove you wouldnt go near them - i want the baked potatoes back i want so spice in the sixers
and for god sake get more attendants in the car pasrk and whats with no attendants directing traffic at rhe end of the game - i sick of getting held up in the car park by morons who push in
not happy lift your game sixers
SOS YOU DESERVE BETTER - you are champions

King James, as usual loved your posting, but just by mentioning Nash's name has brought back even more horrible memories.
Quite clearly Worthington was far too tough and aggressive for any of our guys, made us look soft and outclassed.

You guys are way too harsh on Nash. Yes he aged poorly, but he gave great service to the Sixers. A fantastic role player in his prime.

Now the memories are really coming back!

XY and Paul, I couldn't agree more with what both of you have said.

Not sure if the coaching staff is failing to install the right offensive play sets, the players just don't get it, or a combo of both. It has to change though and in the end the buck stops with the coach. How are you gonna fix it Scotty?

There were a couple of comments about Burston and Hill earlier too. I'd respond by saying:

1) Burston being fit is critical because Balls will do a lot better at PF on both ends, we will have a guy there for the drive and dish and the offensive rebound and Holmes will be able to come off the bench again where he will be more effective.

2) I think Hill should get the starting SF job, but I can't blame Ninnis for not starting him at this stage because he hasn't been fit for most of the pre-season and early season. The team needs Hill to be able to start soon though.

BTW I thought Herbert was good last night at doing all the little things - but he is a stop-gap starter until Hill gets fit.

King James can only agree totally with your post and glad you mentioned that last 1.30 mins and 12 down
How Bad and long was that period.
No good calling for changes as wont happen.
Unforunately team built on a budget and we have to live and hope with .

Wollongong is built to a budget but appear to be more than competitive and are getting a lot of good solid team play from the players that they have.

Team: where was it with the Sixers last night? More like a lot of individuals, only some of which were making any sort of valuable contribution.

Having Burston in the middle is clearly important, and without that we look without structure. But where is our back up plan? The Tigers got valuable minutes and points out of their third and fourth string centres, whereas we had no centre making any impact at all?

Everything we did tonight was individual. The only way we scored was on a one on one move. We need to have some structure?

Melbourne ran their stuff and got the right guy the right shot!

We need to run more plays for Ballinger instead of letting Gilchrist and Groves just go one on one from the top.

Without an offence we will go no where!!!

My post had some good points but also had some sarcasm exaggeration due to a few beers :P

Isaac why do you feel Ballinger couldn't guard Worthington? I don't think Ballinger is a brilliant defender but I think he is on par and probably slightly better then Holmes as he is bigger. I think he would be able to guard Worthington in the block better. Perhaps you feel he wouldn't be able to contain Worthington from outside as maybe his not quick enough? That could be true but its hard to tell as he usually isn't guarding people out there. I just think (as long as Donaldson wasn't on) that it was worth putting him on Worthington.

I still feel Ninnis is a much better coach then Smyth. However, as mentioned his assistants are inexperienced. Hopefully they start learning from their mistakes defensively and offensively!

I agree that for teams of last 5 years that Ninnis is on a par or better than Smyth as neither can maximum efforts from ordinary teams like Bevo. and like Tigers did last night.
He changed how he defended Groves and Gilly and they and we did not have plan B.
End of last year sais and agreed by previous GM that we needed to get experienced NBL coach into the mix .
Things changed and now 1 is a owner and restricted funds mean we have no immediate answer .
If cant get any system happening over next few games then a player change maybe Davo help out or import change to allow Adam free to play his game and keeping costs down.
The other alternative is to bring a Brett Brown or Goorg in for a couple of weeks .
A cheaper alternative maybe Steve Breheny although some posters will not like that idea.
Not suggesting panic stations but the sign of any form of teamwork has not been there last 2 games and only fell in against Crocs.
SOS need to keep the crowds interested with all off season NBL negatives so cant wait too long

KJ, first, who is Donaldson? Do you mean Johnson? The guy who the Tigers tried to isolate on Ballinger and who kept getting to the stripe?

Ballinger is certainly not better than Holmes at the defensive end and it's why Balls was played on a softer target and Wortho was left to Jake and Coops. When Wortho went on his first barrage of threes, I think Jake was on the bench. Personally, I think we could've done worse than leave Holmes on Wortho for the full 40 minutes: (a) he can run out 40 minutes better than most in the league, (b) you know we wouldn't give up many boards with him out there, (c) he would absolutely hate any bucket Wortho got against him.

A number of Wortho's scores were from broken plays and at least one three he hit on Jake (right in front of my seats) was a bit of a prayer because he was on fire - could barely have been defended better.

The problem at the other end is that, without Burston, and Ballinger smothered, Jacob is not a prime offensive target and our other options at SF aren't big/strong players.

The second half was very depressing, but it's a shame that a reasonable first half has been almost forgotten by fans. At half-time, I remember thinking "We're doing OK."

Isaac, bang on the money, our second half was very disappointing. Third quarter fade outs appear to be the way the Sixers play nowadays.

But, I believe there is a more sinister reason for the loss. After the 1 point win game, Brett Maher commented that he had ducked into a certain sponsor's box at half time. "I won't be doing that again!" was the comment in the Apollo room. Perhaps the lure of caviar, lobster and french champagne was a little too much for Brett on Wednesday night. I now put forward a conspiracy theory that Brett Maher did pay that sponsor a half time visit and as a result upset the positive energy balance resulting in a tear in the energy balance resulting in the Sixer's poor performance.

Therefore, Scott is not Evil.

If Brett did pay a visit to that sponsor, I say to that sponsor - lock your door at half time pal!

Yeah I meant Johnson. Fair enough on your analysis. I still think Ballinger is a decent defender. I will watch him more closely from now on to see if he is as vulnerable as you guys think he is in defence.

Checked the quarter-by-quarter numbers for this season, and it's not clear that there is a huge third-quarter-fade issue. Seems mostly confined to two of the games. Still, worth addressing as it's given us a home loss and what was very nearly a home loss.