The New Zealand Breakers are also retiring CJ Bruton's #23 to recognise the massive contribution he made to the club on Friday night.

Te Rangi's court date is also on Friday.

36ers certainly aren't favourites so perhaps it's a chance to see where they're at after a 1-1 start. I'll be impressed if they can disrupt the Breakers at home.

When you look at the match ups as Mystro has set out, it is closer than you would think on paper. Breakers imports are better, but it is quite a good match up across the board. Except that he forgot potentially the two most explosive scorers for the Breakers in Abercrombie and Webster.

I usually pick the Breakers form based on how quickly Vukona fouls out, but he played a limited role against Perth and they still got the W.

Breakers to win by <6 (perhaps on the memory of getting beaten by Ervin last year on a loose inbounds play) to win a close one.

Nz aren't even at full strength and still beat Perth on the road so I expect thry will comfortably beat Adelaide at home.

Winning in NZ is always hard and this is the Breaker's game to lose. All the pressure is on them and if Reuben has a bad day in court, off court, then that will make it very interesting. I agree with Isaac, a Sixers win would be mighty impressive.

Peach v Vukona. That is my favourite match up. Get me a wading pool and some baked beans and that would do me just fine. Both would win the Sam Burgess award.

Jackson Vs Wilson - You would think Action
Carter Vs Crawf - Battle of the 3's. Carter might beat him in the hustle.
BigRed Vs Pledgehammer - The Pledge might be renamed "grasshopper" and learn from the master
Creek Vs Abba - we all know Creek>>Abba.


Settle back and enjoy a great game.

will be interesting how TeRangi goes in court, hopefully the judge will take his and New Zealand's win in Perth into consideration when sentencing him. ;)

NZ can easily cover Terangi...wont matter how he goes in court. If that is the 6ers best chance for a win then god help us!

Better call Saul

It's early days but I think the Sixers will be one of the big over-achievers this year. Their roster on paper by my unprofessional evaluation is probably bottom two in the league but early signs have them playing the right way. An average offense with an elite defense should keep them competitive if they keep the effort level up.

Goes to show you really can't underestimate coaching in this or any league: it's the biggest advantage you can have especially because the spend is outside of the salary cap, and it's even more important in an 8 team league.

I'd say NZ will take this but it will be closer than you think.

Mick...I think the Sixers are far from having an elite defense.

I didnt see the Townsville game so might have been different with Schensch anchoring the middle but Friday night against Cairns it was fairly average.

Tornado, the Sixers defence was significantly improved against Townsville. There was a lot of hustle and I thought they were getting their rotations right a lot more often than they have in the past. Schenscher did a great job of defending the rim as well.

Good to know Beantown...hopefully that remains the rule rather than the exception.

while only yesterday, ch2,7,9 and 10 news were all ai sixers training and that was pretty good.
we fly to nz today and we gonna become road warriors.

or road kill....

36ers biggest job will be containment. Don't let the Breakers get into one of those crazy Jackson-led 15-2 runs. If that happens on Friday = game over.

I think the 36ers can steal this one (as hard as it will be) if they turn it into a grind.

If Vickerman falls in love with his original starting 5 whom over half of are nursing injuries, Adelaide has a very good shot at stealing a win but Vector up until last season was an absolute fortress for the Breakers.

hoping the 36ers turn up not the 35ers or the 34ers

I hope Dean goes with his head and not his heart and keeps his rotations going as he did against Perth. I thought his substitutions were pretty good in that game.

NZ with 3 fouls inside 4 minutes, losing 5-10.

Please don't tell me you guys actually suck and you just happened to play a GF-esque game last week because we unveiled the banner... That would be really irritating.

5 fouls racked up in less than half a quarter, 2 for Vukona in under 4 minutes of court time.

Do the Breakers run a book on who can foul out quickest?

And there NZ goes, back to regular service.

From an 0-8 start, the run has been 23-9.

Foul trouble id say. He got 2 fouls in 50 secs of play.

Vukona picked up the 2 fouls in 3:45. Subbed in at a FT, fouls after the missed FT, gained a whole 1 second of court time before being subbed back out.

3 fouls in 3:46 and it isn't even half-time. Never change Vukona, never change.

Also on the topic of fouls; three offensive fouls by the 36ers so far in 2Q. How is Joey Wright taking it?

Im only seeing the stats but this game seems ugly foul-wise.
Vukona and Te Rangi on 3 fouls already.
Carter, Anthony, Teys, Montreal, Creek and Petrie on 2 fouls with still half of the second quarter to go.
Could be a few foul outs

"Offensive foul anyone......we're giving them out cheap, two for one if you are playing for the 36ers"

Ok, can anyone tell me if the three offensive fouls against the Sixers in the second quarter were warranted or is my inclination to want to blame home cooking justified (I'm at work and watching the live stats)

Sheesh, I thought Vukona was bad, didn't even notice DQ. 3 fouls picked up in 1:18. Ow.

More fouls than minutes for DQ won't help his cause.
Breakers should easily get this done.

Tech called on Jamar Wilson at the end of the 2Q?

wow

Both teams have looked confused with the refereeing at times.

Wow... So he's not injured? He's just had 3 fouls in 1 minute, 18 seconds and has one turnover?
Yeah, I hear Virgin have some cheap airfares.

Is it all over ? or could they still come back?

I said Webster is in for a big year and will show people what he can do...much to peoples amusement on here who said he won't improve..

Webster will have a lot of nights like these this year

Te Rangi and Montreal both with identical stats :P
Montreal is more efficient though. Did it in 1/7 of the time.

Wilson; 4-15 @ 27%! seriously.....ball hog?

All over red rover.

Liking Vickermans rotations, deep bench helps.

quite right mystro. looking at second units. breakers have 35, 6ers have 16. disappointing given what we could do last year.

10pt game.

Im going to be so mad if Breakers win by less than 8. There will go my TAB bet. I was laughing 10mins ago.

Wilson is not up to it IMO.

On another note Montreal cant play D to save himself.

21 point loss. Thats not too bad, At one point I was expecting an ever bigger blowout.

Wilson starting 5? don't think so......maybe top scored with 15, but those stats don't lie for effiency.

down by 25, Wilson subs out. down by 10, subs in. lose by 21. enough said

Long season ahead sixers fans.

21 point loss not that bad? Ok then..

I feel sorry for guys like Gibson and Petrie - they deserve better. They were the heart and soul of last year and the franchise has let them down. Guys like Crawford, Teys, Anthony, Daly, Creek..good players but let's be honest this is the leagues weakest bench and thats hurting them.

Sixers showing some fighting spirit but not enough to get over NZ at home.

Jacksons 3point shooting has improved massively making him so much harder to guard & Webster had his jump shot on automatic tonight and as Macdub said, he's gonna have quite a few of these nights through the season.
Wesley is like having 2x Vukona's and Ibekwe with those long arms has been effective around the rim at both ends and Pledgers contributions have been valuable.
Abercrombie was the player of the game for me.

SEABL players not up to NBL level

Sam johns to replace daly, new import by round 4

Well okay 21 dosnt look good. But anything 30+ would of gone to really bad. And they were within 10 at one point.

I think I need to see the 6ers play the Hawks to find out how they are really going.

From the looks of things, we might be in for a long season.....unfortunately.

BEen watching Wilson and really want to like him but he lets so many players go behind him.. Does he have any peripheral vision because the stats are not showing how much of a hole he creates.. Crawford Phft... Schensh can't move… Dean…. sort it out… and the entertainment while you are there. Joey can not work with this… Own it and fix it…

On the side

This feels like NBL of old with the game style and reffing… It is becoming boring… not a pinch on last season across the board..

Adelaide are ok but aren't quite good enough to compete with the elite. Was impressed with Wesley and Webster tonight. Adelaide need to win next game to take the pressure off. Montreal was good when he was - Wilson was terrible though too much 1 on 1.

Schensher was actually pretty good, was handy round the rim and blocked shots & changed even more. Without him Tai Wesley & Ibekwe both would have outscored Cory Webster.
Peter Crawford was a passenger/luggage, pick one...

To everyone who wanted DJ gone and claimed over the past 2 years that he was a cancer on this team......wouldn't you love to have his 6-8 rebounds per game and his 16+ ppg now.

His 6'11" frame was big for us - literally. He did more than just score points and rebound. DJ didn't win the team MVP 3 years running by being a mug. And he was also young and healthy enough to produce 30+ minutes per game, something that our only true big, Luke Schenscher, can't produce these days (and I have nothing against Big Red, but age and injuries are catching up to him).

I do think the 36ers will be there or about come the playoffs, but I don't believe our current squad is as good as we were last season. The opening game against Cairns and tonight's loss to NZ showed that.

Adelaide were pretty aggressive early and did earn a lot of those calls, NZ were tentative and took a little while to get into it and got beaten off the dribble and were getting whistled. Once they got their offence together and started putting Adelaide on the back foot the Breakers started getting those same calls.
Both teams did look completely bewildered as to what was happening when the whistle was blown more than once.

Rhys Carter once again impressed, ran the team well when Jackson was rested & seems to work well with Jackson or Webster and plays both ends of the floor.

Cory Webster 4/5 from beyond the arc, played some good D as well.

Tom Abercrombie came on and dropped a pair of 3's before quietening down but he played solid defence with 2 steals and 2 blocks. With TeRangi picking up quick fouls it was lucky Abercrombie was in a condition to contribute as much as he did after recent surgery.

NZ with good front court depth this season as long as Pledger can keep on the court. Wesley & Ibekwe both look like crafty versatile players and seem to be developing some chemistry with each other pretty quickly. They'll need to be with Vukona's current rate of picking up cheap fouls.

Vickerman has been pretty good so far. Liked his rotations and he has managed to stem the tide when come backs have been mounted and their lead was slipping away in both games and made adjustments which have worked but still early days and plenty of games to go.
It will be interesting to see if the Breakers can get up for the Melbourne game.

HoldenV8, great points regarding DJ! People would say that if we lost DJ and had Gibson we would be just as good if not better... Yeah right. Hopefully people start to realise how important he was.

"I feel sorry for guys like Gibson and Petrie - they deserve better. They were the heart and soul of last year and the franchise has let them down."

How has the franchise let them down? More like they are currently letting the franchise down. Gibson was once again nothing short of embarrassing for a player of his quality.

I seriously don't know if it is Gibson out there or Kenny Powers. People as always will put the Gibson fanboy glasses on and go "he played well he got 12 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assist!". Lets be honest before the last quarter when the game was over he had 5 points @ 33%, 3 assist and 4 rebounds. Is that the type of production by the only Boomer in the league? In the last quarter when the game was completely over he had 7 points, 3 assist and 3 rebounds to pad his stats. In the Cairns game and this game he has played a total of 1 decent quarter (when the game was over). The guy is extremely talented and here is his time to be a leader, instead he plays the 4th or 5th option on the team. He needs to come out and be aggressive at the start of the game, not sit back and be a ghost.

One of the biggest reasons NZ pulled away with the game was because how Webster played compared to how Gibson played.

Other reasons were

* NZ killed us with their 3 point shots. Sometimes it was bad defense, other times there was just nothing we could do they were hitting it constantly. Jackson hitting 4 of 9, will he ever hit that many in one game again?

* Rebounding smashed again! DJ please come back.

* NZ defense was great and made every shot hard for us.

* I know we wouldn't have won anyway but the umpires were crap as usual. I didn't clearly see Wilson's flop was it worthy of a tech foul? That was a huge momentum swing going into the half from being down 4-6 to being down 11.

* FT could have been better.

There was quite a few negatives in this game but as HoldenV8 said we will be close to making the playoffs and there is no need for panic stations. So far we have lost to a red hot Cairns and NZ. Credit to NZ they are playing excellent basketball.

It was unfortunate Montreal was hampered by foul trouble early on. He ended with 13 in 16 minutes, most of it when the game was over but he looks confident shooting the 3.

Hawks at home next is an important win we need to get.

I remember the people who loved to disrespect DJ and wished he would leave the club

They went on and on about the poor D, the softness inside, the shorts pulling.

I said before that they would regret wishing that, now look.

DJ sucked for 3 seasons and played to his potential for one. Then he left. That's all.

If he had sucked for 3 seasons and then stayed and played to his potential for the next 3 - all good.

But Adelaide and its fans were played. In fact they are only people he outplayed consistently for 3 years.

I think you need to stop has selling the so called DJ haters. Most people saw potential and his attitude for what ever reason... being young or the coach doesn't matter, but las season quickly gave us the DJ we all knew he could be and now respect him and would have liked to see him continue under Joey and with the team so we could all see where he could go… No hating just wanting to see him hit his potential and yes we all would love him back right now..

Like Perth hey, bring back our team, but we have no money amongst other advantages that some teams have been gifted so here we are, back to the old days.. Hoping for more but not expecting it and thats not hating, just reality………..

Wilson questioned the tech and finally appeared to agree that it was too blatant to not be called.

It's early in the season, but so far Adelaide have struggled against what look like two standout teams, and beat a team that will be in the pack, which is what most "non-haters" expected.

If they can fix the rebounding, a big if, they can challenge for a low playoff spot. Big home game next Thursday.

hope the lads behind us at home games are pleased DJ has gone. Bet they'll be even happier with the crap dished up by Wilson in the last few games. Least DJ hit shots, Wilson brings what? me/me/me/I/I/I?

please tell me cos im dying to know

Wilson has no defence. Watch how many back doors he leaves open. No peripheral vision