Kings by 10.

I will be there waiting to see who is coaching the kings this year
Hope one of our new imports goes off first game like last year .

Danger game for Sydney, but we should get up based on preseason form. I don't think Taipans are nearly as bad as last season even with the loss of Trimble though. They'll claim some high-profile scalps.

By far the game of the round. It will be close.
Either team less than 7 is a great bet.

Look forward to seeing live the NBL gap between top and bottom....

Any injuries for Sydney? Bogut good to go?

If so I don't see this being a competition. Sydney by 20+

Sydney by 7+

Taipans young legs to outrun the Kings. Taipans by 2.

Taipans have tools enough to play and, budgetary constraints aside, Kelly has what he asked for this season.
There remains a question about Kelly's authority. Can he make a reality of his 'game style’?
I’m still sceptical.
The only person I’ve ever seen him get truly tough with is himself.
We wait to see him insist on the same ownership of floor responsibilities, in every player, all the time.

Really interested to see how Weaver plays Bogut. I'm guessing it is going to be different than last year when he seemed to spend the entire season at the high post.

Kings coaching staff all dressed up. Adam Forde looking neat and tidy!

Did Homicide just call Bogut the best passing big of the decade??? Leave the standup to the pros mate.

Is Didi out?

This commentary is unlistenable Seb Costello is clueless.

Oh fuck Tommy and his chocolate cake are back, I'm getting PTSD.

Extremely disorienting

Casper in A Kings uniform... Walker for once actually looking old. Going around yet again

Bogut and no other big man to speak of

Then you have Jawai, Newbill, and...who? Oh ok Deng. Djeric is back but watching his jump shot is enough to give you vertigo

My head is spinning

Go the Jawaipans!

Seb Costello is killin this telecast, u can let the audience listen to the refs/coaches.

Also stop saying head coach its doing my head in!!!

Also its the Taipans not the snakes ffs

Noi looking very composed for a rookie.

Cairns playing very well and on a nice roll.

Sydney defence is supposed to be good but not seeing it so far.

Kenny nursing a head injury judging by the haircut.

Kings are playing with about 70% effort. A bit concerning.

The head injury came before the haircut.

It's incredible how good Newley still is at getting to the hole.

To be fair at least Homicide admits he has NFI at what is going on.

Those tatts are going to wasre!

Yeah good 2nd half from Tate. Kings got really lucky tonight, Taipans ran out of legs.

What is the correct score?

As the graphics deducted a point. hmmm.

Cairns scored just 6 points in the 4th with 30 seconds to go.

Taipans had us fooled for three quarters. Business as usual.

Indeed, Kelly had no control over his charges in the final stanza, and in that there's repetition of the last season: 'we lost by a small margin’. Yeah, right.
No, last season you lost by a narrow-but-predictable margin time and again.
In a closer league you can lose less games and still end season duds.
Accountability, please.

As the above poster has basically said, the turning point was when Oliver went down and had to be subbed off early in the last qtr. When he came back the momemtum had well and truly turned. That said, it was a disappointing finish to what had been a good performance up until then.

I think the run of away games coming up are not a bad thing as I feel the Taipans are a bit underdone and need some solid match practice (as compared to preseason where they mostly came up against depleted or below par opponents). It's still a mostly new team that needs some more game time together.

Ugly last qtr....Kelly over used his bench at crucial times, he had Jawai imploding as the rookies succumbed to pressure.....sorry but that's on the coach!!

I agree that it appeared the Cairns bench was overplayed at crucial times (although I have no insight to why this may have been such as fitness, injury, attitude of there starters...)

Newbill playing 28mins and Machado 31mins, I think both should have played about 5 mins more each.

And at times there were 3-4 bench guys playing at the same time.

Hopefully Cairns can get a better rotation going and they will win a lot more games than last year.

Even with Oliver going down, they should have been able to get the win against Sydney.

Even though I don't think it is a great stat, the +/- for the Cairns point guards probably show where the issue lies. Second five as a group were poor defensively and on the defensive boards.

Layer ?? Did you see the play ? Did you see the strapping on his knee
Lost a bit of respect for Bogut after that game but Kings certainly played good D in the last QTR 1 foul in 8 minutes .

Don't get many Crocs fans on here these days.

Maybe the post spilled over from an alternate universe where that awful merger idea between the cities of Cairns and Townsville that is proposed here on a monthly basis actually happened.