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I am not sure about this, i am really worried now about defence capability of big me. Dench cant play defence, either can Ballinger.. mmm anyway Phil has never asked his players to play great d.

Yep, inspiring signing.

Ballingers D is a step up from Horvath .

Coops inside presence has improved and was inspiring many games last season .

What Dench may lack on the Defensive side he will make up for with his ability to drag out the opposing C and nail the three ball .

I think we have done extremely well this off season and now have IMO 4-5 of the best 20 three ball launchers in the league .

Will be an exciting year ahead .

Hard to win a championship from the 3 line. Especially if your centre is out there and not on the boards. I am not a Dench fan at all.

The opposing centres will not be out on the 3 point line guarding Dench.
Most teams will use a forward and keep their big man close to the basket.
The softest team in the competition last year just added the softest player in the competition last year!
And the Sixers have done it before, but with much, much better and talented teams than this one.

According to that logic, Brad Newley is just "another team's reject". Go figure.

Does this mean that there is no more rumours????


Who is next rumoured players to sign?

Not telling!

Damned if you do, damned if you dont

I am sure some people would whinge if we announced we were signing Michael Jordan, Pippen, Shaq, Kobe, Rodman and AI (all in their prime of course)

damn it....

DICKO....

Nah Yogee, those guys....I could handle at there very worst! haha

knackers.. when did the Sixers do it before?

And for anyone that thinks Copper will be a force in the NBL, I just think you're quite mistaken. Defensively I'll agree that he is quite good, but he is not that strong. He'd get eaten alive by a Bradtke (lucky he's retired)/Anstey/Rogers any day of the week. And offensively sorry, but he flat out sucks. A "decent" role player, but nothing more

In my opinion not a bad round of signings. there werent many better out there to get, if Newley plays and plays well, we have the makings of a competetive side..its up to you now Phil...

Im happy with the Dench signing, who out there available is better than Dench to share centre with Cooper??? i dont think there is one, maybe Derek Moore but i say those 2 are about level and Dench is probably alot cheaper as he hasnt been playing in Europe earning big bucks and plus the Tigers cut him and had to buy him out, or atleast make up the difference (i think) so if i was the 36ers and Dench for that matter id sign for the minimum and let the Tigers foot the rest of his salary, and if thats what the 36ers did than Dench is a great pick up try finding someone else better than Dench for minimum, or an Australian centre who is available at any price for that matter.

Brad Newley, Brad Davidson, Adam Ballinger, Axel Dench - are we talking about the 36ers? Lets hope a core group can be found from this latest lot so we can start to feel that they're part of the family. A complete overhaul causes just as many problems as what they potentially solve. There will be the problems of the team gelling again. Hope next season's team is one that can be built on for the future rather than disposing and starting all over again.

geez EC give the team a break

you have to start somewhere. just about everybodys contract expired this last season gone as well as Mal didnt have full control of the team for last seasons signings anyway. what would have you done???? signed everybody back on again for another dismal season and have the fans baying for blood again.

i believe Mal and Phil have put up, lets see what they can do with this group

I agree after last season we had to have a major overhaul of the team this season. I just hope that this group will prove successful and provide much needed stability to the team in future. You can't get away from the fact that they are once again a new group and need to learn to gel with each other.

Lockstock, I was responding to #131912 about the 36ers having done it a few times before (a Championship that is). Sorry about the mis-understanding.

Maher 34yrs
Sutton 23
Ng 24
Cooper 31
Copeland 42
Newley 22
Dench 31
Davidson 33
Ballinger 28
= 9 Players
= Average age: 29.7

Copeland bumps up the average age a little but you can't really call this team old because there is Sutton, Ng and Newley who are young.

I think you are abit harsh EC........I'm tipping it will only take 5 or 6 weeks for them to gel!!

Is that you Phil?

Yeah sorry Knackers.. I didn't see the previous post that actually claimed they had done it before with 3 point shooting centres.

I'd still like to know when we won a championship with that type of man in the middle though

knackers , if they use a PF to guard Dench when he floats to the perimeter then Ballinger or IMPORT 2 will have a mismatch with a Center guarding them and should be able to school them with quickness and agility .

We could post ballinger up and if they don't double from somewhere he will be in for a fun night or if they do then we can have newley slashing and maher and dench spotting up.

The line up we have assembled so far is definitely conducive to some 5 out loosey goose phil ball and while this style needs to switched up it is certainly exciting and very hard to contain .

Well I am now closer to getting seaon tickets have to admit. Does anyone know if Nash has been cut for sure?

Nash wont play for the Sixers this season.

Think you will find that the 36ers have jumped the gun on this one.
Nash won't play but there is still the matter of a year left on his contract to sort out and a payout to be negotiated (lucky for him its not the Dragons!).

I am pretty sure the sixers would have been aware that he has a year to go on his contract.

He will be paid out I would imagine. But it would only be a percentage of what he would have recieved had he been play.

Does this mean the music man will be bringing out the Axel F music ?

Does a contract payout still affect the salary cap?

No.

Skip , how do you know itll only be a fraction of the contract ?

Speaking of which (payouts) : is anyone else pissed off that the Sixers will probably pay-out the last year of Nash's contract after he clearly wasnt up to it last year, but was signed to a 2 year deal anyway ???

Poor management decision last year, IMO, to sign him to a 2 yr deal- who else wanted him that we had to give him 2 ?

Probably Phil!
I guess with the signing of both Dench and Cooper that we are no longer after Schenscher?
It should be a very interesting line up once they have finished recruiting. It was mentioned in the paper that they are looking at a 3 man (David Thomas like) as their import, so I assuming if Brad plays he will play the 2 spot and Maher at the PG spot?
A starting lineup of...

C- Dench
PF- Ballinger
SF- Import
SG- Newley
PG- Maher

Bench
C- Cooper
PF- Dodman (another Dev. Player)
SF- Copeland
SG- Ng
PG- Davidson, Sutton

I still don't think we have anywhere near the team to compete for a championship, especially with that bench.
I know it is better than last year but will still be around 4th or 5th.

well 4th or 5th is decent, if we get to the semi's then that would have be the best result in 4-5 years

Anon,

Both Sutts and Ng got pretty decent minutes last year when we had Farley & Copes in the team. Why exactly should it be any different in the coming season? Sutts doesnt even play the same position as Copes.

Why don't you just give it the benefit of the doubt for the moment and wait to see how the rotations work out?