I agree that this is a poor comment. The Sixers were close enough to win but let NZ get too many easy baskets late and made poor decisions ie fouling Penney their best free throw shooter. Had enough chances to win and with better execution would have.

Too many offensive rebounds

Boxing out is taught in the youngest of kids - My U18's at the Ville get to run if they don't box out.

Pedro - did you see the look on Maher's face when someone (Dench?) fouled Penney with about 30-50 seconds left? Wasn't impressed.

Down 2 or 3 points 30 odd secs left, why foul? Get a stop and your in with a shot.

Maybe if the coach spent more time in the timeout telling the players what to do instead of going on and on about hitting a 3. I'm sure Maher has been around long enough to know that we needed a three and he delivered it!

Did see the look on Brett's face. He had hit a big 3 and couldnt believe it especially after Phil had just told them to foul Turner.

Well actually the Players listened to the coach in this situation and he clearly said in the time out "Hit a 3 and then foul straight away!". I would think years of experience would have taught him the correct logics of the game but he can't even seem to get that correct! Since he gets paid heaps (for his experience and apparent knowledge) and has a vast amount of time to plan strategies and work out what to do in situations you would think it would be second nature to tell his players the correct time to foul and the correct time to not foul!

can someone tell me why mottram only got 16 minutes?

I like Phil but that is a poor and untruthful comment.

Also, given that we were 7 points up with 7 minutes to go, we clearly should have been able to win this game. A 14 point turn around in 7 minutes shows we didn't have enough basketball smarts on the Court down the stretch. I guess we missed Davidson here, but I would have had Sutton on for Ng and either Mottram or Cooper on for Dench (preferably Mottram).

Surely Mottram has the fitness by now to play more than 15 minutes a game. He has by far been our most effective player per mpg and yet is rooted behind Dench and Cooper. Is there something behind this that is not readily apparent?

Nick what comment are you refering to and why do you think that it "is a poor and untruthful comment"?

i dont think the sixers expected to hit a 3.

A dominant last seven minutes carried the New Zealand Breakers to a thrilling 116-109 win over the Adelaide 36ers in their NBL match.

The Breakers outscored the opposition 24-12 over that stretch on their way to their second consecutive victory.

Still the minutes are being spread between too many guys. No consistency whatsoever with playing time which ultimately leads to inconsistent results. Watch Mahersy's body language. Will tell you what he thinks of the rotations and he's not thinking about himself here.

I'm stuffed if I know why anonymous & interstate posters bother taking the time to hate on the 36ers. Surely the local d!ckheads get the job done.
For what it's worth, opposition fans have seen enough improvement in the 36ers to rank them as a threat, both defensively & on the scoring board.
Think about this for a moment, if our Boomer coach is branded defence first, why does he let the opposition score 80+?
If life's as easy as you breast-fed adolescents make out, knock out a truant roster & take over our training sessions.
I'll see you Monday, if you can organise it in time.
Get Mummy to pack your lunchbox.

"Surely Mottram has the fitness by now to play more than 15 minutes a game. He has by far been our most effective player per mpg and yet is rooted behind Dench and Cooper. Is there something behind this that is not readily apparent"

Completely agree XY. It wasn't like he was in any sort of foul trouble and it was patently obvious that we were getting murdered on the boards and fouling unnecessarily. I didn't realise how good a rebounder Mottram was until I saw him play against the Dragons and he plays some very good interior defence as well.

Instead we had to watch Dench committ stupid fouls, play weak defence and get out-rebounded in a crucial part of the game.

Just on Ng, has anyone else noticed how right-hand dominant he is on his dribble - can he dribble with his left hand?

When will people realise, at this level, any team can score ok, defend ok. Champion teams have a definate scoring option that results in high percentage shots, and defensive players that will make the big defensive play. Sixers have neither.

KingJames, I was referring to the comment made by Phil which "Quote Book" pointed out when he started this thread - "We played well enough to win but on the road you need a 10-point lead going down the stretch". I think it's a poor and untruthful comment because you don't NEED a 10 point lead going down the stretch. Sure, it's handy to have one but if you don't it's not like you can't win. They might as well say in the last quarter "Oh, bugger, we're not up by 10 so we might aswell go home now".

Rat10 - that frustrates me no end about Ng's "ball-carrying". He may as well tie his left hand behind his back.

He can probably get away with it at ABA level, but really for a backup guard in the NBL he needs to develop a better handle and that means being equally competent with both hands. You really notice how good Davidson is in comparison.

if phil gets the boot at the end of the season do u think ninnis will have lucas as his assitant coach?

ATTENTION THIS JUST IN.........

Phil doesn't like defence

Theres always a lame excuse somewhere down the line.
We have the players to win with the skills, talent, everything we need to win.

Except the coach needs to guide them and not let them do their own thing!!! This is not 1997 and 1998, 2002 where we had teams that didn't need to be tought defence or to be guided. Letting teams score 100 points and more every game this season. Don't you think there is a reason we usually lose on the road.

It doesn't take teams long to see we switch every screen and last night NZ took it apart by swinging it and waiting until Darren, Matt and Brett were on The Bear and Rickert and then went to work. When they were doubled by the bigs they kicked it to the open shooters. Basic basketball. We just can't play defence well enough to win.

Thats my frustration out after getting home from work at midnight and watching it until 2am last night.

I think you mostly agree with me if you have some sort of basketball brain and go to the sixers games

"flip" not a truer word has been said. they seemed to lazy to fight the picks and where happy to just switch on everything which resulted in bad match-ups and bad scrambles out to shooters. the half court trap put on, was lazy and rotations where not efficient. thus making the trap useless. it looked like the trap had never been practised(eg training) or even properly drawn up! another point after our 7-8 point lead started to dwindle with 7 minutes left in the game, why was there no time-out or changes made. the only time-out in the 4th quarter came with 37 seconds left. by then it was gonna be tough anyway.

Well I was actually at the game last night and it was extremely frustrating to lose as we did.
Finally Chappell had a good ganme (well the first half anyway), Brett was fantastic, if you forget about his defensive issues. Othere good contributions came from Ballinger and Dench (offensively).
I thought that Sutton gave us a real spark early in the last quarter, but needless to say, he was taken off and replaced by Ng, who really is a liability when it comes to defence. By the time Sutton got back on, the game was over.
I wonder when we are actually going to shoot some half reasonable percentages from the foul line! Once again, that is where we probably threw the game away.
Our guys were really knocekd around terribly in my opinion and yes there will be some who will say we need to play togher, but even so, there were some real home court calls and non calls made in that game.
The Breakers boys were on the same plane as us on the way back to Sydney today, then they are off to play the Slingers. If that was us doing that sort of travelling, do you get the feeling that we would be beaten already?
One last thing too, like they do in footy, when they have ststas on hard ball gets, I wonder if they have something similar in basketball in relation to loose ball gets? I reckon if they did, then we would not be soring too well in that regard.
Rickert's effort rate was fantasic, even though he should have been called for plenty of over the back fouls.
Fortunately we did not make it too obvious we were Sixers supportes and were able to leave safely and quietly!

Everyone here blaming the coach is an idiot. Ok if Phil told them to hit a three and foul, possibly thinking they wouldnt hit the three as early as they did...

Surely BLAME lies with the people on the court, who made the decision to foul as much as Phil did.

THE PLAYERS ARE THE ONES ON THE COURT...figure that out people, last year it was not enough time outs, now its time out at the wrong time...funny thing is i dont see one of you coaching a NBL team, or something near that level.

Its a simple fact that at this level blame lies with the players, Tennis players dont cry to their ref when they dont win a set..they have to pick themselves backup and continue to try and win momentum...Coaching at this level is only advice


And yes I have coached, ALOT. SO ram it up yourself and perhaps blame the people missing the shots, not getting the rebounds instead of just the coach

Squid I'm glad you mentioned lots of 'no calls'. I don't understand why it's OK to do the 'pelvic thrust' defense, ie bumping constantly with your abdomen....which is what the breakers were doing heaps. It's Shane Heal's trademark and more and more teams seem to be doing it in the NBL. It's a BG tactic all over too. And poor frail Coops just get's 'bumped' out of the way every time. Frustrating to see this let go when at times it's really blatant. Maybe our guys could do it too, as the umpires are more likely to call a hand check than a full on belly bump.

Rickert's efforts were fantastic, but, IMO, playing in any other game this year so far he would have fouled out on over the back fouls on rebounds.

Experience aside, it doesn't take much to subtract 3 from 6 and figure out that you can still tie the game on one possession.

Squid is correct re Sutton: if Maher (as much as he is the GREATEST player in our club's history by a mile) and Ng on at the same time gives us the WORST defensive backcourt on the planet. Sutton's height was also causing a matchup problem for Turner and Kersten.

Smyth did get a lot of things right the other night, for once not overplaying Copeland (12 minutes) when he wasn't firing, but Ng played too many minutes, and if he isn't hitting his jumpshot then he is no use to us. I kinda parallel Ng to BJ Carter, and having watched the Kings v Bullets game this week, I'd rather have Carter.

Given Penney was cutting lose, it might have been worth throwing Ezy at him for a few minutes, given how good his defence has become.

Skud what are you talking about? You say we are idiots for proving facts on the game directly related to what could have won us the game if things were done differently. Yet you ramble on about general pointless stuff. The idea from the time out was to hit a 3 and then foul straight away. So I don't think the point was to waste as much time as possible then hit a 3 and then foul as your ridiculous idea seems to suggest. Even if that stupid idea is what phil was intending then he is wrong for thinking that. So either way he was wrong but thank you for clearly pointing that out.

The correct thing for him to do, and what he gets paid huge amounts to do, was to give the players scenario's! If we hit a 3 early then DONT foul. If we hit a 3 and there is less then 28 seconds left then foul straight away. Any other situation foul straight away!

Also your other brilliant idea of the blame should be with the players is such a compelling argument and then comparing a team sport like basketball with tennis was great. I think you should write to all sporting organisations around the world and tell them that the coach is no longer needed, then we will see who they think is an idiot.

Squid, the foul shooting hasn't been too bad this year prior to this game. We hit 14 from 15 last week. But that, poor rebounding and the uneven turnover count lost us this one when otherwise we were shooting the ball at a much better rate than the Breakers.

The whole "criticism isn't allowed because you've never coached NBL" is pretty lame Skud.

I can say that an actor acted poorly without needing to have had a Hollywood career myself, right?