Unfortunately, given Nash would have to be considred an "unknown" factor at this time, I would be more likely to rate it at a C level.

Cooper isnt exactly the best big man they could have secured (Moore for example), and seems to almost be an signing in desparation. Ng's signing is hardly a coup, it's not like any other team was woo-ing him, it was purely a decision between his studies and playing, and whether they would tie in.

I agree that you could consider Maher a new recruit given last season, but once again, there werent many other options he was faced with (well, not thatw e know of publicly).

I was disapointed with how slow recruitment had been going, but interesting to note the Kings only have 4-5 players currently signed.

Kings have 9 signed plus development players. Just haven't announced most of them. They've got a signing from the first import now.

Also, I don't think Gower and Hambour were really in the ten much. Hawkes was.

It was more like this:

CT/JW
Maher/Ng
Cat/Hawkes
Holmes/Nash
Rychart/Forman

To this:

Maher/JW
Farley/Ng
Holmes/Nash
Rychart/Forman
Cooper/Rees

So, losing Cattalini, Hawkes and CT. Gaining Farley, Cooper, Rees.

And while I think it's fair to expect more from Nash and Forman (and hopefully Cooper), I don't know about Rychart - he averaged 22 and 10 in a team without a real centre and fewer scoring options, and CT gave him a lot of opportunities. I don't think he'll play any worse, I just think his statistics will reduce with added rebounding from Cooper and Rees, the loss of CT and so on.

I think the Sixers lost a half-decent import (15, 5 and 5 regardless of whoever trashes him) and probably one of the top Australian players and an ABL guard, while gaining a very good import, and bench centre and a veteran bench centre.

I think any off-season performance ranking has to consider that the club was working under very tough conditions (long-term contracts, plus needing to sign two promising forwards (Holmes, Rychart) while three were already signed (Cattalini, Nash, Forman)) and had to provide a more even team (i.e., add a centre). They could've done much better, but Cooper is a bit of an under-proven quantity in my mind.

On paper I agree they could have done better.

Stiff was the big loss in my opinion but once he was gone I question whether our team would have been much better if we signed an expensive big man such as Pepper, Melmeth, etc who were always going to be unlikely to sign here unless we won a bidding war.

Personally I would have liked to see Pero get a go or even Moore but that is not to be.

You are correct with your ins and outs Isaac but you have to factor in the amount of games missed by Maher, Williams and Hawkes as well.

There was hardly a game where Gower and Hambour weren't in the 10.

Nash is an x-factor because he really struggled being played out of position all season. We can only hope that he returns to form.

If Maher and Farley stay healthy we will not spend a second worrying about the loss of CT.

While Cooper and Rees won't perform well statistically (Rees really never has but just keeps on winning) the best thing they can do is keep the rest of the roster playing their natural positions. For example, Rychart and Holmes won't have to waste a tonne of energy trying to keep Bradtke and Pepper away from the basket.

Oscar can be added to the line-up for some scoring without having to worry about him giving up second shots to the opposing centre.

Our current line-up has a decent feel to it in terms of balance. It has a good mix in terms of stars and role players.

Guys like Farley, Rychart and even Holmes have the ability to post-up so having a lumbering name centre that can't leave the key may not have been the best option.

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Despite not landing any big name free agents, I really like the team that the 6ers will have this season.

It is well balanced and has the right attributes to play Phil's 'system' successfully, primarily shooting and rebounding.

Alot of people bemoaned when Rupert Sapwell first got signed to the 6ers. But he turned out to be a player that thrived in Phil's system. I'm hoping that Cooper will be similar and turn out to be productive for us tag-teaming with Rees.

B+

Stephon, hoping Nash returns to form? What form? He's like a silent achiever, if you take the 'achiever' part off.
Two sick dunks in past seasons really doesn't amount to much.

Mark and Blade, agree that balance has been restored to team. This is most important. Last season we had no balance and CT trying to run the show which he's not capable of. Very good at assists but inconsistent thereafter.

Now we have balance, proven talent, decent bench and what's going to be the best import tandem in the league.
Give you the hot tip, Dusty is the man - watch him go this season.

Nash has been an important contributor for the 36ers in his time here. He was starting SF in our Farley championship year and while he wasn't a consistent scorer he would definitely throw in the occasional 20 point game and often these games came when it counted.

His defence was ever reliable and he was even being mentioned as a defensive player of the year candidate a couple of seasons back.

His last season was so poor by his standards that I cannot see how he cannot improve.

Based on what we got out of Nash last season, I think the only way is up. Knowing Smyth's love of mismatches I think Nash will get time in the back-court as well as SF which will be good for him as he is not a power-forward or a centre.

Jacob will have a great season and while I agree with Isaac that Dusty's stats may not improve dramatically (they already were up there in the MVP candidate range of 20 and 10), I think the point is that with another year under his belt Dusty will be an even better and smarter all around player.

If Oscar can keep his current good form with his outside shot up then we will be looking good.

We addressed our problems with our back-court (I think we have the best back-court in the league) and we now have a couple of Centres (even if they are more like the ex-Bulls centres of Purdue, Longley and Wennington than Shaq who at least we know won't disrupt team harmony by wanting a certain number of shots).

On paper I think Melbourne is the team to beat but the things that don't show up on paper is the Tigers nucleus is arguably on the way down whereas our nucleus is on the way up.

I would be very surprised if Maher, Nash, Holmes and Forman did not have better seasons than last. That already is a lot of improvement there.

Farley will give us a lot more than CT and while Cat will be a huge loss at least SF was the one position where we have a future Boomer candidate in great form just waiting to step up to become an NBL star in Holmes.

Eg in Yogee's fantasy league you wouldn't be feeling too hard done by if you ended up with Maher, Farley, Holmes and Dusty as your main 4.

With everything that went wrong for us last season 5 teams finished ahead of us.

Unless Kings can sign 2 awesome imports better than Ere and Carrawell that also make up for the loss caused by replacing Stiff and Nielsen with only Knight then they have dropped dramatically.

Wollongong have gotten worse in my opinion losing Knight, Dench and Lowery.

West Sydney have lost Rillie, Hinder, Williams and Pennisi.

Brisbane have lost Kevin Freeman, Helliwell and Rees. They will have to get a pretty good import to make up for the loss of Wade and Freeman.

Tigers have gotten stronger with Stiff's signing but their core is all older.

True some of the teams below us have gotten stronger (Hunter look to have improved dramatically) but there is no reason why our team this season can't be labeled as very competitive if everyone stays healthy. I think that is all we can ask for. We can't demand All-Stars at every position with a $736k cap but we can ask for a team that is competitive and has a starter over 6'7".

My opinion is that we now have that. Not too mention a bit of show-time back with the signing of Farley who will be worth the price of admission along with Maher every game.

Is Christian Bell a chance to make the squad??

Agree with you there Stephon, but Nash needs to get a move on. He's like a J Williams who just doesn't seem to have the tenacity (at times) for the league. Nash shows glimpses of what he's capable of but is very timid and unsure most of the time. Yes, he's an asset defensively but a team needs consistent scorers who can be relied upon to chip in a certain amount of points each outing.

Nash has potential, this was evident a few seasons ago, yet has not delivered. In my opinion it should be make or break time.

Speaking of JW, have we signed him again? Hopefully not.

I don't think they would be signing Jason until his foot had healed. I think Bell is less of a chance than he had been previously, but I really don't know.

With Jason, I think that he would be a good player for the potential money. He can start if necessary, play 25 minutes if he's in form, and make 15 in a game if he drives and his shots are falling. Depending on team requirements, he could be anything from first sub in to the 10th spot and I think that keeps the team pretty even and versatile. It's not quite like the championship year where Forman and Holmes were in their very first year and averaging 2 PPG -- this time around the last two spots could well be Jason (6 PPG, and should do better) and Darren (4+ PPG).

I rate our offseason as a C, and that is possibly generous.

I think we have a worse roster than last year. Last year we were restricted in recruiting players because of the salary cap reduction. This year we had room to move so could have improved our roster. Our only big name recruit is an import. We've recruited NO decent Australians despite losing one of the best going around. Rees is a 'has been' that in best case scenario will be slightly worse than what he was with us 2 years ago, worst case scenario he will be useless. Cooper is a fringe player, back up player who in absolute best case scenario might blossom into 'average'.

We have not solved our backup point guard problem. Jason Williams looks like being our best option again at this stage. JW was our major weakness 2 years ago. Now we are so bad in other areas that the backup guard deficiency hardly even rates a mention.

Two offseason positives come from the resigning of Rychart and Holmes. Particularly retaining Holmes, this was a great result. More improvement from Holmes (aswell as Forman) is possibly our only chance of success.

I am a huge fan of Rychart, as we all are, but given our final roster I can't help but think we rushed too early into signing him before finalising the Aussie content. Would we have been better off with a bigger import to play centre? Anyway, I'm not going to be too critical of that because I am not even sure myself and Rychart's a great player. But I am very dissappointed that we didn't even get one decent Aussie recruit and therefore can only rate our offseason a 'C', because we patched up our roster with band-aid solutions.

Phil offense doesn't seem to suit a dominant centre, 90% of the Sixers
shots come from the 2, 3 & 4 spot.

Rees & Cooper simply have to fill the middle, set strong picks, make good passes, defend, elbow, frustrate & stay healthy.

Longley frustrated the bejeezes out of Bulls fans, but he played the role required by (the other) coach Phil & they went onto win the most games ever by an NBA team.

If Herman Munster had've played,
instead of Longley, they still would've won 60 games(& the title).

If Farley, Maher & Dusty Bottoms can average 20+ and Holmes can average 15 then the rest of the team should be able to get another 15 -20, then it's not a bad spread across the board.

Hopefully our Herman Munsters can get the job done inside.

A couple of seasons ago I would have agreed with the criticism re the lack of signing big name players.

Eg in 2002 I thought we should have signed Wells or another explosive high scoring import to join the team and they signed a role playing import in Garrison to not effect team harmony.

The result was a championship.

Then in 2003 I was damn excited at the prospect of CT, Rogers and Cat joining the 36ers at the time but the moves well and truly back-fired especially with Rogers being injured/leaving for Europe.

I think with the current cap restrictions gone are the days where teams can overspend just to say they signed a 'name' player. Eg if you were GM do you honestly think that a Pepper, Moore or Melmeth would have been worth $100k or so? Would any of the 'name players' be happy playing the role that Smyth and Breheny have planned for Cooper?

I am more than a little relieved that they signed Cooper over Brad Williams.

Whether we like it or not guys like Holmes and Forman who will be entering their 4th years will get an opportunity to prove they are consistent quality NBL players. If they do so we will be looking good.

I'm judging our off-season as a success simply for the fact that head to head I feel confident that we can compete with any team in the league.

I enjoyed watching the style of bball our 2002 team played and we have assembled arguably a better roster because of the improved scoring that Rychart and Holmes provide.