is Holmes looking at his 3rd wooden spoon in 4 years?

I hope so.

Sydney deserve to be higher than Sixers - they have a far more balanced team of players actualy playing in their positions and haven't got Clarke running rotations that make no sense. Until Clarke goes, the Sixers will always be an unbalanced team running a program that doesn't suit the players.

Spinner, that's a load of crap. You've seen him coach all of one season with one roster and you're busting out "always."

If you were a Kings fan, you would've been hating on Robilliard and his roster in some way for the first 15 or so games of the season.

Can we fit Sanders in as a second import?

Seems like any import averaging 15ppg is a superstar in this league this year.

Mind u we are pretty stacked at SF.

mmmm the posibilities are endless

I would bet money on the fact that Sydney will finish higher. Sydney have lifted their game in the 2nd half of the season while Adelaide is still on a downward slide. Sydney will easily overtake.

Adelaide can only beat perth so yes they will finish lower

Only in Adelaide do a team's fans openly hope their team will fail harder. I get that they haven't done as well as anyone hoped and there have been a lot of frustrating games (I've been watching them too) but to actively and openly wish further failure on them is pretty special.

I hope they don't. There are 4 away and 1 home games left for Adelaide who are 8 & 15.

Sat 12/03/2011 WOLLONGONG v ADELAIDE
Sun 13/03/2011 SYDNEY v ADELAIDE
Fri 18/03/2011 ADELAIDE v MELBOURNE
Fri 25/03/2011 GOLD COAST v ADELAIDE
Thu 31/03/2011 NEW ZEALAND v ADELAIDE

The Kings have 2 home and 2 away games and are 7 & 17

Sun 13/03/2011 SYDNEY v ADELAIDE
Thu 17/03/2001 NEW ZEALAND v SYDNEY
Sun 27/03/2001 WOLLONGONG v SYDNEY
Fri 1/4/2011 SYDNEY v GOLD COAST

The crunch game will be that Sunday game. It is a must win game for us. We are currently +7 on the split, so the Sixers need to win, or loose by less than 7 to get the split. If the Sixers get the split, then it's probably not an issue. Kings are likely to drop the NZ game, probably a loss to the 'Gong, then might go out with a bang against the Gold Coast who are coming home strongly. If they get two, then they will end 9 and 19 and it may get to the split.

Crunch games for the Sixers are that game, and the Melbourne home game. Wollongong are back in town and Zac "Bieber" Delaney may even get a run on Sat. night. The Gold Coast will have the Sixers game as a W in their playbook and the NZ game is always a hard game. I can't remember the last time a Sixers team did well in Auckland.

The Sixers MVP night could end up being a "barrel of laughs". It is being held on Fri 1/4/11 and the boys would have played in Auckland the night before. So, after what is likely to be a loss, the boys get the redeye Auckland to Sydney flight, then the flight Sydney to Adelaide, buggered as bro, they then roll up to the dinner anxious to drown their sorrows. I would hate to be the MC that announces that Sydney has just beaten the Gold Coast to drop the Sixers to the bomb shelter. Yep, that would just be the icing on the cake.

Isaac, I agree.....that coaching formula is a load of crap! It doesn't matter if we see it for 1 season or 3, nothing changes. Every week the wrong players in the wrong positions. Every week, rotations like a development team all trying to get court time.

Yes I would bag Robbillard if I was a King's fan. But I am a Sixers fan and with the poor performance this year, surely I have a right to bag this coach. Give him a go you say - if nothing changed in 1 year, what is going to change in 3? I've asked the question several times and nobody has been able to give a straight answer - how do you execute a 3 year plan if players are only signed for 1 or 2 years?

By the way, I was disappointed on Friday, but I didn't boo the team.

Why is that wrong Isaac? If the Sixers were to win 3 of the last 4 games the Naive fans would say it has been a bumpy road but looks like they are back on track now. Clarke will then get pat's on the back with people saying "don't worry you are a good coach you just had some injuries (naive to the fact that so did every other team) and were unlucky, you did a good job". When anyone that is a true fan and knows basketball will know he did an incompetent job and we had an embarrassing season. He as well as the coaching staff and players deserve to be made accountable for that!

This season HAS been worse then last season with Clarke having the luxury of being able to cut imports which Ninnis was not able to do. I wonder if there was a weak Sydney team last season and Ninnis got 2 extra wins if he would have held on to his job.

Isaac can I also ask if you get to watch games for free? If you do then surely your opinion is biased due to the fact that you don't have to spend several hundred dollars for season tickets.

I cannot believe what I am reading here. Some of you want the Sixers to lose?? Wow.

From the articles in the paper today; the club seems fine with Clarke; but the club as a whole with be under the microscope.

Marty doesn't seem to react to the losses as much as I would assume someone in his stead to. I just keep going back to the "Method to his Madness" train of thought and assume that the losses have some sort of underlying point to them.

Mviews on the Sixers-Sydney race to avoid the wooden spoon were posted 2 weeks ago. As Jack Toft says above, it's about the Sunday game next week and the Melbourne game here in Adelaide. Robilliard will have Sydney firing next week and the Adelaide team has to find the spirit to play like they did in a good part of the first half of the season, when there was a lot of positive comment on here about the team's performances.

I have to confess that I'm not sure why the wheels have fallen off so badly in the second half of this season. I have not seen many games and so don't have the insight of many of the posters on here. However, a number of players seem to have dropped away in their performances. Since returning, Carter seems (to me) not to have played to the level he was before his injury. After de Vries was injured, he clearly never reached the level where he started the season. Dowdell is not performing anything like the standard he delivered in the first part of the season.

I can't fathom why the Sixers were performing better, even in losing games, with so much more spirit and commitment in the first part of the season and are performing so poorly now? It's easy to say - it's the players, they aren;t good enough. Or - it's coach, he doesn;t know what he's doing. But that doesn;t satisfy me, when I look at the change in body language and overall spirit.

I wonder how much losing Ng and Carter at the same time, thereby wiping out any real outside threat, made the Sixers a much easier team to defend against? In saying this, I note that people have commented on here about the Sixers' inability to overcome zone defences, lately. Also, the Sixers have given up less points per game than the Breakers, who are 19 and 5. So, I've focused on the offensive production as the key weakness. Maybe that's a bit naive but I'll put it out there.

Do others share my sense that it's been very much a season of two halves? If so, why such a big turnaround in the second half and what's the best way to turn it back again?

Spinner, I have tried explaining it to you a few times in the past. This year has not been a success but it does not necessarily follow that having a three year plan is a mistake. Like I have said so many times, every coach and club in the league would have a multi-year plan.

Until Clarke goes, the Sixers will always be an unbalanced team running a program that doesn't suit the players.

What I wanted to pull you up on here is that you claim that any future Clarke team at the 36ers will "always" be unbalanced and will never suit the players. You're basing that on one season that you've seen. If they sign a centre next year and keep the guard stocks reasonable, are they still unbalanced? If they had Robbins/Martin, Knight/Wagstaff/etc would the program not suit the team? Are they less balanced when playing on the road? Does the program change to suit them less?

KingJames, last question first, I trade thousands of dollars worth of work for my seats. I would be better off financially just working for another client (that I can charge full rate) and just buying the tickets. Obviously I can't use all of them myself, so I take friends along to the game to try and get more people interested in the sport. Regardless, I'm not sure how that would bias me towards a coach I don't know? Maybe towards defending owners who I've met and think are decent people, but not really the coach. FWIW, I would've picked Marty to coach from what was available at the time (e.g., Goorjian, Bevo, McLeod not really available).

Marty needs to change a couple of things up, no doubt about it. For one thing, drop back training intensity a notch so some players aren't scared to come to Adelaide for fear of wearing themselves down.

And IMO with the second import change, he should have put a defensive big with Ballinger. An Andre Brown could've done little worse than Howard. Even Majok just to see what would happen. I can see why the first change was used to try and settle on a better PG situation for the team but second time around we had a more balanced array from PG-SF. And if not that, just keep Winder and play him as a SG-SF wildcard - not like Howard was that much taller! Either a Galen Young-style SF or a bruiser. I bet fans would've liked the idea of Rick Rickert, but there is a reason why the Breakers didn't keep him around.

So, I have no bias towards Marty and don't think he is without faults - hope you can accept that.

My frustration comes from how often fans are ascribing success to players and failure to the coach. If you put the 7-27 quarter on a coach, can you also thanks him for that 18 point lead? If you put that lead on the players, can you not then accept that simple errors or horrible defence can undo it just as fast?

That last quarter was an absolute demolition and Loughton ran rampant. Loughton is a bit like Worthington in that he can command a final-quarter spree of threes in a pressure situation. Leaving him open at any point was crazy.

When Holmes went out for Johnson, I immediately thought "Wrong sub!"

Problem is, when they're running a zone, we need any outside shooter we can get. With Ng and Herbert out, Ballinger is the best bet. Carter and Shannon aren't high-percentage shooters from the arc. After Ng, we have no one topping 34%.


I agree that winning the last few games would potentially disguise problems within the team amongst some fans but the same's probably true in Sydney. But I don't think Sydney fans hope they'll lose more, for example. I wasn't surprised at the loss on Friday, but I wasn't hoping that it happened.

Anybody in there who's watched this year will already know stuff needs to change. Thing is, you could've said the same for almost every year out of the last few, right? What's left to try?

Isaac - no problem with having a plan, I agree it is necessary. This issue is that a plan must be achievable. The plan should be flexible enough to accommodate any changes. The initial part of the plan must include adequate and appropriate resourcing. Whether or not the players Sixers had this year were appropriate or adequate is reflected in their season record.

In addition to shortcomings in the plan, I also point to the rotations run by Clarke. Wrong combinations on at the wrong times, players on a roll being taken off and not coming back on for some time, rotating too many players too early, etc, etc.

Many people have noted these issues and have commented on various forums including some from the media. From the comments he has made, Clark would have us all thinking that he is right and everybody else is wrong?! 8 and 15!!

Well said Isaac!!

Lemanis on the Breakers plan and the time it's taken:

"What you get now is a result of the seeds sown from day one, sticking with it, and having a plan and faith... winning the minor premiership I guess ratifies what we did in those early years."

Spinner, agree re flexibility but I think crucial issues are very difficult to address with import changes in a single season. Past coaches didn't turn around seasons in a hurry, remember. Twice we got Hodge in who can out-stat any import in recent 36ers memory, but little changed.

And with non-imports it's very difficult - who's been picked up during the year? Majok, Kendall, Tait, Dickel, Bruce? I'd only rush to grab Dickel from that group as a potential starter. That guy is an on-court coach.

Yeah, I reckon we could've got an Andre Brown instead of Ron Howard without losing anything, but I don't think it would've won us many more games.

I think you're expecting what no 36ers team has managed to achieve solidly in around four years - close out games, win on the road, look convincing for an entire game, etc. After a full season, I would expect Marty to have a better handle of what the problems are and take more concrete steps to deal with it. I think he was too optimistic last off-season.

All started better than finishing.
Probably we do miss a bit of Ng shooting.
Dowdell only plays 3mins now.
You could've done Majok for Howard but that's past.
What's left to do? Maybe let Shannon go , now.
Although Clarke wants Shannon Bruce Carter together, at extended training sessions (as hadn't had that with their injuries.)
I go to some of the training , not all of it..
Bruce blows past Shannon, on the right, Shannon sees him a bit late.

Could let Shannon go and just play the kids in his place. Thought Eddie was lucky not to get a tech on Friday.

What incident was that for Isaac? I can't presently dredge one up from memory other than his injury antics.

His reaction to non-calls or calls. Has a habit of punching the air very aggressively. Not sure how the refs treat that, but did think it was a bit much.

I still remember the Nick Horvath Incident from 4-5 years ago; where he got hacked for about 10 minutes of play with no calls; he finally sinks a bucket and punches the ball and it goes out into the crowd.

Poor fella gets a double-technical and he's done for the night.

I didn't boo them either because I wanted Cairns to win. They needed it more than we did. Even if we won that game, it would probably still have meant that we will end up in the bomb shelter. What angered me although I didn't mind the loss was the realisation that at this late stage in the season, still nothing has changed to make any improvements. Any improvements at this late stage could be viewed as a path towards the 3 year plan. It could have created some excitement for the following season. Instead, I feel that next season will be exactly as this one unless major changes are made, starting with the coach. I have seen absolutely nothing that makes this season a piece of the 3 year plan puzzle.

Isaac

After a full season, I would expect Marty to have a better handle of what the problems are and take more concrete steps to deal with it. I think he was too optimistic last off-season.

. You mean the writing is still not on the wall. He needs a full season to work out where he went wrong. Fans have been saying where he went wrong for months now but he does not listen. If he is the professional coach he is supposed to be, you can't waste a whole season to work out where you went wrong.

If you put the 7-27 quarter on a coach, can you also thanks him for that 18 point lead?

Definitely not, the 18 point lead is expected of a good coach, the 7-27 quarter is a disgrace. Even more so after the 18 point lead.

#310807
I didn't boo them, that has to be a positive. Another positive, I will be attending the last home game of the season despite their record this season. Another positive, I will be renewing my season ticket next year but that is dependent on enough fans also renewing theirs or there will be no next season. Also the 18 point lead didn't win the game but the 7-27 quarter did lose it. Its quite obvious that I have been extremely disappointed this season, but that is a common theme amongst the fans. If I am negative, then why was the team booed on Friday night? Why has there been countless threads about how poor the team has performed, which players need to go, the terrible job the current coach is doing, the negative media reports? Its all around us and you can't escape it.