OKC a lot weaker than Suns, and Adelaide match up well since OKC don't have any legit bigs.

Can see 36ers winning again personally

I think it's the opposite, it’s easier against star studded teams than weaker NBA teams - less stars and younger so those players will put more in and more likely to play properly.

And those shooting stats won't be repeated

Let's hope they aren't repeated or else the 36ers are going to have to go import shopping again for sure.

If they do pull it off I can't wait for the n00bs to again disregard a Sixers victory as "embarrassing for the NBA" with no credit at all assigned to the NBL. Sigh, can't win even when you do.

If DJ isn't playing will be tough for Adelaide, especially with their being no element of surprise now. They have a good roster though, so should still be a decent game.

OKC coming off a back to back, their bench is full of young experienced players. 36ers could seriously win this.

A pessimist but a realist, I think when your NBL teams losing 9/10, you're probably not going 2-0.

But what’s important is Adelaide are competitive and provide value as a preseason game to NBA sides.

In the future I think it’d be good to have an NBL Cup which doesn’t count towards the regular season but is played in the US prior/during NBAxNBL games so that NBL sides can #1 show off their talent in front of scouts in the US and #2 give the sides experience against NBA teams and be able to show off their talents.

I feel like that’d work both as a marketing opportunity to legitimise the NBL but also help attract stars to the NBL that will see it as a good place to be seen, amongst the other benefits of a great lifestyle, English speaking country, stable decent pay etc.

DJ not playing which limits the offensive options.
If 36's stay with 15 they've done well

With in 15 in the first quarter would be good. Soto is horrible.

Adelaide couldn't miss anything in Phoenix. They couldn't hit anything in Q1 in OKC!

Are the 36ers tanking to keep their imports? Haha

OKC on fire. Adelaide getting their own medicine

Gaze sitting next to JVG.

How bad is the DJ injury?

Hopefully perfectly fine for next week

He was doing running and shooting drills in the warm-up and looked to be moving fine.

Tanking to keep the imports is a good call haha.

Was worried about them coming back with 4 less players.

What did DJ do anyway? Did it happen in the first game? Noticed he didn't play much (if at all) in the second half

@crazy8

He tweaked his ankle against Phoenix.

What's the chances of pulling Bairstow out of retirement and replacing Acouth

Gaze sitting next to JVG.

He's there to take credit if Adelaide wins, and to be able to blame someone else for getting rid of him if they lose.

Thank your sir for the perfectly answered response.

OKC playing outstanding defense

Just looking at the stats but is that worse case scenario. We drop the game and the imports play will again.

Unfortunately that looked a bit more realistic. Still we made history pulling off that surprise win against the Suns and I bet we take even more out of that thumping from OKC ahead of the start of our NBL season.

According to a large amount of 36ers fans on facebook, if Sotto had played more they probably would've won this game. Too many crocodile players. Must be true.

Randall still had a solid game.

Well done to him, hopefully he brings that form to the season.

I don't think he will get poached on one superb game.

And back to reality

DJ is too big a loss to still be competitive with an NBA team when there are no other quality big men on the roster.

Back to earth for Adelaide there. Still a very successful trip for them, but as someone else mentioned above, playing against a young hungry team with regular NBA minutes up for grabs still, this was always going to be harder. Also they're a few games into their pre season rather than a few days into training camp as the Suns were.

This trip will definitely have done the team well and nobody will care about the loss in a few years and only ever remember the win, despite this game more accurately reflecting the difference in quality.

"And back to reality"

Seems like a bit of a snide take here. Yeah, Adelaide beat the Suns with a completely unlikely shooting display. They also lost to OKC with a terrible and unlikely shooting display and the loss of their starting big man, and the only quality big the team has. Which one is reality?

The answer: It's somewhere in the middle.

Well said ME. Completely agree.
We saw two polar opposite performances.
DJ's absence was telling in terms of reducing the offensive first, and more significantly, second options, and it changed the way okc woukdve otherwise defended (to some degree)

Notwithstanding, a great excercise for Adelaide which will do their chemistry and culture a world of good.

As a Melbourne fan, I'm hyped for a string 36's this season

The game went pretty much as expected tbh.

Nobody thinks that an NBL side is competitively talented to an NBA side. But when you've got 4 or 5 players that can compete on the same level as the other teams 9-12, and you go and shoot the absolute lights out, you can win. The other 9/10 times the team with every player on par or better than your best will end up winning easily as you’d expect them to.

If the 36ers keep the team together, they should hopefully see this as a successful trip on and off the court and sets a higher tone and level which hopefully we see translate into success in NBL games.

The challenge from here is rest and jet lag so that they come in with momentum not fatigue.

Are the 36's similar to the 36ers?

"Are the 36's similar to the 36ers?"

Sounds the same so yeah. :)

Too busy eating a Parma to care, amiright?

DJ didn't play late in the Suns win so I think people put to much weight on that when they get spanked by 33. Even if they had a normal shooting night they are still losing. All the planets aligned against the Suns and as an Australian it was very cool. But too many people got carried away with it

You can't put too much weight on DJ missing, he is such a good offensive player. Sure, the Sixers hit some ridiculous one-on-one threes and tough drives after DJ went out to keep their lead, but they got into a winning position with him scoring 15 in 18 minutes! No way they do that without him for a full game.

I don't think anyone is saying if DJ played today they win, their oppo got as hot as they did on Monday, but it meant they didn't really have a chance.

" But too many people got carried away with it"

Who did?

It has all been pretty reasonable

If Adelaide played a full season in the NBA you'd have far more games like this one than the phoenix game. While it may be "somewhere in the middle" that's only true by a degree. An average loss of just under 30 instead of just over.

Adelaide didn't have DJ? OKC didn't have a handful of their rotation players including their best player.

I'm not saying this to shit on the Sixers. They did a great job to take advantage of what they were presented with in Phoenix and should be Hella proud. But the OKC game definitely shows a more realistic gap between the teams.

Talk of Randall getting left in the states due to shitty attitude and zero commitment at training.

Oh please, what is your source.

I think if you're a 1.7 million dollar team and you are 28 points on average worse than a 260 million dollar team you're probably getting a whole lot of bang for your buck.


I don't think anyone reasonably thinks the NBL is anywhere near par with the NBA. But I think the signs of competitiveness are heartening and show a continued improvement in the league. If we have 5-7 players on a team who can make an NBA team work for their money then Australian basketball is in pretty good shape.

Not to do all the "shoudda coudda wouddas" but on an NBL court, with NBL rules and an NBL game time - ie, the conditions our teams are built for - these games are much closer again. The NBA not only has superior talent in these circumstances - a fact no one would question - but they also have the ultimate in home court advantages.

Anyway, I am happy with how the Sixers represented the league in these games. Taking the W against Phoenix was massive and put the league even further on the map. And having seen the OKC game, it was a bad shooting display and DJ away from being at least respectable on the scoreline. The league looks to be heading in the right direction and the NBLXNBA series provides a great yearly barometer for where it is going.

The only thing we really know for sure about Craig Randall is that he will keep jacking it up
1 game 37 points and the other 27 plus 8 assists like some kinda NBA player.

I think the top 3-4 players (on average) on each team in the top 6 or so leagues in the world are more or less equal to the 10 through 17 roster spots on an NBA team and for the most part the difference is opportunity and perceived potential.

The far bigger difference is between those groups and the top 3-4 players on an NBA team.

Adelaide did great, but again trying to use results in these games for anything aside from a bit of feel good buzz is pointless as they're just practice games.

The 36ers have arrived back in Adelaide and Randall says a few NBA teams are interested in him.

Hmmm crap.

Nine tv news ran the story, last night, from Adelaide Airport -
'Randall admits interest from several NBA teams.' they told us.

Good to know you're still watching television Camel.