Hoops

McQuade on 36ers: playoffs would be an achievement

They should have kept coopers and not gone with Hahn!

I place little value on pre-season predictions for a national competition comprising only 9 professional teams and with talent so evenly spread that on any given night any team can knock over another for any number of reasons. I expect most teams to hit purple patches. Even Sydney will pinch wins.

Adelaide were around the mark for much of last season until the wheels seriously fell off late in the season. Every team has lost significant pieces from last year and must adjust to new players, new plays and remodelled opponents. We won't know which teams are legit until mid-season.

Still pre-season predictions makes for great discussion points and personally I would prefer my team be under-estimated than having a target on their back before the season has even started.

I believe the sixers will be pushing for a finals spot, I've seen enough of their preseason games to believe they have a unity and backbone that won't crumble as easily as last season's unit.

McQuade makes a lot of reasonable points about the Sixers: Balls at centre, lack of frontcourt depth, coach an NBL rookie, new imports. Basically, he is right, there is a big question mark over the Sixers to start the season.

I think if Winder and DeVries prove to be top notch and Johnson and Hill step up to support them and Balls, the Sixers are a top 4 team.

But I'll be happy if the Sixers show they can compete with everyone and players show growth on both ends of the floor this season. Most important of these is Johnson, followed by Hill. If Marty can turn these two guys into quality starters then the Sixers future starts looking pretty good.

What will we have achieved this coming season if the team doesn't make playoffs. We may as well have kept Ninnis and continued with the same rubbish we have the last 2 years. I don't believe for a second that the 36ers have not aimed for an improvement on the previous years. I wonder if Marty Clarke himself would be this pessimistic about making playoffs.

i still think its early days. yeh we wooden spooned last season and we have sacked over half the roster to make up for it. we wooden spooned in the top end challenge initially to Perth by two points, yet they took it out and won with bigger buffers than that, so i think we will be able to mix it up with the rest of them.

In saying that though, this is going to be one very close season still, there will be alot of upset wins and i dont mean for the sixers i mean for the other underdogs in the league, and i for one cant wait to witness this season.

Not even necessary to close out the tight games Isaac - more a matter of holding on to 10-15 point leads in the last quarter where we fell down regularly last year.