Hoops

Clarke's latest excuse

Damn forgot half those players were South Australians. You guys could have an All Star type game, the guys we cut Vs the guys we hate. Clarks current mob Vs Ninnis and Hill, Schensher, Holmes, Foreman, Bruce, Magden etc lol
I'd watch.

Anon, I agree that Marty has to accept a big chunk of responsibility for the roster. But its not always the fault of the coach when players don't work out.

Who would have predicted Weigh would shoot THIS badly throughout the season? He was the Sixers marquee Aussie signing and nearly everyone praised them for it, but he simply hasn't put it together. Is that Clarke's fault? Could be, but it could just as easily be that Weigh simply can't shoot.

Balls barely played and was ineffective when he did.

Crosswell's steadying hand was an obvious positive influence early and losing him to injury has also hurt the team. (BTW, I am happy he is on the roster next season, but in my post above I was talking about players on our roster I consider indispensable. Crosswell could be replaced by other journeyman PG's.)

So there has clearly been some major holes in the Sixers roster this season which are not really the fault of the coach.

Kobe, I know you like to focus on examples of poor substitutions by Marty, but I'm not convinced you know the full story. Sometimes I have seen Marty sit Simpson after one of his frenetic stretches because he is clearly labouring and needs a break.

Since Balls has been out, Marty has been forced to sub either DJ or Simpson out earlier, because he needs one to come back in and rest the other. As soon as Helliwell comes in we get killed, but what can we do? Weigh is the only other option at PF and that is only against some teams.

With regard to the most recent game, I totally agree with Peter John's comments earlier. DJ had 1 rebound to half time, which really isn't good enough. Perhaps the coach was sending him a message?!?!

Likewise, people complain about Ng being subbed off when he's hot, but don't consider the matchups. It's no good having him shooting threes out there if his opponent is beating him off the dribble all night long to create mayhem in our defence!

There are all kinds of things the coach knows about how a player is feeling, how they have trained that week and what injury niggles they have, which we don't know about.

So I just think it is dangerous to make bold assumptions about a coach's ability based on selected substitutions in different games.

I'm with Muzz Buzz here. While I'm not saying Marty is a great coach, I don't think he is as bad as some of you are making him out to be. I really think it comes down to having a very young team and a team that doesn't have enough talent yet.

Outside of DJ and Simpson, if you are really honest, who on this roster has consistently looked likely to outplay his opponent most games? I would say no-one.

The cold hard truth of the matter is that our guards just aren't good enough. I like Warren's shooting, but he just doesn't have what it takes to run a team at NBL level yet and defensively he just gets burned too easily.

None of the other guards have shown that they are good enough to earn more than minor bench minutes on the top NBL teams.

We aren't much better at the small forward position.
Weigh is okay in that he rebounds and seems to have a good hard nosed attitude out there. The problem is, he is too slow to guard a lot of threes and he can't seem to offset that with scoring because his shooting is woeful. While you can see the potential in Creek, he also can't shoot and remains a charging machine when trying to get into the paint to use his athleticism.

If I was choosing the Sixers roster next season, the only players I would be determined to keep would be DJ, Simpson and Creek. That's it.

Everyone else I would consider AFTER I had my starting lineup settled. Weigh will probably have to remain in the starting lineup because he has another year to run, but I would be searching high and low for the best Aussie guard I could land and then complimenting them with the best import guard I could find.

I just think blaming the coach is futile when we have such a limited roster. Play the season out and then consider who else is available at the end of the season. Unless we can land a PROVEN top level NBL coach, we are just as likely to get worse as better by switching coaches again.

BJF, you are right however its sorta like saying, "if" I got 4 numbers in X Lotto then Im not far awy from winning the big one. Yeah?

Even making sixth place doesnt mean much when we struggle to find wins anywhere. Come play off time, even if we made 4th, we'd probably play the Tigers and in Melbourne..... I think not!

If Adelaide really wanted success, you'd pay the guy out and look at guys like Phil Smyth or someone of his calibre. He knows what it takes to win titles!

He refers to 2 injuries - 17points - a quarter of the team , and some very close games , just lost.

It's been an interesting ride : Holmes Hill Dowdell Carter Bruce Harris Winder DeVries Howard Shannon , while the top teams have been together for a while.

Sixers have a young team now with 2 veterans out injured 1 of which is a 10 point player. The 2 top teams have had the nucleus of their squads together for a few seasons and in NZ's case most of them play together in the national team as well as NZBL, they carry all that chemistry into the NBL.
Sure the Sixers got 2 wins in Perth, Breakers also lost to the Hawks at home. This league is such that if you just turn up no matter who's on your team, if you don't play well and put the effort in for 4 quarters, you won't win even against the bottom placed teams.
The Sixers really lack an experienced floor general out their to run the offense and defense and get on players when they drop their heads, the top teams have multiple guys with leadership abilities who can fill this role when needed to.
Sixers would be a completely different team if they had say an Eddie Gill running the point and your 2 injured vets back.

Nice work Muzz Buzz
I think anon will sit down now

Sounds like he's got some support from higher up- that they know the season is shot and he's undermanned and they can't get the replacements they want mid-season.

The team is rudderless. Warren isn't a true PG and doesn't have the leadership skills yet. In fact there are no true leaders on the team at all. Creek can be vocal on court and sets an example by his hustle but he's 20 and still isn't a key contributor. DJ isn't a leader, DS sets an example but isn't a floor leader, Weigh is developing but is in a massive slump....you can't get out of holes like the one we got in last night without leadership.

Also, no-one expected us to lose by anthing less than 10+...the result wasn't a shock although i can't get over the difference in FG attempts. That shouldn't even be possible.

Should the hat be passed around next home game?

"Wins keep you employed"...while I couldn't agree more there for a professional coach I have to go back to something Marty Clarke said a while ago:

Its not about wins and losses.....

I STILL hate that line. When IS coaching a professional team going to be about wins and losses for Clarke? According to the stats Marty Clarke has so far led the 36ers to a 14-30 record.

Scott Ninnis was sacked after just 2 seasons and he had a better record than Clarke does (Ninnis ended up 25-33 as 36ers coach). With just 9 games left in the season Clarke can't even match that and Ninnis actually got us to the Elimination Finals in 2008-09.

correct me if im wrong but didn't DJ fill in for Anstey at the tigers when he went down with an ijury and do an impressive job. Then came to 6ers and marty wouln't play him many minutes. That alone probably set his development back not to mention giving his confidence a huge dent

Iunderstand where you are comming from Mystro but having been to every 6ers home game and watched all the away games that were on one its just a matter of same shit diffrent game. I have no faith in clarke at all and its just lucky i love basketball so much i can get enjoyment from watching a great game even if it is the opposition playing it, dont get me wrong i support the 6ers all the way and am still disapointed watching this season unfolding to be worse than last season [i thought if you have a three year plan you improve as time goes on]i believe we have a better team this season than last and stil the same results. This thread was about marty's excuse and shows he has no idea what the real problems are and is focusing in the wrong areas he seems to go into a game with one plan and when it doesn't work is to pig headed to change it, he drills the players so hard they become robotic and when the play doesn't work they don't know what to and look like a bunch of idiots out there. I don't blame them for hanging their heads, playing game after game like they do would get to you after a while, they bought into marty's system at the start of the season cos he is great at spining shit and seems like he knows what he is doing maybe they are starting to realise he has no idea.

I don't think it was a case of evening players minutes just if guys weren't getting it done they sat on the bench, no one was getting it done so they all had spells on the bench. DJ and Simpson weren't as dominant as they have been in previous games because Wilkinson isn't a shabby defender nor is Vukona. They straight away got the ball into DJ and Wilkinson clean blocked him, Vukona had the strength to guard Simpson in the post as did Boucher but his length and grit got him a few points and Pledger came on and altered shots in the paint. Creek can't shoot from outside and Ng can't create a shot so it was up to Warren and Weigh and Jackson and Abercrombie had them fairly sorted.

Normally i would have agreed with everyone but you were up against the reigning champs on the road and they got out to a 10 point lead at the end of the 1st Q (so the game is far from over) and pretty much the whole team apart from Simpson had their heads down and bottom lips out. He called a TO and pulled them up and told them they were getting treated like little boys out there and tried to motivate them and they just kept their heads hung low and didn't rebound or box out to a high standard nor even dive on a loose ball.
CJ's how old and just come back from injury and he was diving for everything. Sixers Zone and Press did cause NZ a few probs as did lack of execution but Jackson split double teams at will and just kept getting the ball to the scorers.

Gone back to his old whimsy - evening players minutes.
Don't think we got a lotta shots off or took many rebounds. Seems we had about 26 freethrows and they had about six.

Sixers got killed in the effort area's in this particular game. Coach can't teach effort the players have to want to put in the effort. Breakers were crashing the boards and diving on loose balls, the Sixers weren't. He gave them a roasting and they didn't respond. They honestly had their heads down before it was even half time and it wasn't like they were completely out of the race either.