Snakes fans loving fun winning style
BASKETBALL
FROM wooden spooners to being described as “box office performers” – the Cairns Taipans are all of a sudden fun to watch again.
Coach Mike Kelly portrayed a vision of playing attractive and high-tempo basketball when he took over last year, and they did for most part, but that squad just could not stop the opposition putting up huge numbers at the other end.
According to analytics website SpatialJam, the Snakes are currently ranked inside the top four for both offence and defence this season, the only club to be that high in both.
Cairns are delivering what fans want to see: more buckets and long bombs. They are equal second in the competition for three-point percentage following Round 10, at 38 per cent. The club’s scoring has risen dramatically in their last seven games also, putting in 86 points per game for the first seven outings of the campaign.
They are now up to 98 per contest in their last seven, which has played a key role in their rise up the ladder, winning five of their last six games.
Most would equate fun basketball with playing faster, but Cairns still ranks second-last for pace – a far cry from Mike D’Antoni’s Phoenix Suns’ “seven seconds or less” offence that has changed the way many in the NBA play.
No one gets a better view of Cairns’ home games than former player and fan favourite Cameron Tragardh, who thinks they have found the right formula.
“The Taipans are fun again for the first time since 2015,” since February 2008.
■ The 109 on Sunday was the highest score in a road game since October 2008 for the club.
■ It was also the first time Cairns have won on a Sunday under Mike Kelly.
Tragardh said. “Mike Kelly has fantastic trust in his charges; Scott Machado’s injection back into the NZ Breakers game with four fouls early in the fourth quarter was a gamble. But, coaches need to gamble at times, which is part of the fun Kelly has brought back to hoops in the Far North.
“There’s youth, there’s talent, there’s belief and the whole country is watching.
“The Taipans are box office performers right now and have won the hearts of Australia’s basketball community.”
In an interview in late 2018, on the back of an eight-game losing sequence early in Kelly’s tenure, Taipans president Troy Stone pointed to the board’s desire to be viewed as attractive on the court, instead of the grind-it-out style Aaron Fearne deployed.
Former coach Fearne was often criticised for his game plans, using the entire shot clock often on offence and playing dogged defence, but while it was not always pretty, he did lead the club to two grand finals.
“The feedback from people is that the entertainment package is great; the style of basketball is what everyone is enjoying,” Stone said just over a year ago about Kelly.
“The product of basketball – fast and free-flowing – is what people want.
“It is a different style of basketball and it is what people have been calling out for the last couple of years. They do not want to see lockdown, slow and low-scoring games.”
The 7-7 Snakes host the reigning champion Perth Wildcats, who also won two games in Round 10, on Thursday night.