Grand final series goes down to the wire
BASKETBALL: Adelaide’s moment of truth arrives in Melbourne tonight when the 36ers try to break a 16-year NBL championship drought.
With the grand final series against Melbourne United locked at 2-2, the 36ers will have to buck the trend to win the fifth and deciding game on the road at Hisense Arena and claim their first title since 2002.
While Melbourne have four genuine game-winners in Casper Ware, Casey Prather, Josh Boone and Chris Goulding, Adelaide’s biggest weapon is their unpredictability with multiple offensive threats.
Almost every player on the 36ers’ roster has produced a game-winning performance this season.
Shooting guard Shannon Shorter said: “We’ve got so many weapons. You got Ramone (Moore), Majok (Deng), Sobes (Nathan Sobey), Saucy (Daniel Johnson), Creeky (Mitch Creek), Hodgy (Matt Hodgson), myself, we are so deep and you don’t know who’s going to get going game to game.
“It’s just we always know it will be three to four guys who will get rolling, and nobody has a role on the offensive end – it’s just whoever’s feeling it in that game, that’s who we tend to go to and try to find a mismatch.
“I feel like Majok can be a mismatch. I feel like they can’t keep up with him and when you’ve got a guard on him he can shoot over the top of them, so that’s a key weapon for us right now.
“He’s playing really well and his confidence is sky high. I mean we see it every day in practice, but he’s just doing on a bigger stage now and I’m excited for his development.”
Shorter said one player did not need to hit 30 points for Adelaide to produce an upset.
“Last game we had four to five guys who had 13 to 17 points and Saucy had 20, so if somebody does get 30 that’s not going to not help us – we’ll take that as well. But I don’t think we go into the game thinking ‘I gotta get 30’.
“We go into it thinking defence first, and offensively whoever gets rolling that’s who we feed off of and keep it going.”
Shorter believes neither side will take momentum into the game because of the week’s break and although the 36ers are entering hostile territory, he hopes Adelaide fans will also make themselves heard.
“Adelaide fans are great – they feed off how we’re going and they really want a championship,” he said. “I said that’s what my goal was going into the season before I even came, and we’re one game, 40 minutes away.”