Adelaide 36ers coach Joey Wright says his team is playing ‘too nice’ and without the required passion as it slumps to third straight loss
Two weeks ago, Adelaide 36ers coach Joey Wright called his team’s performance “selfish” and “unprofessional”. Now, he has taken aim at his team’s meek display against New Zealand.
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Too buddy-buddy. Too nice. Too silent. Trying to get along too much. Not playing with enough passion.
Those were some of the tags that Adelaide 36ers coach Joey Wright threw at his team after it slumped to a third-consecutive loss – a 87-96 home defeat to New Zealand on Sunday.
Adelaide never took control of the game and the Breakers were more desperate down the stretch, diving on loose balls, grabbing crucial rebounds and drawing shooting fouls.
With games against the top two, Perth (home) and Sydney (away), to come this week, the eighth-placed 36ers need a spark to turn their 8-10 season around.
Wright said his side must start by challenging each other to “play basketball the way it needs to be played with passion and intensity”.
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“I thought the Wollongong (Illawarra) game we just lost focus and in the Cairns game and this game we came out with good purpose and our intentions were right, but our mood is a little bit passive right now,” Wright said.
“We’re probably trying to get a long a little bit too much.
“We’re a little too buddy-buddy, too nice right now and we’re not playing with the passion we need to.
“Right now we’re just silent.
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“We’ve got to learn to charge each other up and if a guy gets blown by you charge him up and say ‘we can’t do that, we need to do better’.
“We need to be able to challenge our teammates to play better and if we do that we’ll win games and if we don’t we won’t.”
The second-chance points statistic, which New Zealand led 20-4, was indicative of the 36ers’ lack of grit.
The Breakers all but sealed the result when Adelaide failed to secure two offensive rebounds with two minutes remaining and star import Scotty Hopson made the hosts pay by dunking on a drive, ensuring an eight-point lead.
“In the fourth quarter we probably had too many turnovers, too many missed box-outs and a couple of point-blank shots we probably should’ve made,” Wright said.
“We matched their intensity levels for the first three quarters but we should’ve played with a little bit more intensity and pushed them a little bit more, and then tried to wear them down over four.
“But we let them play right with us all the way to that fourth.
“Our guys shouldn’t have been fatigued … but we looked like we were fatigued.”
Wright praised co-captain Kevin White, who had six points, two steals and took one charge in just 12 minutes court-time, for being the only player to spark the team off the bench.
Adelaide hosts second-placed Perth on Wednesday.