The inside story of the dysfunction and self-destruction of one of South Australia’s favourite sporting teams
The Adelaide 36ers have had a season from hell which culminated in the explosive claims against former coach Joey Wright. Reece Homfray goes inside how it all happened.
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It was after 10pm at Adelaide’s MVP dinner last Saturday when the greatest 36er of them all Mark Davis addressed the elephant in the room.
Davis had just been inducted into the Sixers’ hall of fame when he used the final obligatory question asking him who he’d like to thank, to surprise everyone in the audience.
The nine-time MVP did what coach Joey Wright could not because he wasn’t there and what every other official had failed to do on stage – thank the team for the season that had just finished so miserably.
The team that had just been told that missing finals two years in a row was a “line in the sand” moment for the club and that losing close games because their culture wasn’t strong enough would no longer be tolerated.
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And unbeknown to most in the room, that was on top of everything that had supposedly been said behind closed doors including co-captain Kevin White’s allegation the team had been told they were “s***”.
So Davis stepped in, or up, as he had so many times as Adelaide’s ‘chairman of the boards’ in his decorated career.
“Yes, we would all like to be winning championships,” Davis said before pausing.
“But from one competitor looking at another, these guys went out and put it all on the line and did their absolute best.”
That it took Davis, who has not put on a Sixers uniform for almost 20 years, to say “thank you” to the current players was as big an indictment on Adelaide’s culture as anything we’ve seen this week when the situation descended into total anarchy with White’s tirade on Twitter.
But the toxic blame game had been bubbling away all season.
Wright thinks it started when players refused to stay in their assigned rooms on a pre-season trip. Others think it was when Jerome Randle was parachuted back in without any warning or explanation in Utah and first-year professional Deshon Taylor was told to pack his bags in the hotel lobby.
The season started disastrously when they lost to Sydney 102-80 but that was put down to a bad case of jet lag and the Sixers won their next three against Brisbane, Illawarra and Cairns.
They got to Round 12 at 8-7 after Randle’s buzzer beater in New Zealand, but that was also the turning point in their season.
Adelaide flew home and instead of a planned training session on the court they were told to head to the beach for a swim.
Three days later when they lost to bottom team Illawarra by nine points at home, Wright blasted the group as “unprofessional”.
“It was a complete example of what being selfish is all about,” he said.
“We thought this would be an easy one and we acted like it all week. And it caught up with us.”
And that was when it all began to turn.
Wright’s mantra as a coach has always been “us against the world” – whether it’s the opposition, the referees, the NBL or whoever.
But as this season spiralled out of control (the 36ers went from 8-7 to 12-16), according to White and Adelaide’s three imports, the ‘us’ became the coach and the ‘world’ his own team.
But Wright makes no apologies for his hard line stance in trying to bring what he described as a fractured team together.
Adelaide staggered through the next month of the season before more signs that things were unravelling emerged in Cairns when they lost to the Taipans by 17 points and stayed out until 3am when some players were involved in a fight with punters on the walk home.
In early February news began to break that Wright and the 36ers would part company at the end of the season but the Sixers still had two games to go.
By then Wright was barely speaking with his imports and took Eric Griffin to Perth where he played him for just two minutes in the first quarter and that was it.
“He wasn’t interested in playing tonight so I wasn’t interested in playing him,” Wright said post-game.
On Friday night – two weeks later – Griffin responded on Twitter.
“I never understood your coaching techniques to begin with. But this whole blaming and public shaming of your players is shocking and low, EVEN FOR YOU. You lack the respect, integrity and morals of a coach,” Griffin posted on Twitter.
“I won’t go into a back and fourth war with you. but to be frank; you were a disgrace to the organisation and you served no real purpose to your players.
The Perth game was the 500th of Wright’s NBL coaching career and The Advertiser has been told he invited the team to drinks in the hotel lobby that night but at least four players and one assistant coach didn’t show up.
It was then Wright who didn’t show to the club’s MVP night at the Entertainment Centre which didn’t surprise the club hierarchy.
After seven seasons at the helm, not one player thanked Wright or even mentioned him by name when they got on stage to collect their awards.
Not even Brendan Teys, Wright’s most loyal disciple who followed him to Adelaide from the Gold Coast and two weeks earlier had declared “I love Joey”.
But they all thanked owner Grant Kelley who pays their wages and has put $10m into the club over the past four years and taken them to the Entertainment Centre.
Morale was drastically low when Daniel Johnson got up to collect his fifth MVP trophy and closed his speech with:
“To all the boys it’s been a rough year for all of us, but we’ve stuck together.”
Kelley had promised them that change was coming with early findings from the external review recommending changes to culture and leadership, and Wright was officially gone four days later by mutual agreement on his payout.
But his comments in the media on Thursday when he said “the three imports and Harry (Froling)” had underperformed this season was the tipping point for White who went rogue on Friday with his tirade on Twitter.
As well as allegations that Wright had assaulted a player and told them there was a “racial divide” in the group, White posted a screenshot of a group chat in which Wright told other coaches some players would “hopefully hang themselves”.
Wright responded to the scandal with his own message of defiance, saying his “hang themselves” comment had been taken out of context and that he could release private messages that would defame the entire team, but he would never do that.
He told SEN that the message had been leaked by “disgruntled” assistant coach Darren Golley. Golley declined to comment when contacted by The Advertiser on Friday.
But later that night the imports had their say. Griffin took to Twitter, Ramone Moore to Facebook and Jerome Randle spoke to Fox Sports.
Moore, who sat out the second half of the season because of what the club said was an injury, revealed he wasn’t injured at all.
“I was going through a personal issue and asked for help and it seemed as if after that my minutes went down and my need for the team wasn’t there anymore,” Moore wrote on Facebook.
The Advertiser was told during the season that Moore had informed the club he was not in the right mindset to play and was in fact the one who requested a break.
Randle said he was angry and confused.
“I have messages from him telling me how he appreciates how I’m approaching this year: ‘I really appreciate you, Rome’. How can you then come back and say that I wasn’t doing my job this year? You can’t have it both ways.”
So now Wright is gone with his reputation having taken a hit.
But the next question turns to White who will either be viewed as a brave and heroic whistleblower or an untrustworthy snitch who waited until his coach was gone before publishing private messages on social media.
Furthermore, White doubled down by later publishing a private conversation he had with one of his teammates Alex Mudronja who dared disagree with White’s accusations on Twitter.
White is contracted to Adelaide for next season but club management will now surely consider whether that’s even possible and if it is, whether his position as captain is now untenable.
As for who else is still there next year, all bar Anthony Drmic, Harry Froling, Moore and Griffin are contracted, but as the club’s external review continues, no one’s job is assured.
Not least of all Randle who signed a two-year deal to return this season but whose fate now rests in the hands of a ‘club option’ to see it out.
“If I ever play in Adelaide again, I’m gonna work my ass off for the city, and for the owner, and for the club,” Randle said.
“I don’t appreciate any person lying or saying that I didn’t work my ass off each and every day in practice, and in games. It’s not true and it’s not fair. I love the city of Adelaide. I hope they do sign me back, but, if not, there’s no hard feelings from them.”
Hard feelings or not, the fractured relationships at Adelaide may never recover from this sorry saga and a total clean-out may be the only way forward.