Adelaide 36ers coach Joey Wright admits it’s been a “horrible” season so far, but it’s not all bad

Team sport comes down to a few fundamentals: caring for each other, driving each other, applying peer pressure to perform. And that’s where 36ers coach Joey Wright thinks the team is going wrong right now

• 36ers fall to Illawarra after costly free throw misses

There seems to be only one word for it: horrible. That’s the best way 36ers head coach Joey Wright can describe the team’s season so far. It’s not pretty, but it is pretty accurate.

On the back of Sunday’s agonising on-the-buzzer, one-point loss to the Illawarra Hawks at home and now having lost six of their last eight games, Wright is honestly blunt in his appraisal, not just of the team, but his own performance too.

“Right now, I don’t think I’m doing a good job with the guys there and the guys aren’t doing a good job of responding,” he said.

“It’s been horrible. We haven’t played basketball the way we’re supposed to … I wouldn’t say I’m an old-school coach, but I think there are some things that you have to do in basketball — in team sport period — that we’re not doing. We’re not caring enough about each other, we’re not driving each other, the peer pressure’s not there.”

As the Sixers prepare for a tough game away against the Brisbane Bullets on Saturday afternoon, Wright said the players needed to take personal ownership over improving their on-court bond.

“We can’t keep saying: ‘Like each other’; we can’t keep saying: ‘Push each other, drive each other’. They have to decide. I mean, individually, teams have to say: ‘You know what? It’s important for us to do these things’.”

And he challenged the leaders — singling out Daniel Johnson, Nathan Sobey, Anthony Drmic and Brendan Teys — to step up and let the others know that there were consequences for not playing the game the way it should be played. He also called on import Ramone Moore to take big shots.

Adelaide 36ers head coach Joey Wright leaves the floor with his team after the 36ers’ one-point loss against the Illawarra Hawks at Titanium Security Arena on December 9, 2018. Photo: Kelly Defina/Getty Images.

As the Sixers went through an extended video session at training on Tuesday, Wright responded to fair criticism about the team’s poor shooting from the line, by saying it was “more about what’s going on in the head than the hands”.

But he remains Joey-Wright-style philosophical about it all: “At the end of the day, we don’t have cancer. At the end of the day we’re still up. At the end of the day, we’re still eating. At the end of the day, there’s still a lot of life to live and you got to look at it from that philosophical manner. But as far as basketball? There hasn’t been a lot of highlights.”

Wright knows the Bullets, who beat reigning champions in Melbourne last weekend, will be a tough test. And while he’s contemplating changes to the starting five, he said point guard Adam Doyle’s standout performance against the Hawks would likely get him more court time.

Doyle said his career-high nine points were the result of making the most out of any minutes he’s given on court.

“I don’t want to come out there and do the same as I’ve always been doing, I want to make an impact in the game,” he said.