Adelaide 36ers downed West Sydney Razorbacks 18 years ago this week to claim the club’s fourth and so far last NBL title
From the foul that fired up Willie Farley and an epic coach’s spray to Brett Maher’s masterclass and the Planet Nightclub celebrations. The stars of Adelaide 36ers’ last NBL grand final win lift the lid on the triumph, 18 years on this week.
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Willie Farley grabs the ball and drives to the basket, searching for a trademark moment of magic to revive Adelaide 36ers’ flagging championship charge.
The US import had already notched a game-high 34 points to inspire the Sixers to a tense home victory over West Sydney in the 2002 NBL grand final series opener.
But with Adelaide trailing in the second clash of the best-of-three decider, his progress is on this occasion crudely halted by Razorbacks big man Simon Dwight.
The tough foul draws a furious response from Farley’s teammates, as a fiery bout of push and shove breaks out among players at Sydney’s packed State Sports Centre.
When the dust settles, the shooting guard famed for his spectacular dunks, regains his cool to sink back-to-back free throws, ignoring the crowd’s chants of “Farley’s a w***er”.
It is not enough to prevent a dramatic three-point defeat for the visitors, on their way to a winner takes all encounter at Adelaide Arena five days later.
But 18 years on this week, ex-36ers coach Phil Smyth said the flashpoint moment gave his star recruit and his colleagues extra incentive to steer the club to its most recent title.
“Willie went in to dunk it, Simon went in to block it and it was a professional foul,” recalled Smyth, of the big hit.
“It got pushy shovey and things got said.
“I don’t reckon Willie was the guy you wanted to get fired up.
“He came into the last game and said ‘he’s made a big mistake’.
“He (Dwight) woke the sleeping giant and Willie pretty much tore the heart out of them (in game three).
“When you reflect on it now, those emotions stir pretty quickly.
“You think of the roar of the crowd when you win it at home and you get the tingles.
“It was a spectacular game to watch – whatever we touched was just right.”
Farley (22 points) shone in tandem with grand final MVP Brett Maher (30 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists) to propel Adelaide to an 18-point demolition job.
It was sweet revenge, particularly after Dwight, named the league’s best defensive player that season, refused to apologise for his “good, hard foul” leading up to game three.
The stunning win also delivered Smyth’s third championship in five years at the helm with a team thought to be in a rebuilding phase following a string of key off-season departures.
But Razorbacks guard John Rillie said the 36ers’ victory, which was built on a blistering first-half shooting display, stemmed from more than just Dwight’s run-in with Farley.
As a member of the side which claimed Adelaide’s first championship under Smyth in 1998, the former Boomer should know.
“That’s the beauty of sport,” said Rillie, now assistant coach at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the US.
“You can flip an incident like that any way you want.
“He (Dwight) was probably the best ever shot blocker to play in the NBL.
“But as any good coach can do, they can manipulate something to make their team feel good.
“Myself having played in Adelaide and won a championship, I wanted to come back and win another championship on Adelaide’s floor.
“We won game two and we went down there feeling good about ourselves.
“But credit to Adelaide, they were a great team.
“They had that offensive explosion in that first half and I don’t think even they could have thought it would go that well.
“Phil let those guys play with the ultimate confidence.”
Maher’s masterclass came after 25-point hauls in each of the opening games against a powerful Razorbacks line-up boasting gun Americans Bruce Bolden and Derek Rucker.
It ensured he became just the second NBL player at the time to win two Larry Sengstock Medals, despite no 36ers player or coach claiming individual NBL awards that year.
Maher singled out Rupert Sapwell, who added 18 points in the first-half of the decider including four triples, as central to Adelaide’s success.
“It was one of the best halves that any 36ers team has played,” said Maher, of his side’s commanding 70-51 lead at the main break.
“But he (Sapwell) was the X-factor that made the difference.”
Four-time NBL All Star Maher recalled a vastly different mood in the camp seven months earlier, when the team met Farley for the first time during a pre-season tour of China.
Due to budget constraints, Smyth and his assistant Steve Breheny had self-funded a trip to the States to sign Fresno State University product Farley, such was their belief in his talent.
His arrival followed the retirement of 481-game club legend Mark Davis, as well as the exits of dual-champions Darnell Mee and Kevin Brooks.
“Everyone predicted us to finish sixth or seventh on the ladder with all the unknowns we had,” said Maher, captain for 13 of his 18 36ers campaigns.
“We hadn’t even seen Willie Farley … but straight away, we knew we were on a winner with him.
“Normally it takes a while for everyone to get used to someone and have a good synergy with that player.
“But his game style and mine just connected.
“A lot of people called him a baby (Michael) Jordan, because he had a lot of the similar moves and he was a pleasure to play with.
“That was probably close to the peak for me personally in that 02 championship.
“If you compare it to our 98 or 99 championships we had so much talent on those lists, but this was a team that had a lot of players that played their roles perfectly at the right time.
“Looking back, it was the one (title) that we probably stole.”
The Sixers (23-15) finished second after a rollercoaster regular season, during which their second import, US forward Matt Garrison, joined midway through.
They began with six victories from seven outings, but prevailed in just one of their next seven to fall off the pace.
Smyth, now 61, said his stinging post-match address following a fourth-quarter fade out in the last minor round win over wooden-spooner Cairns Taipans was pivotal.
“I reckon that was the first major spray that I’d ever given the team,” said Smyth, who also claimed three championships as a player with Canberra Cannons.
“‘What we’re doing is unacceptable, we’re better than what you guys are doing, you’re buying into the hype, what you delivered tonight was crap’.
“It was along those lines with probably a few Fs in there as well.
“We were looking like we were just barely holding on (to a finals spot).
“But that kind of spun it around and then we just kept rolling after that and kept winning.
“There was great character in the group and the fibre of the group was really solid.
“That was a big focus for us with the guys we tried to recruit and that was the thing that got us over the line in 2002.
“No one was ego driven, they were all team focused.”
Jason Williams typified Adelaide’s team-first attitude.
The one-club man averaged 15 minutes on court during his 166-game NBL career.
But he stood tall in the 2002 grand final triumph, landing four pressure free throws to close out game one and a pair of timely threes to drag the Sixers back into game two.
“We all just bought into our roles really well,” said Williams, an under-18 championship coach at Sturt.
“I knew I had Willie Farley and Brett Maher to contend with and I knew I wasn’t going to get much court time.
“But my role was to come out, play hard defence, get up the floor and give Mahersy and Willie a rest when they needed it.
“We went to battle in training that year.
“It was really competitive and intense, and that helped us get ready to play games.
“At the start of the year, no one gave us a chance in hell of winning anything.
“But we all came together and we all loved being around each other.”
The decider sold out within 30 minutes of tickets being released.
Williams, who recalled even the walkways at the Findon venue being crammed with fans, watched a video of the match about a month ago after stumbling across it on Facebook.
Rillie was yet to revisit it, despite averaging 25 points and nine boards throughout the series.
“I don’t need to see Sapwell shoot again,” joked Rillie, who went on to feature in now defunct West Sydney’s 2004 grand final loss to cross-city rival Sydney Kings.
“To this day, I still think about that. But it’s done with.
“We had a pretty experienced team and when you’re playing on good teams, you always think those moments will happen pretty often.
“But over the course of your career, you’re going to get a limited amount of opportunities to play in that type of situation.
“If you want to be considered a great player, you’ve got to win championships and you’ve got to step up in those big moments.
“In a way for myself, it became a motivating tool to say ‘we were close, but I wasn’t good enough, so I need to get better’.”
The 36ers’ raucous on-court celebrations were followed by a quieter moment of togetherness in the changerooms, as the team reflected on their efforts, albeit with beers in hand.
Williams said the party which “lasted for the next week” soon ramped up, particularly at a 36ers-themed event in their honour at the former Planet nightclub.
“What I can remember from that night, we got up on stage and it was packed,” said Williams, who named centre Paul Rees and forward David Stiff as the team’s colourful personalities.
“They looked after us so well and there could have been more than a couple of free drinks.
“One of my mates did a Google search on me and … there’s no pictures of me playing basketball that year, but there’s one of me chugging on a massive magnum of champagne.
“But it was just good being with your teammates and celebrating that accomplishment and also giving back to the supporters – God we had the best supporters.
“There’s no better feeling, other than when you have kids and when you get married.
“It was just an awesome time for basketball in the state.”
Maher said the King William St victory parade attracted about “1/50th” of the crowd the joint cavalcade with the champion Crows, Lightning and Thunderbirds had four years earlier.
But it remains the Sixers’ high-point of the past two decades, following grand final defeats in 2014 and 2018.
“Whenever you win a championship, you feel like you can go on and do it the next year,” said Maher, still ruing the loss of Farley, ironically to West Sydney, for the 2002/03 season.
“The main problem is just keeping a really good nucleus together of good players.
“They’ve had such a turnstile of players that it’s been hard to get … that mix right over the last 10 to 15 years.
“The longer it (drought) goes on, the more appreciation you have for the ones that we actually were able to win, especially with the calibre of teams we were coming up against.
“It starts to build pressure on the team to perform and win it again.”
Originally published as Adelaide 36ers downed West Sydney Razorbacks 18 years ago this week to claim the club’s fourth and so far last NBL title