New, aggressive approach sparks Cadee

Jason Cadee came to play when his number was called early on Sunday afternoon against Melbourne United at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

Cadee entered the game after less than two minutes, when captain Mitch McCarron picked up two early fouls.

The 186cm point guard was at his aggressive best, scoring a team-high 18 points to go with six assists and two rebounds.

“I was disappointed with the way I played the other night (in the loss to Brisbane Bullets), I just felt I wasn’t assertive enough and CJ (Bruton) has been really on me since he signed me to come in and be aggressive and that would lead to other things,” Cadee said.

“With our group, we need people to step up, we don’t have the three imports, we had two imports pretty much out for a month of pre-season, so we are just trying to find our way.

“It’s going to be on me to go out there and be aggressive and just try and make plays, it doesn’t need to be a hero play.”

The 2016 Commonwealth Games gold medalist said the 36ers can bounce back quickly, despite dropping to 0-2 after the opening weekend of the NBL24 season.

“This is never a position you want to be in, you can’t just roll into any place and expect it to work,” Cadee said.

“I feel like we are moving forward and we have to try to keep to build as we go through this, 0-2 is not great, but it’s not terrible in this league.

“You can quickly get back to 3-2, 4-2 as quick as you can get down 0-2.”

Cadee said his side is showing signs of development in the past fortnight and knows the club is building with a tough double header on the road next weekend against Perth Wildcats on Friday and Sydney Kings on Sunday.

“It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of chemistry and unfortunately for our group everyone knew we were behind the eight ball after the Blitz,” Cadee said.

“We finished the third game of the Blitz with no imports, who are the main guys we are meant to build around. The improvement since the Blitz has been really good and we are in a good place.

“For 30 minutes across the game, we are pretty good, and we are in the fight and we are playing good basketball.”

Adelaide led Melbourne 62-57 with just under nine minutes to play on Sunday, but United scored 25 of the last 37 points of the contest.

“There’s 10 minutes broken up amongst that where we are just not great and it’s probably on the offensive end which is making our defense a lot harder and putting a lot more pressure on us defensively,” Cadee said.

“How do we get that to 35, 37 minutes of good basketball and now all of a sudden in that last five minutes today and Friday night we are up five rather than chasing leads.

“For me, that is where we are at right now, that is where we are at.”