Sixers treating Championship Series as a Grand Slam final

The Adelaide 36ers are drawing inspiration from Spanish tennis ace Carlos Alcaraz’s Australian Open win ahead of the second game of its NBL championship series.

Alcaraz lost the first set of this year’s open final to Novak Djokovic 2-6 before bouncing back to win the next three and take home the title.

Having gone down in disappointing fashion in game one in Sydney on Saturday night, the Sixers have drawn parallels with grand slam tennis, knowing the Championship Series is also a best-of-five undertaking.

Speaking to local media after training on Wednesday, Sixers co-captain DJ Vasiljevic said since reviewing the weekend’s game on Monday, the group has had two of the best training sessions all season, and were focussed on responding this week.

“You treat (the series) like a grand slam,” he said, “you’ve got to win three sets, right? And we dropped the first one.

“Alcaraz dropped the first one at the Australian Open and bounced back so (our) kind of mentality is one game at a time.

“We're trying to push this as far as we can. We're trying to win, and we're going to take it one day at a time.”

After being soundly beaten by 44 points, it would be easy for the Sixers to drop their heads, but Vasiljevic maintained that energy was high and so was morale.

He also drew parallels with the Sydney Kings championship side he was part of in NBL23.

“If you lose by one point or you lose by 44, you’re still (down) one-zip.

“When I played for the Kings, we lost our first game against New Zealand. We were able to bounce back and win the series so I think we’ve got to take a game at a time.

“We had a good film session on Monday,” he continued.

“Watched what we needed to do, and the last two or three practises have been unreal - probably some of the best for the season.”

After a report surfaced suggesting player unrest with coach Mike Wells, Vasiljevic was quick to put that to rest.

He said the group was united and chasing the common goal of ending a long-term wait for a championship in Adelaide.

“Mike's got our full support,” the co-captain said.

“We play for him, we play for the organisation, we play for the city.

“He's done a fantastic job. It's hard taking a play-in team last year to finish in second.

“It's easier when you've got the best player, but you also got to incorporate little bits and recruit and he's done a fantastic job with that and that's why we're in the grand final.

“We're trying to play for a championship. You got to give credit where credit is due and Mike's done a fantastic job with that.”

Friday night’s game tips off at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre at 7pm ACDT.

While tickets are currently exhausted, further allocations may become available online at Ticketek.