Sydney showed Spirit and the Taipans bared their fangs as the “staggering” and “crazy” start to the NBL season continued.

Early-season pacesetters New Zealand (3-1) and Melbourne (4-2), each crashed to a home loss, while the unheralded Sydney Spirit (3-3) scored come-from-behind wins on successive nights to extend their victory streak to three.

The Breakers lost 122-111 at home to Cairns (3-2) with three players including recruit Ian Crosswhite scoring over 20 points.

Cairns recorded their third straight away win over New Zealand despite missing former Boomers star Martin Cattalini, who was stood down for one game for drinking driving.

Defending champion Melbourne slipped to a 105-101 home loss to Perth (3-5), but bounced back to record a smashing 119-91 victory over Adelaide (2-3) in another home game.

Sydney recovered an 18-point halftime deficit to inflict a 98-92 away win over the hapless Gold Coast (0-5) having come from behind the following night in their 101-86 home win over Perth.

Perth failed to build on their upset win over the Tigers, in their testing three-game road trip, losing 85-82 to Wollongong (2-3) in addition to falling to Sydney.

“There’s a lot of crazy things going on,” Melbourne coach Al Westover said.

“I’m not a betting man, but if you were this weekend, you probably would’ve lost a lot.”

Melbourne’s next assignment is a local derby against South Dragons (4-2) whose coach Brian Goorjian faces an emotional weekend, with his team due to play the previous night against the Spirit at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, where he won three straight NBL titles with the Kings.

Like Westover, Cairns coach Alan Black believed the competition was more even this year.

“It’s a funny season, the results have been quite staggering,” Black said.

“The Spirit, who everyone thought would struggle a bit, have won their last three and because of those teams falling out the standard has increased.”

Spirit coach Rob Beveridge was delighted with the way his team fought back to win their matches despite struggling to score at more than 50 per cent from free throw line in each game.

“The way the guys are coming together and fighting is very pleasing,” Beveridge said.

In further good news for Sydney, prize recruit Jason Smith is getting closer to playing.

Beveridge said the veteran guard was back in full training after undergoing shoulder surgery.

“We’ve got to send him back to the surgeon during the week to get a final clearance, but we’ll hopefully get him back over the next few weeks,” Beveridge said.

Blaze coach Brendan Joyce said if the team was serious about making the play-offs it had to beat the Spirit.

“We had ourselves in a position to win it comfortably and we blew it,” Joyce said.

Wollongong stalwart Glen Saville celebrated his 400th game for the club by tallying 19 points, 14 rebounds, four steals and four assists.

Townsville (3-1) had a bye.

Free Email updates:

• Get a daily Other Sports email

Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport or that author. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it. We value privacy. More...

© 2007 AAP