The Perth Wildcats must find a way to post some wins in a horror eight-day stretch of four games starting Wednesday night, or they face the prospect of missing an NBL playoffs series for the first time in 29 seasons.
The Wildcats have cemented themselves as the strongest NBL club with 28 consecutive playoff appearances winning six championships along the way.
For most of the 2014-15 season they appeared certain of being a contender again.
Perth had been locked in battle with the New Zealand Breakers and Cairns Taipans for a top-two spot, but those two have broken away, with the Wildcats now in a fight to remain in the top four with a horror schedule, some dwindling form, and injuries starting to mount.
The Wildcats have lost back-up guard Earnest Ross for the season, star big-man Matt Knight for up to two months and they are on a two-game losing run with a horror eight days to come.
It begins at Perth Arena on Wednesday night against the fourth-place Melbourne United before the Crocodiles in Townsville on Friday, the Taipans in Cairns on Saturday, and finally the Breakers in Auckland next Thursday.
Those four games in the next eight days will determine the Wildcats’ prospects of making a 29th straight playoff appearance. The Wildcats could very well return home to play the Sydney Kings on February 1 cemented in the top four, or find themselves out of it altogether.
Wildcats coach Trevor Gleeson was horrified by his team’s defensive effort last Friday night to let Adelaide score 106 points and take a win away from Perth Arena, and he knows the next eight days will show the character of his group.
“It’s an NBA schedule we have right now with three games in four days, and you throw travel in there and then we go over to New Zealand. This is the toughest part and we are going to find out what we are made of,” Gleeson said.
“We have nine games to go and we are in a fight. We talked about that before the game and we didn’t really step up to do that so now we are going to find out if we are hungry, if we are desperate and if we are a championship team.
“We have the toughest schedule in the next week, we are down our starting centre and down our wing guy, and we can take that as an excuse but it won’t get us anywhere at all. We have to play smarter than that and for the vets that we’ve had and the guys in the game, they’ve got to know that.”
The Wildcats’ run of 28 straight playoff appearances is unmatched in major Australian professional sports and betters all the major American sports as well, aside from two National Hockey League clubs.
The Wildcats’ performance of making 28 straight NBL playoff appearances began right back in 1987.
The Cats entered the NBL five years prior in 1982 and did not qualify for the post-season in the first five years, but come 1987 one of the best streaks in world professional sport began.
The first three years of playoffs action included a losing grand final series in 1987. Then a team featuring Ricky Grace, James Crawford and Mike Ellis, plus other legends of Australian basketball and coached by Alan Black, won back-to-back titles in 1990 and 1991.
It took three more years for the club’s third NBL title, and that included losing the 1993 grand final series to the Melbourne Tigers. The next championship came in 1995 with Adrian Hurley coach, and Andrew Vlahov captain and MVP.
Four more years elapsed before the next championship came in the 1999-2000 season. Black had returned as coach and with Paul Rogers dominating as centre, and veterans Vlahov, Grace and Scott Fisher still around the Wildcats won their fourth title.
The Cats lost the grand final to the Sydney Kings in 2003, and in 2009-10 won a fifth championship. There was then three successive playoff losses to New Zealand, one in the semi-finals and two grand finals, before the Wildcats claimed a sixth title in 2014.
The most consecutive finals reached in VFL/AFL football is 13 by Hawthorn between 1982-94, while the NRL’s St George came close with 23 between 1951-73.
In American sport, the Philadelphia 76ers (as the Syracuse Nationals) made the NBA playoffs 22 straight seasons between 1949-50 and 70-71 in what is the best run in the strongest basketball league in the world.
In Major League Baseball the best streak was by the Atlanta Braves, who managed it 15 straight seasons between 1991-2005.
The only major professional league in the United States that has a better streak is in the NHL, with the Boston Bruins (1967-68 to 95-96) making it 29 consecutive times. The Chicago Blackhawks also had a run of 28 straight appearances and the St Louis Blues 25.
Making the playoffs has not just become expected in Perth, the club demands to be championship contender and that comes from the owner down, so the prospect of missing the playoffs in 2015 is sure to place a burden on everyone involved.
Under Rob Beveridge for the previous four seasons, and then in Gleeson’s first championship-winning season, the Wildcats’ success has been based around its strong defence and that’s what had Gleeson so angry last Friday against Adelaide. That 106 points was the biggest score conceded by the Wildcats since the Gold Coast Blaze hit 107 points against them on November 12, 2011. Gleeson hopes that his team’s defence is vastly improved at home to Melbourne, and on the road to Townsville, Cairns and New Zealand.
“Our defence has been our DNA for a long time but what we coughed up today is unacceptable,” Gleeson said. “It’s disappointing and especially coming off a loss when normally we respond with high intensity, but I didn’t see that intensity out there at all which is fairly disappointing.
“In the last five minutes of the game we scored nine points and they scored 20, I don’t know what we were throwing up there. It’s disappointing and we have a lot of searching to do. A lot of players have some searching to do and as a coaching staff we can’t cough up 106 points in a 40-minute game. That’s a joke.
“Execution down the stretch is a championship team that can do that and right now we are so far away from that it’s disappointing, especially with 90 per cent of the team coming back after last year. That’s when we should be the best and be a championship team when the pressure comes, but right now we respond individually and not collectively which won’t get the job done.”
Perth Wildcats star Bryce Cotton can lay claim to being the second-most decorated player in NBL history behind Australian basketball legend Andrew Gaze after…
Illawarra have completed one of the more remarkable comebacks in Australian sport in recent times by flying into the NBL playoffs when the club…
NBL referees boss Scott Butler has conceded officials "made a mistake" to deny Melbourne United a potential match-winning free throw, even though the decision…
News from on and off court around the NBL.
The Perth Wildcats have pinched a finals berth by 0.06 of a percentage point after finishing a dramatic last day of the NBL regulation…
The Perth Wildcats will miss the NBL finals for the first time since 1986 after falling at home to South East Melbourne in overtime,…
