OKLAHOMA CITY — The Adelaide 36ers, the seventh-place squad in Australia’s 10-team National Basketball League last season, boarded a 6 a.m. commercial flight on Sept. 28, when a few players sat in business class and the rest of the roster and staff squeezed into coach.
The team made connections in Sydney and Los Angeles before finally landing in Phoenix 19 hours later, right around lunchtime the same day, as odd as that sounds. They grabbed a quick bite and headed straight for the Arizona State campus for practice, preparing for a three-game American visit and what they hope will be the franchise’s first winning season since 2017-18, an NBL campaign that the 36ers will start a bit later than their rivals due to their preseason dates against NBA foes.
“We understand the job we’re trying to get done,” said shooting guard Craig Randall II, who received more publicity during this trip than he did all last season while averaging 26.7 points per game for the G League’s Long Island Nets. “Honestly, it’s not even about winning these NBA games. It’s about preparing for the NBL season.”
Point guard and team captain Mitch McCarron, who was 0-4 in preseason games against NBA teams with Melbourne United, put it like this: “We know now that we’re probably going to have a little bit of a target on our back for sure.”
That’s an understatement, considering the 36ers became the first team from Down Under to defeat an NBA opponent, shocking the Phoenix Suns at the Footprint Center on Sunday.
“It got about halfway through the fourth and we’re all just kind of pinching ourselves,” said NBL veteran Sunday Dech, whose past teammates include Charlotte Hornets star LaMelo Ball and Oklahoma City Thunder foundation piece Josh Giddey.
Adelaide’s 134-124 win was the first time an NBA team lost in a preseason game against an international squad since EuroLeague powerhouse Real Madrid’s 142-137 home win over the Thunder in 2016, when a 17-year-old kid named Luka Doncic contributed three points, four assists and five rebounds for Los Blancos.
Sure, the Suns treated it like a preseason game. They pulled their starters with 4:29 remaining in the third quarter after Chris Paul, Devin Booker and Co. cut a 12-point halftime lead to three.
Nevertheless, the basketball world buzzed about the 36ers letting it fly from deep — 24-of-43 from 3-point range — to beat the team that had the NBA’s best record last season. That occurred just a couple of days after the 36ers played their reserves…
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