What a great shot in the arm for Australian basketball, with an unexpected slice of history – The first time an Australian NBL team has defeated an NBA team, and they did it in the USA as well!

134 to 124 after shooting the lights out, and more historically it’s the first time an NBA team has lost to a non-NBA team since Oklahoma City Thunder lost to Real Madrid 142-137 in Madrid on October 3, 2016, with that Madrid team featuring a 17-year-old Luka Doncic.

A team of underpaid semiprofessional basketballers…

Against the Adelaide 36ers.

What an absurd result, because the 36ers were somewhere north of 31-1 to win outright, the talent disparity between the leagues is several thousand lightyears, and this was the context of the teams in 2021-22:

The 36ers were 7th out of 10 teams, finished 8 games out of the Top 4 with a 10-18 record and still haven’t reached the NBL finals since 2017-18.

The Phoenix Suns, the season after winning the Western Conference and making the NBA Finals, won 64 games and were the No.1 seed in the West.

Admittedly, since that 64-18 finish, the Suns were 2-0 up on the Dallas Mavericks in the Conference Semis, got wiped off the face of the earth by the Mavs in Game 7, their owner was outed as a racist and was suspended for a year…

And now they’ve been dry humped by a bunch of South Australians.