“One or two pieces away”: Cotton’s recipe for NBL27 success

Bryce Cotton has spoken of the success of his first season in Adelaide, explaining what he thinks the 36ers need to go all the way in NBL27.

Cotton joined the club in May on a three-year deal and guided the Sixers to 27 wins for the season – the club’s most ever in a season.

He won his sixth NBL MVP award among a list of highlights in his debut campaign in the City of Churches. That included making the NBL Championship Series for the first time in eight years and pushing it to five games, falling just short in the decider on Sunday.

While he stopped short of calling it a “complete success”, Cotton reflected proudly on some of the side’s achievements in his first season in a blue jersey.

“I can't say it's a complete success because you know we came up short and we were a rebound away from a championship,” Cotton said on Wednesday during his regular segment on SEN SA Breakfast, “but we've helped to turn the city around (and) as an organisation, we've breathed life back into a city from a basketball standpoint.

“There's a lot of great things that we did this year, that I'm proud of us as a team and even the image of how we conduct ourselves as an organisation. We've done a lot of things just putting Adelaide back in a position where we want to be, but we did come up a little bit short, so two things could be true at once.

“I'm not going to say it was a complete success because it wasn't, but we did so many great things though at the same time.”

The Sixers led Sunday’s Game Five Championship decider by four points with around 40 seconds to play before the Sydney Kings found a couple of big plays.

Cotton had the opportunity to win the game in regulation time with a layup just before the buzzer that didn’t drop, only to see his side go down in over time.

He said he would not be rewatching the game because it served little purpose, but he knew the group would be better for having gone through the experience.

“You probably don't think about it too much because it's very fresh, and there's nothing that you can do about it,” Cotton explained.

“You know you left it all out there on the floor and this was the first year a lot of us got here and for us to get so close to the finish line, but come up a little bit short, it's like bittersweet, but you know we like to think that this is just the beginning and even better things are in store as long as we don't get complacent.

“We have so much chemistry with our team. Everybody pretty much gets along with each other so it just makes us more hungry to continue to put ourselves in these situations and basically, hungry to come out with a different result next time.”

Asked what he thinks the group needs to break through for the organisation’s first NBL Championship since 2002, Cotton had some ideas.

“I think we're just like one or two pieces away,” he said.

“Probably somebody that's long, can defend, athletic - stuff like that.

“But I think that bringing back pretty much at least 80% of the team or whatever it is, that's so huge for us, especially all the big games we've played in.

“The team morale, the team mental fortitude is going to have a level of toughness that is going to be very rare because it's going to be hard to play in any game throughout the regular season that that can rattle any of our guys because we've been in the biggest of games.

“Having that experience, having that bitter taste in your stomach, as well as we all are very, very familiar with each other's games now - it's like once you just add one or two pieces to that, I think that just helps you continue to build off of where we left off.”

Cotton said he would now enjoy two weeks without any form of basketball training before getting back into some physical activity.