Adelaide 36ers

A name borrowed from a proclamation

The club entered the National Basketball League in 1982 as the Adelaide City Eagles and took the 36ers name a year later, lifting it from the proclamation of South Australia on 28 December 1836. A 1984 merger folded in players from West Adelaide, among them Al Green, who had won the 1982 NBL MVP award in West Adelaide colours and whose No. 15 now hangs retired in Adelaide.

Home for the first decade was Apollo Stadium, and it was from there that the club won its first championship in 1986, beating the Brisbane Bullets 113–91 in the decider with Mark Davis taking grand final MVP honours. That side has since been named the best in the league's history. Davis stayed until 2001, shared the 1987 MVP award with Brisbane's Leroy Loggins, and had his No. 33 retired.

The 36ers left Apollo Stadium in 1991 for what became known as Titanium Security Arena, where they played until 2019 before moving to the 10,000-seat Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

Three titles in five years, then nothing

Phil Smyth took over as coach in 1998 and won three championships in five seasons — 1998, 1999 and 2002 — with Brett Maher captaining all three. Maher's 525 games remain the club record and his No. 5 is retired alongside Green's and Davis's.

That was the end of it. Twenty-four years on, the 2002 title is still the last one, and four championships leaves Adelaide fourth on the all-time list behind Perth's ten, Melbourne United's six and Sydney's five.

The years since produced curiosities rather than silverware. Josh Giddey signed as an NBL Next Star in 2020 and was taken sixth by Oklahoma City in the 2021 draft. On 2 October 2022 the 36ers beat the Phoenix Suns 134–124 in a pre-season game in Phoenix — still the only time an NBL club has beaten an NBA team. Underneath, Grant Kelley's ownership was building something more durable, with Nic Barbato as chief executive and Matt Weston as general manager.

The Cotton signing

On 22 May 2025 Adelaide announced it had signed Bryce Cotton on a three-year deal. Cotton had just left the Perth Wildcats after nine seasons and three championships, turning down a contract that would have made him the highest-paid player in league history, and had spent the interim playing for Mets de Guaynabo in Puerto Rico. Moving to a direct rival was treated in Perth as a defection.

He repaid it immediately. Through the opening ten rounds of the 2025–26 season Cotton averaged more than 27 points and seven assists, passed 40 points on four occasions and scored 53 against Cairns. He won his sixth MVP award and a ninth scoring title in his first Adelaide season, and took the club MVP as well. Zylan Cheatham was named best defensive player and Flynn Cameron most improved.

One possession short

The 2025–26 season under American coach Mike Wells was the club's best in years and ended badly twice. Adelaide topped its NBL Ignite Cup group at 3–1 but lost the final 111–107 to the New Zealand Breakers on 22 February 2026 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre, forfeiting a $300,000 prize; defensive problems that surfaced there did not go away.

After beating South East Melbourne 2–1 in the semi-final, Adelaide reached its first Championship Series in eight years and lost it 3–2 to the Sydney Kings. Cotton's game-winning layup in front of a full Entertainment Centre levelled the series; the deciding game went to Sydney in front of a record NBL crowd of 18,589, with the five matches drawing 70,269 in total. The league's own review of Adelaide's season noted that a fraction more spin on Cotton's layup, or one defensive rebound, would have made them champions.

Off the court the numbers were unambiguous: 8,619 members, up 23 per cent year on year; 199,705 spectators across 20 home games, an average of 9,985; 41 consecutive home sell-outs; and an 82 per cent rise in ESPN viewership. Barbato was named NBL Executive of the Year.

Gleeson inherits a short window

Wells stepped down in May 2026 to be closer to his family in the United States, where he joined Ohio State as an assistant. On 22 May 2026 Adelaide named Trevor Gleeson as his replacement on a three-year contract. Gleeson won five championships at Perth, three of them in four years with Cotton in his backcourt, and arrived from two seasons coaching in Japan's B.League. Kelley, the executive chair, said the certainty around the appointment came from having a team "built to win" already.

The roster was rebuilt for that premise rather than against it. Free agency opened on 17 April 2026, with Weston saying the club wanted to deepen the squad "because we're built to win now" and Cotton asking specifically for a long, athletic defender. Ten of the eleven players from the Championship Series side returned, Cotton took the captaincy, and the frontcourt of Isaac Humphries, Cheatham and Milos Rakocevic was rated the best in the league in pre-season previews.

It has not held together. Humphries, in the final year of his contract after averaging 12.6 points, five rebounds and 1.5 blocks last season, has not played a minute of 2026–27; on 1 October the club was reported to be seeking a second medical opinion in Melbourne with surgery among the options, and development player Deonte Williams has been covering. Cameron has been out with an ankle injury and Bul Kuol has also been unavailable.

The results track the casualty list. Adelaide won at Melbourne United 97–95 on 19 September, lost 98–97 at Perth on 24 September and beat Cairns 83–69 at home on 27 September. Then came a 114–92 defeat at Illawarra on 2 October, 65–35 down at half-time, after which Gleeson said it had looked like a men's team playing against a kids team, and that his replacement players could not simply treat a start as a reward. Home losses followed to New Zealand, 88–72 on 4 October, and Melbourne United, 96–91 on 7 October, before a 84–78 win in Sydney on 11 October in the Championship Series rematch. That leaves them 3–4 and seventh with the regular season running until 14 February 2027.

The building itself

The Entertainment Centre has become the club's most reliable asset. The playing surface is named Brett Maher Court, the capacity is 10,000, and the run of consecutive sell-outs reached 41 by the end of last season — every home fixture filled.

The game-day format dates from a 2022 relaunch: a pre-game festival in the venue's Orb with a DJ, arcade hoops, a food and drink zone, face painting and a merchandise stand, a Sixers Hype Squad running half-time shows, and the Single Fin Surf Deck as a catered standing area. The mascot is Murray the Magpie, named for the river, in a No. 36 singlet.