Basketball On The Internet.

IT'S been a truly bizarre 24 hours with more emerging from inside the Adelaide 36ers' club issues, a power outage crashing the Cairns-Sydney game, import Will Cummings sacked by South East Melbourne and training session video emerging of Sixers captain Mitch McCarron lashing his teammates with a long overdue "read the riot act" spray. 

Yeah, not your standard NBL Friday.

The sacking this week of coach CJ Bruton has, according to reliable scribes, suddenly laid bare a host of internal problems plaguing the under-performing Adelaide outfit.

It boiled over at practice when McCarron's expletive-laden spray went viral, the skipper calling for unity and a way forward under interim coach Scott Ninnis.

That came on top of the news this morning Cummings was cut by South East despite averaging 14.5 points, 2.7 assists, 1.7 steals and 3.3 rebounds coming off the bench in 12 games with the Phoenix.

Reports suggest it was not an on-court issue that led to his sudden demise, just days after the club lost Craig Moller to a season-ending ruptured patella injury suffered against New Zealand.

Meanwhile last night in Cairns a power outage caused a 51-minute delay at halftime of the Taipans' match with Sydney, air conditioning among the casualties but the NBL's credibility as the self-proclaimed "second best league in the world" taking a major hit.

The second half had no 24-second shot-clock, both teams agreeing to play under the amateur-hour conditions which in a game that would go down to the wire, was ludicrous.

Contrary to what Larry Kestelman-loving history re-writers would have you believe, the league first tipped off in 1979 and incidents such as last night's occurred way back in 1981. 

Court announcers handled it then. But that couldn't occur last night? Nonsense.

So, while the Kings twice led by as many as 20 points in the second half after a sizzling 33-15 opening quarter, it didn't seem a big deal. But when Cairns rallied in the fourth, now it stood out as a key factor in influencing the outcome.

Kings MVP Jaylen Adams had his side ahead 71-56 late in the third before Pat Miller's late basket.

Bul Kuol's 3-pointer opened the last and at 61-71, Cairns was alive.

A triple by Bobi Klintman and its bonus free throw - Cairns was an abysmal 12-of-25 from the stripe so ultimately had no-one else to blame - brought the Taipans to 68-74 and the Convention Centre was cooking.

Another Klintman three and it was 71-74 before Miller snared an offensive rebound, put it away and added the bonus free throw to tie it at 74-74.

Cairns then got it back to a point at 81-82 and again at 83-84 but Adams converted 8-of-8 free throws - he was 12-of-12 for the game - by running down the non-clock to keep Cairns at bay.

Ahead 86-83 inside the final three seconds, Sydney had an anxious moment as Jonah Antonio rushed the ball forward, steadied and stuck a triple for the tie, albeit 0.1 of a second too late.  

SYDNEY KINGS 86 (Adams 24, Galloway 13, Toohey, Hogg 12, Hunter 11; Hunter 10 rebs; Adams 7 assts) d CAIRNS TAIPANS 83 (Miller 22, Klintman 13, McCall 12, Kuol; 11; McCall 6 rebs; Miller 7 assts) at Cairns Convention Centre. Crowd: 4,126