Basketball On The Internet.

PICTURE this. There's 3.1 seconds to go in an NBL ball game. Trailing, South East Melbourne Phoenix coach Mike Kelly takes time-out to draw up a final play. His on-floor team of Ben Ayre, Owen Foxwell, Angus Glover, Malique Lewis and Matt Hurt execute it perfectly to score right on the buzzer.

The result? A 10-point loss to the 36ers in Adelaide but proof that a) Kelly is not afraid to think about what his team may need in the future; b) He also is not afraid of ridicule for taking time-out when there was no chance of salvaging the result; and c) When he has the right people on the floor, good things can happen.

Hurt had an exceptional game and played 35:45 en route to a game-high 32 points at 55 per cent. The remaining quartet on the floor with Hurt in the endgame between them totalled 35:35 of court time.

What that one play also showed is there ARE players on this roster who can work together and that Kelly is a good coach. Except maybe not at THIS level. High school in the US or even college coaching may currently be his calling because against the 36ers, South East looked north-west and lost for any direction.

Clearly, the hardened pros are not buying what he is selling.

The Phoenix were mostly shambolic offensively and playing token defence, hardly the recipes for success.

Looking at them left no doubt this team has no identity and doesn't stand for anything.

Kelly as a player was a "3 and D" man before the term was even popular. Well his team certainly jacked up enough threes, that's for sure - 32 to Adelaide's 16. The Sixers made 8. The Phoenix made 7.

And defence? No.

Undisciplined and a group that not only isn't on the same page but maybe reading from different travel brochures altogether.

Surely picking up three NBL championship winners in Glover, Derrick Walton Jr and Jordan Hunter had to count for something to this non-existent culture. Then, of course, there's Nathan Sobey who, some would argue, put the "I" into individual.

Extraordinary athleticism and highly skilled but no program on which he has been a major contributor has enjoyed any prolonged success. Driving to the hoop, throwing yourself on the floor and yelling out "Hey!" does appear to have a shelf-life bordering on its expiration date.

Meanwhile the 36ers, home at last, took a leaf out of the coaching book of Scott Ninnis and not only realised that if you make Isaac Humphries an early focus and play through him, good things tend to happen, but actually applied the successful theory.

From that moment on, the game was theirs to lose, and that wasn't going to happen.

South East however has to beat history after going 0-4. Not since 2003 has a team which opened with a quartet of losses squeezed back into the playoffs.

But that was a 48-minute game back then. In the two 40-minute eras of the NBL - you may not know but there was a 40-minute era BEFORE the arrival of Larry Kestelman as league owner - no team has ever reached the playoffs after a 0-4 start.

Kelly does not have history on his side and neither does Tasmania's Will Magnay after basically shoving Cairns' Rob Edwards away from his unnecessary altercation with Jordon Crawford.

Magnay's hand slipped from Edwards' chest to his throat but it looked worse than it was. The NBL today citing Magnay with a case to answer is such a nonsense, especially when no-one has said a word about Taran Armstrong coming into the fray late and shoving Crawford from behind.

Crawford did appear to annoy the Taipans, surprising considering he had an ordinary game.

And if Justin Schueller's comments about his Brisbane team after Round 1 weren't pathetic enough, along comes Perth's John Rillie after last night's home humiliation at Melbourne's hands making excuses about his missing players.

Oh, poor baby. When I looked, a fairly important United starter named Matthew Something-or-Other was missing from Melbourne's team and yet Rillie wants to draw our attention to Tai Webster and Dylan Windler being out?

What happened to the other tried and true coach's mantra - admittedly usually when you win - about we have a "next man up" mentality.

Not in Perth, apparently. Opening with that was my cue to dump the Wildcats press conference, Rillie subbing 13 players through the dismal demolition Melbourne inflicted.

Nup. No "next man up" mentality in that program.