title: Gone (novel series)

text: Gaia schemes to kill the FAYZ residents in order to prevent Pete from fighting her by inhabiting another person's body. Gaia and Diana spot two young men on the other side of the barrier; Gaia uses her power to briefly remove the barrier, causing one of the men, Alex Mayle, to fall through. Gaia removes and eats Alex's arm and informs Alex that she will use him as food. Intimidated, Diana and Alex follow Gaia to Lake Tramonto. Diana escapes and warns the community, but Gaia appears and slaughters most of the community before being forced to retreat by Brianna. Sam and Caine join forces to kill Gaia and rescue Diana. Sam and Caine find Gaia, and their efforts to kill her result in Caine being taken hostage and Sam heavily injured, before he is rescued by Taylor and Lana.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: The kids regroup at Perdido Beach and discuss their next move. It is revealed that Gaia, though possessing every power of every living person in the FAYZ, loses that power when the person dies. Sam contemplates whether he must sacrifice himself in order to stop Gaia. Meanwhile, Alex brings Drake's head to Gaia; she decapitates Alex, attaches Drake's head to his body, and replaces Alex's missing arm with another tentacle. Gaia attacks Perdido Beach and kills Brianna. Jack is also killed by a stray bullet and Sam is taken prisoner. Drake captures Astrid and begins to torture her, but Astrid incapacitates him and escapes. With the situation desperate, Caine retrieves Albert's missiles and launches them at Gaia. Orc, who was fighting Gaia at the time, is killed in the blast, but Gaia survives. Realizing that there is only one option left, Caine allows Pete's consciousness to inhabit his body at the cost of his own life. Pete fights Gaia, with each destroying each other in the process, as well as the barrier. While the kids flee Perdido Beach, Sam returns alone to confront Drake after receiving a firearm from Lana. Sam finds that he has lost his ability to shoot light, but when Drake attacks he finds that his immortality and Gaia's ability to graft his head onto Alex's body has also been nullified, resulting in Drake's apparent demise.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: The remaining kids reunite with their families and mourn their losses. Connie tells Sam how Caine and Sam were fraternal twins, fathered by the man whose DNA had merged with the gaiaphage, and becomes distant from Sam. Edilio is forced to go into hiding to avoid being deported back to Honduras, and comes out to his family after learning that his boyfriend Roger survived the massacre at Lake Tramonto. Albert gains the attention of every major business in the world, and does an advertisement for McDonald's in Perdido Beach. Lana returns to her family in Vegas. Sam is targeted by prosecutors intending to bring him to trial for his actions in the FAYZ, and escapes hospital with Quinn's help. Astrid, Todd Chance and Jennifer Brattle hold a press conference and Astrid reveals that Caine had written a confession note prior to his death claiming that he was controlling the children of the FAYZ and was responsible for their actions. Sam crashes the conference and is reunited with Astrid. With Caine's confession muddying the waters and footage of Sam and Astrid's reunion going viral, public opinion forces Sam's release. Astrid decides to write a book about life in the FAYZ and signs off the movie rights to the Brattle-Chances. With the money, Astrid buys a house for herself and Sam next door to Quinn's family. After the survivors attend a memorial to all those who died in the FAYZ, Sam and Astrid ask Diana to live with them, to which she agrees. No one knows what happens to Dekka.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Four years after the collapse of the FAYZ, more "Anomalous Space Objects" (meteors carrying the gaiaphage virus), head towards Earth, mutating anyone with whom it comes into contact. Genius teenager Shade Darby, who was present when the FAYZ fell and witnessed Gaia kill her mother, steals and ingests some ASO rock, along with her new best friend Cruz Rojas, a trans genderfluid person (AFAB) with a difficult home life. Shade becomes capable of morphing into an insectoid creature with super-speed, while Cruz gains the ability to turn invisible or alter their appearance. Callous artist Justin DeVeere is also exposed to ASO rock and morphs into the giant crustacean-like beast "Knightmare", destroying an aeroplane and the Golden Gate Bridge. Elsewhere, schizophrenic teenager Vincent Vu obtains ASO rock contaminated by starfish and densovirus genetic material and becomes capable of growing into a giant monstrous form able to control reanimated human bodies. The various mutants, dubbed "Rockborn", are able to transform back and forth between human and mutant forms, and feel themselves continually observed by enigmatic "Dark Watchers" while morphed.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Homeland Security Taskforce 66 recruits Dekka to voluntarily ingest some alien rock after revealing that Drake has survived the end of the FAYZ, hoping she can combat the various new threats. She becomes able to morph into a feline beast with the ability to project matter-shredding energies, and soon learns that the corrupt HSTF-66 has abducted and experimented upon numerous people to build a mutant army. Dekka escapes along with Aristotle "Armo" Adamo, a youth with oppositional defiant disorder given a polar bear-like morph form. Dekka and Armo briefly seek refuge in Perdido Beach, where they reunite with Diana. Meanwhile, HSTF-66's leader Tom Peaks is fired by the government, prompting him to vengefully ally with Drake and ingest ASO rock, gaining a dragon-like form capable of vomiting napalm. Shade and Cruz become fugitives from HSTF-66, joined by Shade's equally intelligent ex-boyfriend Malik Tenerife, and Shade fights Justin, who is subsequently captured by HSTF-66. Shade, Cruz and Malik then ally with Dekka and Armo to get to another ASO before Peaks and Drake, leading to a vicious fight interrupted by Vincent, who subdues Peaks before escaping. Malik is fatally burned in the fight between Vincent and Peaks, but Shade and Cruz give him some ASO rock in the hope of saving him. Sam provides sanctuary to Dekka and Armo. A governmental memo reveals that the mutants now occupy the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted, joined by an unknown person named Francis Specter.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Warning Sam and Astrid (who are now married) that Drake is still at large, Dekka secretly provides Astrid with the rest of Shade's ASO rock so she can become Rockborn in order to fight Drake. The horrifically burned Malik gains the ability to morph into an illusory version of his unharmed body, at the cost of projecting unbearable pain to other people and leaving him constantly feeling the Dark Watchers' attention. Shade, Cruz and Malik invade HSTF-66's "Ranch" facility, destroying much of the building and freeing Justin and the other mutant captives, and Shade livestreams footage to expose the organisation's crimes. Aspiring comedian and FAYZ survivor Dillon Poe buys ASO rock on the black market and gains a reptilian morph with the ability of mind control. His love interest Saffron Silverman inspires him to try to take over the world, and they seize control of thousands of people in Las Vegas, causing mass carnage and the deaths of thousands, including Saffron. Dekka and Armo regroup with Shade, Cruz and Malik, and they engage Dillon and his enthralled forces in a battle, discovering he cannot control other Rockborn while they are morphed. They are joined by Francis Specter, a teenager who has the ability to turn intangible by passing into a fourth-dimensional plane. As Francis does not feel the Dark Watchers observing her, Malik identifies her as an anomalous Rockborn that could pose a threat to the Watchers.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: The military invades Vegas to stop Dillon, who sends his slaves in kamikaze attacks against them. On his way to Vegas to join the carnage, Vincent is killed by the army. Dillon takes many people hostage and douses them in gasoline. Intending to regain the government's trust, Peaks travels to Vegas but inadvertently ignites the hostages with his napalm, killing most of them, though Dekka and her allies are able to save a few. Malik uses his pain-projecting powers to torture Dillon and coerces him into committing suicide, freeing everyone under his control. Dekka, Shade, Cruz, Malik, Armo and Francis form a superhero team, the "Rockborn Gang", and Cruz becomes their public spokesperson after she is seen saving a baby from the flames, while Shade and Malik resume their relationship.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Various ASOs have landed across Earth, to the point where most countries are becoming overwhelmed by the emergence of destructive Rockborn. Stricken with guilt over his role in Dillon's massacre, Peaks commits suicide. To prevent a particularly large ASO from obliterating New York, the government fires nuclear missiles at it to break it up, but this still results in many shards hitting New York, killing or infecting much of the city. Many of those infected are abducted and massacred by government forces, but businessman Bob Markovic and his daughter Simone escape using their morphs: Markovic becomes a gestalt swarm of insects capable of inflicting horrific and agonising diseases upon humans while rendering them unable to die, while Simone becomes able to fly in the form of a blue humanoid with many tiny wings. The power-hungry Markovic, now calling himself "Vector", infects New York's government and seizes control of the city, recruiting a small army of Rockborn to assist him, including Justin.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Discovering Astrid has become Rockborn, Sam ingests the rest of Shade's ASO. He becomes able to create domes of various sizes resembling the FAYZ, while she can morph into a Hulk-like form with super strength and invulnerability. Drake ambushes Astrid, but Astrid easily overpowers him with her new abilities and dissolves him in hydrofluoric acid. Forming an uneasy alliance with the US government, the Rockborn Gang, with Dekka as their official leader, travel to New York to stop Markovic, joined by Simone, Sam and Edilio. Francis strands Justin and some of Markovic's other Rockborn in the fourth dimension, which she dubs "Over There". Markovic tries to reach Washington to conquer the government, but he is trapped by Sam's abilities and the Rockborn Gang kill him with nerve gas. However, Shade is almost killed in the battle, while Sam is forced to destroy a train, killing over forty of Markovic's hostages. Cruz and Armo begin a relationship, and Simone becomes romantically interested in Dekka. A military general helps Dekka, Shade, Cruz, Malik, Armo, Francis, Sam, Astrid, Simone and Edilio go into hiding at a secret bunker, and they agree to consider helping deal with other villainous Rockborn.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: The conclusion of "Hero" reveals the truth about the entirety of the universe depicted throughout the nine books. Malik accompanies Francis in a series of excursions to Over There, and he and Shade theorise that their reality is a simulation created by the Dark Watchers. Malik and Francis' final excursion brings them in contact with a future version of Malik, who confirms his younger self's suspicions and notes that Pete was the only other person to discover the nature of their reality. The older Malik explains that the FAYZ universe was created by an MIT team led by him and Shade 26 years in the future using artificial intelligence and based on their own memories. Although the older Malik acknowledges the suffering felt by those in the simulation, he explains that it cannot be altered, but can be switched off, ending their universe. Malik refuses to make the decision without unanimous approval of the Rockborn Gang. The series ends with the Rockborn Gang about to vote, with the ultimate fate of their universe left unknown.


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Reviews have generally been mixed to positive, though many note "Gone"s success in its intended demographic. Mal Peet, for "The Guardian", pointed to the series' "rave reviews, most of them posted on websites by teenagers", though noting that such success stemmed from literary sacrifices that made characters into "crude two-dimensional digitisations".


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Amanda Craig, for "The Times", noted that "Gone" was "heavily influenced by TV series such as "Lost" and "Heroes", and described the book as "Clever but a little too predictable." Jayne Howarth, for the "Birmingham Post", called "Gone" "superb" and said she found the book "full of suspense, action and the supernatural. Think of a potent mix of "Lord of the Flies", "Heroes" and "Lost" and you get an idea of the audience this will appeal to." Describing the pace of the novel as "frantic and frenetic" Howarth summed up: "This is an incredible mystery story, with twists and turns, cameos and protagonists, to keep readers engrossed... Violent in parts, Grant does not hold back at showing the feral nature of humans when faced with a world without order. Unputdownable."


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Dinah Hall, reviewing "Lies" for "The Sunday Telegraph", also drew comparison with "Lord of the Flies" and "Lost", and wrote: "While it's never going to make it on to the GCSE syllabus, it definitely has the addictive pull of a cult television series... I would sell my soul for the next installment." Toby Clements, reviewing "Hunger" for "The Daily Telegraph", wrote: "Grant's world is hard-edged but thought-provoking, a Stephen King novel for youngsters in which the children are challenged with reshaping society while fighting off evil. "Hunger" ought to be required reading for any teenager who thinks adults suck."


title: Gone (novel series)

text: Stephen King has also praised the series, writing: "These are exciting, high-tension stories told in a driving, torrential narrative that never lets up. There are monsters, there are kids with mad-crazy super powers, there's the mystery of where all the adults went. Most of all, there are children I can believe in and root for. This is great fiction."


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: Manjari Fadnis (also spelled Phadnis and Fadnnis) is an Indian actress who predominantly appeared in Hindi films, in addition to Telugu films. She is best known for her performance in the 2008 Hindi film "Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na". Her other notable films are "Faltu" (2006), "Zokkomon" (2011), "Warning" (2013), "Grand Masti" (2013), "Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon" (2015), a short film "Khamakha" (2016) and 'Barot House' (2019).


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: Fadnis was first seen on television during the second season of the Indian version of the singing reality show "Popstars", which was aired on Channel [v] India in 2003. She was one of the participants who made it to the finals for the musical band Aasma.


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: She started her film career with "Rok Sako To Rok Lo" in 2004, but her big break was "Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na" (2008) as the lead actor's girlfriend, for which she won a Stardust Award for Breakthrough Performance-Female 2009. The film was successful with the audience and also enjoyed critical acclaim. Earlier she was part of the National Film Award-winning Bengali feature film "Faltu" (2006) and also "Mumbai Salsa" (2007). In 2008, she made a debut in Telugu films with "Siddu From Sikakulam", following which her first Tamil film "Muthirai" (2009) got released. Notably, she had sung a Tamil song under the direction of Yuvan Shankar Raja for the film "Muthirai". In September 2009, she signed to appear in a series of Onida Television commercials.


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: Fadnis' 2010 releases were the Telugu films "Inkosaari" and "Shubhapradham". She then starred in the Walt Disney-produced superhero film "Zokkomon", starring Darsheel Safary in the titular role. The film received positive reviews from critics. She also worked in the Telugu film "Shakti" (2011) alongside Jr. NTR, and later in a Hindi film "I M 24" (2012) and her debut Kannada film "Munjane" (2012). The year 2013 saw release of her films "Warning", a 3D underwater film and "Grand Masti" (opposite Aftab Shivdasani). "Grand Masti" was the highest grossing Bollywood film with an A (Adults Only) certificate in India. Her next film was Mohanlal starred "Mr. Fraud" (2014), which marked her Malayalam debut. Then came her romantic comedy film "Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon" (2015) starring Kapil Sharma. The film was a box office success. She then acted alongside Shreyas Talpade in the content driven film "Wah Taj" (2016). The movie had a dance song "Chori Chichori" for which Fadnis attired as traditional Marathi Mulgi did a semi-folk popular dance. She also worked in her maiden Marathi film "Sarv Mangal Savdhan" (2016) opposite Raqesh Vashisth. She appeared as a lead actress in the inspirational film "Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai" (2017) starring Arbaaz Khan, Himansh Kohli and Ashutosh Rana, set in exotic locations. In 2018, she came up with a murder mystery film "Nirdosh" opposite Ashmit Patel and an action comedy film "Baa Baaa Black Sheep" opposite Manish Paul.


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: In 2017, her short film "Khamakha" (2016) won the Filmfare for Best Short Film People's Choice Award. Her other short films are "The Morning After" (2013), "The Cot" (2017), Jackie Shroff starred "The Playboy Mr Sawhney" (2018) and "Interdependence: Megha's divorce" (2019).


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: She made her first theatrical performance "Double Deal Reloaded" (English), in Mumbai in 2017 and the following year in Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. In 2018, she came up with a musical drama "Devdas" staged at Mumbai.


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: Fadnis sang a duet Tamil song "Azhagana Neeyum" under the direction of Yuvan Shankar Raja for the film "Muthirai" (2009). She also sang the duet songs "Sonya Ve Sajna" in the Indo-Pakistani music album "Beat Beyond Borders" composed by Pakistani musician Fakhar-e-Alam in 2012 and "Ga Raha Hai Ye Aasma" composed by Raghav Sachar in 2014. In 2015, she lent her vocals for a duet Marathi song composed by Nikhil Kamat for the film "Sarv Mangal Savdhan". She recorded her first solo song "Alvida" composed by the musical duo of Arif-Troy in 2017.


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: She was the cover girl for "Woman's Era" Magazine September 2015 issue. She has also appeared in various fashion events such as Bombay Times Fashion week 2018, Intimate Fashion Week 2017, and Dubai Fashion League 2017. She was cast in 'Hyundai i10 car' TV advertisement with Shah Rukh Khan of "Main Hoon Na" and "Om Shanti Om" fame in May 2012. Earlier, she had appeared in a series of Onida Television commercials in 2009 and later on in iball pen drives TV ad in 2011, Mehfil Southall Hotel/Restaurant/Banquet TV ads in 2015 . She has also been featured in the music videos "Beat Beyond Borders" (2011) and "Raghav Sachar feat" (2014).


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: She received the Movers and Shakers award at the MAAC 24FPS International Animation Awards 2015. In 2020, she received the Youth Icon Award for 'Excellency in Entertainment industry' at Maier Medi International Short Film Festival, Pune.


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: Fadnis, who comes from a Maharashtrian family, was born at Sagar, Madhya Pradesh to Ruchi Fadnis and Bharat Kumar Fadnis. As her father served in the Indian Army, a transferable service, she grew up with her only sibling Gagan Fadnis in Shimla, Jammu, Delhi, Mumbai and Pune (her hometown).


title: Manjari Fadnis

text: Fadnis participated in the fashion show 'Umeed-Ek Koshish-A Starwalk for Charity' in 2012 and Amy Billimoria's 'The Walk of Pride' Charity show in 2015. Earlier in 2012, she graced the Global Peace Fashion Show to commemorate the victims of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. She was also part of the Zee TV environmental awareness initiative "My Earth My Duty" in 2013. She volunteered for the Punjab Kesari 'Selfie with Daughter' campaign to address the importance of saving a girl child in 2016. In 2017, she adopted two kittens and a puppy namely Mia, Simba and Pari to emphasize animal welfare. In 2018, she wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister expressing her concern about safety of women in India. Same year, she volunteered to emphasize celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi with Eco-friendly Ganesha idol. In 2019, she participated in an event held at Mumbai concerning Digital Detoxification. The same year, she actively volunteered for the S"ave" A"arey Forest campaign." She later on appeared in United Nations sponsored short film "Interdependence" to raise awareness regarding climate change.


title: Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker

text: Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker is an internet viral video featuring a hitchhiking man who calls himself "Kai". It was released on February 2, 2013, by a reporter from a local news station in California. The video went viral and received national attention in the press. Kai Lawrence, later identified as Caleb Lawrence McGillvary (b. September 3, 1988) from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, would cite the fall-out from the video as part of his defense against a homicide charge that was filed in New Jersey a few months after the video was released.


title: Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker

text: The video is by local Fox affiliate KMPH in Fresno, California. The video is an eyewitness account by a man calling himself "Kai" who describes what happened (according to Kai) soon after the course of events and while still on the scene. Kai recounts he had been hitchhiking and was picked up by Jett Simmons McBride, who Kai describes as weighing 300 pounds and who claims to be Jesus Christ. As they are driving, McBride tells Kai he once raped a 14-year-old girl in the Virgin Islands while on a business trip. McBride then crashes into a pedestrian at an intersection, pinning him against the rear of a parked truck and the front of the vehicle McBride is driving. Kai jumps out of the car to help the pedestrian while McBride remains in the car. When a bystander arrives on the scene to help, McBride jumps out and attacks her in a bear hug. Sensing the woman's life might be in danger, and believing the man could snap her neck "like a pencil stick", Kai removes a hatchet from his backpack and repeatedly strikes McBride in the back of the head. In the video Kai describes the hatchet blows with the words "Smash, Smash, SUH-MASH" while he reenacts the over-head swings. Kai recounts he was interrogated by police and set free.


title: Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker

text: The video was uploaded to YouTube on February 2, 2013, by Jessob Reisbeck, who had conducted the interview for KMPH. As of December 16, 2021, the video had over 7.8 million views. The Gregory Brothers sampled the interview and turned it into a song; as of October 27, 2019, the music video had garnered over 10 million views. In January 2020, Kai was interviewed on "Inside Edition", where scenes from the viral video were replayed; this video segment uploaded to YouTube had over 7.5 million views as of November 2022.


title: Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker

text: Kai was arrested on murder charges in May 2013 for the death of New Jersey attorney Joseph Galfy. Kai maintained he fought against Galfy in self-defense. According to Kai, he had been drugged and raped by Galfy after he offered Kai a place to stay for the night. Kai stated that the police claimed the sexual encounter was consensual and the murder premeditated; however, Kai said that after the viral video in California, he had no need to have sex with men like Galfy, whom Kai described as unattractive, stating "Do you know how many hot chicks—never mind. Even if I was gay, do you know how many hot guys wanted to fuck me after that shit in California? I'm not even being vain. It's just a fact, like—no offense, but he [Galfy] was not a looker".


title: Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker

text: After the murder charges, the video views increased substantially increasing its viral reach. Fans of the video, who considered Kai a hero for saving the woman, raised a legal fund. Kai was imprisoned for over five years awaiting trial which began April 1, 2019. Kai took the stand in his own defense and was combative during cross examination; he made an outburst during his defense lawyer’s closing arguments nearly leading to his expulsion from the court room. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 57 years in prison. He will serve 85 percent of that term before the possibility of parole, with the judge telling McGillvary, "when you become eligible for parole, you will still be younger than Mr. Galfy was when you murdered him." Galfy was 73 at the time of his death. Kai said he planned to appeal the conviction.


title: Rongorongo

text: Rongorongo (Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, with none being successful. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, none of these glyphs can actually be read. If rongorongo does prove to be writing and proves to be an independent invention, it would be one of very few independent inventions of writing in human history.


title: Rongorongo

text: Two dozen wooden objects bearing rongorongo inscriptions, some heavily weathered, burned, or otherwise damaged, were collected in the late 19th century and are now scattered in museums and private collections. None remain on Easter Island. The objects are mostly tablets shaped from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain's staff, a bird-man statuette, and two "reimiro" ornaments. There are also a few petroglyphs which may include short rongorongo inscriptions. Oral history suggests that only a small elite was ever literate and that the tablets were sacred.


title: Rongorongo

text: Authentic rongorongo texts are written in alternating directions, a system called reverse boustrophedon. In a third of the tablets, the lines of text are inscribed in shallow fluting carved into the wood. The glyphs themselves are outlines of human, animal, plant, artifact and geometric forms. Many of the human and animal figures, such as glyphs and have characteristic protuberances on each side of the head, possibly representing eyes.


title: Rongorongo

text: Individual texts are conventionally known by a single uppercase letter and a name, such as Tablet C, the "Mamari" Tablet. The somewhat variable names may be descriptive or indicate where the object is kept, as in the Oar, the Snuffbox, the Small Santiago Tablet, and the Santiago Staff.


title: Rongorongo

text: is the modern name for the inscriptions. In the Rapa Nui language it means "to recite, to declaim, to chant out".


title: Rongorongo

text: The original name—or perhaps description—of the script is said to have been , "lines incised for chanting out", shortened to or "lines [for] chanting out". There are also said to have been more specific names for the texts based on their topic. For example, the ("lines of years") were annals, the ("lines of fishes") were lists of persons killed in war ( "fish" was homophonous with or used figuratively for "war casualty"), and the "lines of fugitives" were lists of war refugees.


title: Rongorongo

text: Some authors have understood the in to refer to a separate form of writing distinct from "rongorongo." Barthel recorded that, "The Islanders had another writing (the so-called ""tau" script") which recorded their annals and other secular matters, but this has disappeared." However, Steven Roger Fischer writes that "the was originally a type of inscription. In the 1880s, a group of elders invented a derivative 'script' [also] called with which to decorate carvings in order to increase their trading value. It is a primitive imitation of ." An alleged third script, the or described in some mid-twentieth-century publications, was "an early twentieth-century geometric [decorative] invention".


title: Rongorongo

text: The forms of the glyphs are standardized contours of living organisms and geometric designs about one centimeter high. The wooden tablets are irregular in shape and, in many instances, fluted (tablets B, E, G, H, O, Q, and possibly T), with the glyphs carved in shallow channels running the length of the tablets, as can be seen in the image of tablet G at right. It is thought that irregular and often blemished pieces of wood were used in their entirety rather than squared off due to the scarcity of wood on the island.


title: Rongorongo

text: Except for a few possible glyphs cut in stone (see petroglyphs), and one possibility on barkcloth, all surviving secure texts are inscribed in wood. According to tradition, the tablets were made of toromiro wood. However, Catherine Orliac (2005) examined seven objects (tablets B, C, G, H, K, Q, and L) with stereo optical and scanning electron microscopes and determined that all were instead made from Pacific rosewood ("Thespesia populnea"); the same identification had been made for tablet M in 1934. This 15-meter tree, known as "Pacific rosewood" for its color and called in Rapanui, is used for sacred groves and carvings throughout eastern Polynesia and was evidently brought to Easter Island by the first settlers. However, not all the wood was native: Orliac (2007) established that tablets N, P, and S were made of South African yellowwood ("Podocarpus latifolius") and therefore that the wood had arrived with Western contact. Fischer describes P as "a damaged and reshapen European or American oar", as are A (which is European ash, "Fraxinus excelsior") and V; notes that wood from the wreck of a Western boat was said to have been used for many tablets; and that both P and S had been recycled as planking for a Rapanui driftwood canoe, suggesting that by that time the tablets had little value to the islanders as texts. Several texts, including O, are carved on gnarled driftwood. The fact that the islanders were reduced to inscribing driftwood, and were regardless extremely economical in their use of wood, may have had consequences for the structure of the script, such as the abundance of ligatures and potentially a telegraphic style of writing that would complicate textual analysis.


title: Rongorongo

text: William J. Thomson reported a calabash, now lost, that had been found in a tomb and was "covered with hieroglyphics similar to those found on the incised tablets." During the early missionary period that began in 1864, it was reported that women wore bark cloth decorated with "symbols"; a fragment of one of these survives, and appears to be rongorongo.


title: Rongorongo

text: Oral tradition holds that, because of the great value of wood, only expert scribes used it, while pupils wrote on banana leaves. German ethnologist Thomas Barthel believed that carving on wood was a secondary development in the evolution of the script based on an earlier stage of incising banana leaves or the sheaths of the banana trunk with a bone stylus, and that the medium of leaves was retained not only for lessons but to plan and compose the texts of the wooden tablets. He found experimentally that the glyphs were quite visible on banana leaves due to the sap that emerged from the cuts and dried on the surface. However, when the leaves themselves dried they became brittle and would not have survived for long.


title: Rongorongo

text: Barthel speculated that the banana leaf might even have served as a prototype for the tablets, with the fluted surface of the tablets an emulation of the veined structure of a leaf:


title: Rongorongo

text: Larger tablets and staves may have been read without turning, if the reader were able to read upside-down.


title: Rongorongo

text: According to oral tradition, scribes used obsidian flakes or small shark teeth, presumably the hafted tools still used to carve wood in Polynesia, to flute and polish the tablets and then to incise the glyphs. The glyphs are most commonly composed of deep smooth cuts, though superficial hair-line cuts are also found. In the closeup image at right, a glyph is composed of two parts connected by a hair-line cut; this is a typical convention for this shape. Several researchers, including Barthel, believe that these superficial cuts were made by obsidian, and that the texts were carved in a two-stage process, first sketched with obsidian and then deepened and finished with a worn shark tooth. The remaining hair-line cuts were then either errors, design conventions (as at right), or decorative embellishments. Vertical strings of chevrons or lozenges, for example, are typically connected with hair-line cuts, as can be seen repeatedly in the closeup of one end of tablet B below. However, Barthel was told that the last literate Rapanui king, Ngaara, sketched out the glyphs in soot applied with a fish bone and then engraved them with a shark tooth.


title: Rongorongo

text: Tablet N, on the other hand, shows no sign of shark teeth. Haberlandt noticed that the glyphs of this text appear to have been incised with a sharpened bone, as evidenced by the shallowness and width of the grooves. N also "displays secondary working with obsidian flakes to elaborate details within the finished contour lines. No other "rongo-rongo" inscription reveals such graphic extravagance".


title: Rongorongo

text: Other tablets appear to have been cut with a steel blade, often rather crudely. Although steel knives were available after the arrival of the Spanish, this does cast suspicion on the authenticity of these tablets.


title: Rongorongo

text: The glyphs are stylized human, animal, vegetable and geometric shapes, and often form compounds. Nearly all those with heads are oriented head up and are either seen face on or in profile to the right, in the direction of writing. It is not known what significance turning a glyph head-down or to the left may have had. Heads often have characteristic projections on the sides which may be eyes (as on the sea turtle glyph below, and more clearly on sea-turtle petroglyphs) but which often resemble ears (as on the anthropomorphic petroglyph in the next section). Birds are common; many resemble the frigatebird (see image directly below) which was associated with the supreme god Makemake.


title: Rongorongo

text: Oral tradition holds that either Hotu Matua or Tuu ko Iho, the legendary founder(s) of Rapa Nui, brought 67tablets from their homeland. The same founder is also credited with bringing indigenous plants such as the toromiro. However, there is no homeland likely to have had a tradition of writing in Polynesia or even in South America. Thus rongorongo appears to have been an internal development. Given that few if any of the Rapanui people remaining on the island in the 1870s could read the glyphs, it is likely that only a small minority were ever literate. Indeed, early visitors were told that literacy was a privilege of the ruling families and priests who were all kidnapped in the Peruvian slaving raids or died soon afterwards in the resulting epidemics.


title: Rongorongo

text: Little direct dating has been done. The start of forest-clearing for agriculture on Easter Island, and thus presumably colonization, has been dated to "circa" 1200, implying a date for the invention of rongorongo no earlier than the 13th century. Tablet Q (Small Saint Petersburg) is the sole item that has been carbon dated, but the results only constrain the date to sometime after 1680. Glyph 67 () is thought to represent the extinct Easter Island palm, which disappeared from the island's pollen record "circa" 1650, suggesting that the script itself is at least that old.


title: Rongorongo

text: Texts A, P, and V can be dated to the 18th or 19th century by virtue of being inscribed on European oars. Orliac (2005) argued that the wood for tablet C () was cut from the trunk of a tree some tall, and Easter Island has long been deforested of trees that size. Analysis of charcoal indicates that the forest disappeared in the first half of the 17th century. Roggeveen, who discovered Easter Island in 1722, described the island as "destitute of large trees" and in 1770 González de Ahedo wrote, "Not a single tree is to be found capable of furnishing a plank so much as six inches [15cm] in width." Forster, with Cook's expedition of 1774, reported that "there was not a tree upon the island which exceeded the height of 10feet [3m]."


title: Rongorongo

text: All of these methods date the wood, not the inscriptions themselves. Pacific rosewood is not durable, and is unlikely to survive long in Easter Island's climate.


title: Rongorongo

text: In 1770 the Spanish annexed Easter Island under Captain González de Ahedo. A signing ceremony was held in which a treaty of annexation was signed by an undisclosed number of chiefs "by marking upon it certain characters in their own form of script." (Reproduction at right.)


title: Rongorongo

text: Several scholars have suggested that rongorongo may have been an invention inspired by this visit and the signing of the treaty of annexation. As circumstantial evidence, they note that no explorer reported the script prior to Eugène Eyraud in 1864,


title: Rongorongo

text: However, known cases of the diffusion of writing, such as Sequoyah's invention of the Cherokee syllabary after seeing the power of English-language newspapers, or Uyaquk's invention of the Yugtun script inspired by readings from Christian scripture, involved greater contact than the signing of a single treaty. The glyphs could be crudely written rongorongo, as might be expected for Rapa Nui representatives writing with the novel instrument of pen on paper. The fact that the script was not otherwise observed by early explorers, who spent little time on the island, may reflect that it was taboo; such taboos may have lost power along with the (scribes) by the time Rapanui society collapsed following Peruvian slaving raids and the resulting epidemics, so that the tablets had become more widely distributed by Eyraud's day.


title: Rongorongo

text: Eugène Eyraud, a lay friar of the Congrégation de Picpus, landed on Easter Island on January 2, 1864, on the 24th day of his departure from Valparaíso. He was to remain on Easter Island for nine months, evangelizing its inhabitants. He wrote an account of his stay in which he reports his discovery of the tablets that year:


title: Rongorongo

text: In 1868 the Bishop of Tahiti, Florentin-Étienne "Tepano" Jaussen, received a gift from the recent Catholic converts of Easter Island. It was a long cord of human hair, a fishing line perhaps, wound around a small wooden board covered in hieroglyphic writing. Stunned at the discovery, he wrote to Father Hippolyte Roussel on Easter Island to collect all the tablets and to find natives capable of translating them. But Roussel could only recover a few, and the islanders could not agree on how to read them.


title: Rongorongo

text: Yet Eyraud had seen hundreds of tablets only four years earlier. What happened to the missing tablets is a matter of conjecture. Eyraud had noted how little interest their owners had in them. Stéphen Chauvet reports that,


title: Rongorongo

text: Orliac has observed that the deep black indentation, about long, on lines 5 and 6 of the recto of tablet H is a groove made by the rubbing of a fire stick, showing that tablet H had been used for fire-making. Tablets S and P had been cut into lashed planking for a canoe, which fits the story of a man named Niari who made a canoe out of abandoned tablets.


title: Rongorongo

text: As European-introduced diseases and raids by Peruvian slavers, including a final devastating raid in 1862 and a subsequent smallpox epidemic, had reduced the Rapa Nui population to under two hundred by the 1870s, it is possible that literacy had been wiped out by the time Eyraud discovered the tablets in 1866.


title: Rongorongo

text: Thus in 1868 Jaussen could recover only a few tablets, with three more acquired by Captain Gana of the Chilean corvette "O'Higgins" in 1870. In the 1950s Barthel found the decayed remains of half a dozen tablets in caves, in the context of burials. However, no glyphs could be salvaged.


title: Rongorongo

text: Of the 26 commonly accepted texts that survive, only half are in good condition and authentic beyond doubt.


title: Rongorongo

text: British archaeologist and anthropologist Katherine Routledge undertook a 1914–1915 scientific expedition to Rapa Nui with her husband to catalog the art, customs, and writing of the island. She was able to interview two elderly informants, Kapiera and a leper named Tomenika, who allegedly had some knowledge of rongorongo. The sessions were not very fruitful, as the two often contradicted each other. From them Routledge concluded that rongorongo was an idiosyncratic mnemonic device that did not directly represent language, in other words, proto-writing, and that the meanings of the glyphs were reformulated by each scribe, so that the could not be read by someone not trained in that specific text. The texts themselves she believed to be litanies for priest-scribes, kept apart in special houses and strictly "tapu", that recorded the island's history and mythology.


title: Rongorongo

text: The 26 rongorongo texts with letter codes are inscribed on wooden objects, each with between 2 and 2320 simple glyphs and components of compound glyphs, for over 15,000 in all. The objects are mostly oblong wooden tablets, with the exceptions of I, a possibly sacred chieftain's staff known as the Santiago Staff; J and L, inscribed on "reimiro" pectoral ornaments worn by the elite; X, inscribed on various parts of a "tangata manu" ("birdman") statuette; and Y, a European snuff box assembled from sections cut from a rongorongo tablet. The tablets, like the pectorals, statuettes, and staves, were works of art and valued possessions, and were apparently given individual proper names in the same manner as jade ornaments in New Zealand. Two of the tablets, C and S, have a documented pre-missionary provenance, though others may be as old or older. There are in addition a few isolated glyphs or short sequences which might prove to be rongorongo.


title: Rongorongo

text: Crude glyphs have been found on a few stone objects and some additional wooden items, but most of these are thought to be fakes created for the early tourism market. Several of the 26 wooden texts are suspect due to uncertain provenance (X, Y, and Z), poor quality craftsmanship (F, K, V, W, Y, and Z), or to having been carved with a steel blade (K, V, and Y), and thus, although they may prove to be genuine, should not be trusted in initial attempts at decipherment. Z resembles many early forgeries in not being boustrophedon, but it may be a palimpsest on an authentic but now illegible text.


title: Rongorongo

text: In addition to the petroglyphs mentioned above, there are a few other very short uncatalogued texts that may be rongorongo. Fischer reports that "many statuettes reveal or -like glyphs on their crown." He gives the example of a compound glyph, , on the crown of a statuette.


title: Rongorongo

text: There is some arbitrariness to which glyphs are grouped together, and there are inconsistencies in the assignments of numerical codes and the use of affixes which make the system rather complex. However, despite its shortcomings, Barthel's is the only effective system ever proposed to categorize rongorongo glyphs.


title: Rongorongo

text: Barthel (1971) claimed to have parsed the corpus of glyphs to 120, of which the other 480 in his inventory are allographs or ligatures.


title: Rongorongo

text: For almost a century only a few of the texts were published. In 1875, the director of the Chilean National Museum of Natural History in Santiago, Rudolf Philippi, published the Santiago Staff, and Carroll (1892) published part of the Oar. Most texts remained beyond the reach of would-be decipherers until 1958, when Thomas Barthel published line drawings of almost all the known corpus in his ("Bases for the Decipherment of the Easter Island script") which remains the fundamental reference to rongorongo. He transcribed texts A through X, over 99% of the corpus; the CEIPP estimates that it is 97% accurate. Barthel's line drawings were not produced free-hand but copied from rubbings, which helped ensure their faithfulness to the originals.


title: Rongorongo

text: Fischer (1997) published new line drawings. These include lines scored with obsidian but not finished with a shark tooth, which had not been recorded by Barthel because the rubbings he used often did not show them, for example on tablet N. (However, in line Gv4 shown in the section on writing instruments above, the light lines were recorded by both Fischer and Barthel.) There are other omissions in Barthel which Fischer corrects, such as a sequence of glyphs at the transition from line Ca6 to Ca7 which is missing from Barthel, presumably because the carving went over the side of the tablet and was missed by Barthel's rubbing. (This missing sequence is right in the middle of Barthel's calendar.) However, other discrepancies between the two records are straightforward contradictions. For instance, the initial glyph of I12 (line 12 of the Santiago Staff) in Fischer does not correspond with that of Barthel or Philippi,


title: Rongorongo

text: In addition, the next glyph (glyph 20, a "spindle with three knobs") is missing its right-side "sprout" (glyph 10) in Philippi's drawing. This may be the result of an error in the inking, since there is a blank space in its place. The corpus is thus tainted with quite some uncertainty. It has never been properly checked for want of high-quality photographs.


title: Rongorongo

text: As with most undeciphered scripts, there are many fanciful interpretations and claimed translations of rongorongo. However, apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to have to do with a lunar Rapa Nui calendar, none of the texts are understood. There are three serious obstacles to decipherment, assuming rongorongo is truly writing: the small number of remaining texts, the lack of context such as illustrations in which to interpret them, and the poor attestation of the Old Rapanui language, since modern Rapanui is heavily mixed with Tahitian and is therefore unlikely to closely reflect the language of the tablets.


title: Rongorongo

text: The prevailing opinion is that rongorongo is not true writing but proto-writing, or even a more limited mnemonic device for genealogy, choreography, navigation, astronomy, or agriculture. For example, the "Atlas of Languages" states, "It was probably used as a memory aid or for decorative purposes, not for recording the Rapanui language of the islanders." If this is the case, then there is little hope of ever deciphering it. For those who believe it to be writing, there is debate as to whether rongorongo is essentially logographic or syllabic, though it appears to be compatible with neither a pure logography nor a pure syllabary.


title: Rongorongo

text: The Unicode Consortium has tentatively allocated range 1CA80–1CDBF of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane for encoding the Rongorongo script. An encoding proposal has been written by Michael Everson.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers, also known as the Sixers, are an Australian professional men's basketball team in the National Basketball League (NBL). The 36ers are the only team in the league representing the state of South Australia and are based in the state's capital of Adelaide. The club was originally called the Adelaide City Eagles when they joined the NBL in 1982, but changed their name to the 36ers the following year. The 36ers nickname comes from the fact that the Colony of South Australia was officially proclaimed on 28 December 1836. Since 2019, the 36ers play their home games at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers' tally of four championships is equal with the New Zealand Breakers and Sydney Kings, and third only behind Melbourne United (six) and the Perth Wildcats (ten) as the most by any club in the NBL's history.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: After the demise of the Forestville Eagles at the end of the 1981 NBL season had left the West Adelaide Bearcats as Adelaide's only representative in the NBL, the Basketball Association of South Australia formed a composite team representing all the state league teams (not the Bearcats). This team was known as the Adelaide City Eagles when they joined the NBL in 1982. Mike Osborne was appointed as team coach, Chris Stirling was captain and the team, like West Adelaide, played out of the 3,000 seat Apollo Stadium. The Eagles performed well in their first season but missed the playoffs finishing in 7th place on the ladder with a 15–11 record. The championship was won that year by the West Adelaide Bearcats who featured future 36ers in 1982 NBL MVP Al Green, Moscow Olympian Peter Ali and veteran guard Ray Wood.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide City Eagles changed their name after the 1982 season to the Adelaide 36ers to reflect on the history of South Australia's proclamation in 1836. Mike Osborne continued as head coach while David Winslow was named team captain. The 36ers once again missed the NBL playoffs in 1983 finishing 6th on the ladder with an 11–11 record.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 1984 NBL season saw the first time the 36ers would reach the NBL finals, finishing the regular season in 3rd place in the Western Division with a 16–7 record. The team lost their Elimination Final to the Nunawading Spectres 108–101. Following the season, Mike Osborne was not retained as coach. With the West Adelaide Bearcats facing financial difficulties, the club pulled out of the NBL after 1984 with a number of their players joining the 36ers. From 1985 the Adelaide 36ers would be the sole South Australian team in the NBL, a situation that continues as of the 2016–17 NBL season.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Former Australian Boomer and 1964 Olympic representative Ken Cole was signed as coach of the Adelaide 36ers for the 1985 NBL season. Under Cole (who had previously coached in South Australia in the 1970s), the 36ers became one of the league's premier teams. Import players including 6'9" (207 cm) centre Bill Jones, New York-born combo guard Al Green (who had been drafted by the San Diego Chargers as a Defensive back in the 1979 NFL Draft despite not playing football) and an NBL rookie in 24-year-old Power forward from Philadelphia, Mark Davis who joined the team 5 games into the season after dominating the local league with South Adelaide, combined with local players Darryl Pearce, team captain Peter Ali, young gun Mike McKay, and veteran Ray Wood to help Adelaide to a 20–6 record and second on the regular season ladder behind the Brian Kerle coached Brisbane Bullets who featured Australian Olympian Larry Sengstock, arguably the league's best player and former West Adelaide championship player Leroy Loggins, Ronnie "The Rat" Radliff, and the "Black Pearl" Cal Bruton. The team had a bye going into the semi-final where they easily defeated for the Newcastle Falcons 151–103 at home in what the then record semi-final win in the NBL, something Ken Cole had publicly predicted would happen. Leading 105–84 going into the last period, Cole told his team that he wanted a record score for a Semi-final and the team responded, producing a 46–19 last period to blow the Falcons away and get the record. In the last single game NBL grand final ever played, Adelaide were up against the Brisbane Bullets on the Bullets' home court (Sleeman Sports Centre). Going into the final period the game the Bullets' were leading 78–74 but a 42–21 last period in favour of the home team with Loggins leading the way saw Adelaide fail to win their first grand final going down 95–120.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: 1985 would see Al Green set a single season points per game record for the 36ers when he scored 31.0 ppg in 28 games played (the record still stands as of 2016–17). Green, who Ken Cole chose to move to Point guard and leave Darryl Pearce at off guard, adjusted to his new role running the team's offense and also led the team in assists for the first time averaging 5.1 per game. His form saw him selected to his second All-NBL First Team after also winning selection in 1981 while with West Adelaide (amazingly, despite being the 1982 league MVP he had been overlooked for a place in the All NBL First Team that year). For his efforts during the season, 19-year-old guard Mike McKay was awarded the NBL's Rookie of the Year award (despite having already played 38 games with West Adelaide in 1983 and 1984 as a bench player). McKay played all 28 games, averaging 12.9 points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: 1986 would see the Adelaide 36ers win the first of their four NBL championships. 27-year-old import centre Bill Jones replaced Peter Ali as captain and 6'6" (199 cm) former import forward (now a naturalised Australian citizen) Dwayne Nelson returned to the team after a year away, while Ken Cole would win the NBL Coach of the Year award after guiding the team to a 24–2 record, 5 more wins than the second placed Canberra Cannons (as of 2016–17 this is the only time a 36ers coach has won the award). The 36ers were undefeated at home during the regular season going 13–0, the first time a club had gone unbeaten at home in league history. The two games the 36ers lost in the regular season were both last second shots against the West Sydney Westars and Coburg Giants respectively. Those two losses ultimately denied Adelaide a perfect season but earned the team the nickname "The Invincibles" (the nickname was given by Adelaide's multi-award-winning basketball journalist Boti Nagy). Again earning a bye into the semi-finals, Adelaide this time accounted for the Illawarra Hawks 116–92 before moving onto their second grand final in a row, this time to be played over three games instead of the single game that had been in place previously. Once again facing the Brisbane Bullets, the 36ers won the first game of the series 122–119 in overtime in front of a then NBL record crowd of over 11,000 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. Back home in Adelaide the 36ers would lose only their third game of the year (and first at home, ending a 20-game home winning streak dating back to June 1985) when they lost Game 2 83–104 at Apollo. The final game played at home in front of a packed Apollo Stadium saw the Adelaide 36ers win their first championship with a 113–91 victory. Mark Davis finished second in the NBL in total rebounds (15.8 per game), won the NBL Grand Final MVP award and also won selection in the All NBL First Team. The 36ers average winning margin in 1986 was 17.8 points and 25 years later during the 2011–12 NBL season, the 1986 36ers were named the league's greatest ever team on the NBL's official website.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Despite the on court success there was controversy at the club during the 1986 season with coach Ken Cole suspended towards the end of the regular season by the club board over his smoking of marijuana joint during a road trip to Brisbane, a situation that Cole was open about and never denied. Indeed, in a television interview he stated that he was recommended it by his family doctor as a way of dealing with health problems (diabetes) and physical pain. After the story was broken in one of Adelaide's daily newspaper's at the time, "The Advertiser", Cole was suspended by the club for the last two games and the team was coached by his assistant Don Shipway. Before the playoffs, the players got together and went to the club board demanding Cole's return, going so far as to tell the board that they would refuse to play unless Cole was coaching them. Under immense pressure from not only the players but the general public of Adelaide who supported Cole despite his admitted use of the drug, the club board relented and Cole returned for the 1986 playoffs, though it was known that he would be sacked over the incident at the end of the season regardless of a championship win or not.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Ken Cole, the 1986 NBL Coach of the Year and the 1986 championship winning coach was replaced for the 1987 NBL season by former Nunawading Sectres import guard Gary Fox, who would continue the work started by Cole by coaching Adelaide to their second minor premiership in a row with a 21–5 record, though their coaching styles were vastly different. While Cole was a coach who was high on motivating his players, Fox ran a much more stringent operation and the free-flowing 36ers of 1985 and 1986 became far more structured, much to the dismay of Al Green and Mike McKay who preferred a more free flowing offence. However, despite the change, for the third season running the team had earned a bye to the semi-finals where this time they would face the Perth Wildcats who were in their first ever playoffs. In a major upset the defending NBL champions lost the series 2–1 to the Wildcats. They won 99–98 in Perth but then lost games two and three 99–101 and 93–103 at Apollo. Perth had emerged from the doldrums of previous years and were the emerging power team in the NBL. The Wildcats and new coach Cal Bruton, who had left Brisbane after a public falling out with Bullets coach Brian Kerle following the 1986 season, built a team with the aim of beating the champion 36ers. Bruton recruited James Crawford to counter Mark Davis, former Harlem Globetrotter Kendall "Tiny" Pinder to counter Bill Jones, they had team captain Mike Ellis to counter Darryl Pearce and Bruton himself to oppose his best friend off the court, Al Green. The ploy worked with the Wildcats defeating the 36ers in what was considered an upset, though the Wildcats would be swept in the Grand Final by the Bullets.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: After winning the Grand Final MVP award in 1986, Mark Davis would continue to have a major impact on the NBL when he jointly won the league's MVP award with Brisbane's Leroy Loggins. Davis also led the league in rebounding for the third straight season, averaging 17.8 for the year.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Adelaide finished with their third minor premiership in a row and the second under Gary Fox after finishing with a 19–5 record in 1988 but would again be beaten Semi-finalists. Bill Jones was replaced as team captain by Fox who appointed Australian Boomers representative Darryl Pearce as the new captain. Against the Ken Cole coached Falcons in Newcastle in Round 2, Darryl Pearce would set a still standing single game scoring record for the 36ers when he scored 48 points including 11 of 14 three-point attempts. 1988 also saw 6'10" (208 cm), Adelaide born centre and Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) attendee Mark Bradtke make his NBL debut for the 36ers. Bradtke had been signed by Ken Cole in 1986 as a 6'8" (203 cm) 16 year with more growing to come. Bradtke however, living in Brisbane at the time, committed to the AIS for two years before joining Adelaide. Playing mostly as a backup centre to the more experienced Bill Jones (and often playing as backup Power forward to Mark Davis), Bradtke played in 23 games, averaging 7.4 points and 5.4 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Both Darryl Pearce and Mark Bradtke won selection for Australia at the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, helping the team to finish 4th after being defeated 49–78 in the bronze medal playoff game by a United States team that included future NBA Hall of Fame players David Robinson and Mitch Richmond as well as NBA players Dan Majerle, Danny Manning and Hersey Hawkins. Bradtke's selection at age 18 making him the youngest player at the time to ever represent Australia in Basketball at the Summer Olympics (Bradtke turned 19 during the games).


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: 1989 was to be Gary Fox's last season with the Adelaide 36ers and it saw the team drop to 6th on the regular season ladder with a 15–9 record. Bill Jones left the team to join former coach Ken Cole in Newcastle and was replaced as an import player by 1983 NCAA West Coast Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year and former Los Angeles Lakers draft pick, 6'7" (201 cm) Orlando Phillips. The team had a down year by its recent standards and Adelaide was eliminated in the Elimination Final by their playoff nemesis, the Perth Wildcats. With Jones now gone from the team, Mark Bradtke became the starting centre for the 36ers and his star continued to rise with the Olympic representative winning the NBL's Most Improved Player award. Bradtke averaged 15.0 points, 7.6 rebounds and 1.3 blocks per game over the 24 game season.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: 36ers long time assistant coach Don Shipway was appointed coach of the team for the 1990 NBL season which saw the team miss the playoffs for the first time since 1983 when they finished 9th with an 11–15 record, the club's first ever losing season. Mark Davis replaced Darryl Pearce captain of the team in 1990, a position he would hold until the end of the 1996 season. 1990 also saw the final year for former captain and local favourite Peter Ali who retired from playing at the end of the season after 279 games, 141 of them with the 36ers since 1985.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Shipway was retained as coach for the 1991 NBL season despite the team's worst ever performance in 1990. With the recruitment of import point guard Butch Hays to replace Al Green who had been pushed out and would join Newcastle, as well as a skinny 6'10" (208 cm), 19 year old, Noarlunga Tigers player Brett Wheeler joining the team to give extra size that the team lacked outside Bradtke, the team turned their form around finishing the regular season in 4th place with a 16–10 record. They lost their semi-final series to their nemesis, defending and eventual league champion the Perth Wildcats, missing out on their third grand final appearance in 5 years. 1991 was the last season that local favourite and former captain Darryl Pearce would play for the club, signing with the North Melbourne Giants from 1992. The season was also the team's last playing out of the 3,000 seat Apollo Stadium which had opened in 1969 as a new venue was due to be opened for the 1992 season.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Adelaide had played at the Apollo Stadium since the team's inception in 1982. However ticket demand was more than double that of what Apollo could hold (often tickets for games would be sold out in less than an hour), so in conjunction with the Basketball Association of South Australia (BASA), a new home for basketball in South Australia was opened in 1992 in the western suburb of Findon. Built on the site of a former rubbish dump, he AU$16m, 8,000 seat Clipsal Powerhouse quickly became a fortress for the 36ers with every game played in front of a sell-out crowd (at an open day for the new arena staged a week before the opening round, the 36ers sold over 6,000 season tickets for the 1992 season). However their road form wasn't so good and they dropped to 9th on the table with an 11–13 record. Mark Bradtke and Mike McKay would go on to represent Australia at the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona. 1992 was also the rookie NBL season for Brett Maher who would go on to play a record 525 games for the club and captain the team to three NBL championships.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: After their second losing season, the 36ers replaced Don Shipway as coach with American Don Monson for the 1993 season. The team had lost centre Mark Bradtke to the Melbourne Tigers in acrimonious circumstances during the off-season, but gained experience in NBL championship winners, Adelaide born Aussie Boomers captain Phil Smyth and veteran 6'11" (211 cm) centre Willie Simmons, both from the Canberra Cannons. Adelaide improved to a 14–12 record under Monson and made the playoffs finishing in 7th place but were beaten in the quarter-finals by the defending NBL champion South East Melbourne Magic. Whyalla junior and AIS attendee, barrel chested 6'5" (195 cm) forward Chris Blakemore was named the 1993 NBL Rookie of the Year, while 8th year guard (and future team coach) Scott Ninnis was voted as the NBL's Most Improved Player, scoring a career best 20.1 points and 4.4 assists per game after returning from two seasons in Melbourne with the Eastside Spectres and the Magic respectively. Ninnis, who made his NBL debut in 1985, had been part of the 1986 championship squad.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers pulled off a major signing between the 1993 and 1994 seasons when they enticed the league's 1993 MVP Robert Rose away from the Magic. The undersized 36ers also acquired 6'8" (203 cm) forward Andrew Svaldenis from the Hobart Devils. They also had a new head coach in former NCAA coach Mike Dunlap. Finishing in 4th place with a 19–8 record, the 36ers won their semi-final series against the defending champion Melbourne Tigers to win their way into the 1994 NBL Grand Final series against the North Melbourne Giants. The win over the Tigers came at a cost though as team captain Mark Davis's court time was limited in the Grand Final after dislocating his right shoulder during the first game of the semi-finals. Adelaide went down to the Giants 0–2, losing game one at the Powerhouse 93–95 in overtime and game two at The Glass House in Melbourne 117–97. Robert Rose averaged 32 points for the 36ers over the two grand final games, scoring 33 in game one and 31 in game two. He played a major role in game one as Adelaide came back from 63–77 down in the last period down to level the game at 84-84 at the end of regulation time and most felt that had Adelaide won the series he would have been the leading candidate for the Grand Final MVP award. The award was deservedly won by Giants centre and future three time 36ers championship player Paul Rees.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Despite the departure of Phil Smyth to the Sydney Kings, Adelaide's good form continued into 1995 with the team reaching the semi-finals where they were eliminated by their playoff nemesis Perth who had also eliminated them in the 1987 and 1991 semi-finals, and the 1989 elimination final. After the 1995 season and twice winning the club's MVP award in his two seasons in Adelaide, Robert Rose was let go by the club who claimed that his asking price was too high. Privately the talk was that at 31 years of age, the club felt his best years were behind him. However, rumours had been circulating around Adelaide that former NCAA college coach Dunlap preferred to coach younger players who still could be taught and didn't get along very well with the team's older players, which led to the departures of Mike McKay (Brisbane), Phil Smyth (Sydney) and Robert Rose (Canberra). Dunlap had also been in hot water over an incident in the 1995 Semi-finals against Perth. During a time out of Game 1 at the Powerhouse, Dunlap had instructed Chris Blakemore to basically belt the next Perth player who went through the key. Minutes later, Blackmore backhanded Martin Cattalini as he cut through the key, giving him a cut on his mouth that required 15 stitches, an incident which almost led to a brawl (Cattalini later told that not retaliating was self-preservation as Blakemore, who looked more like a professional wrestler than a basketball player, had gained a reputation of one player not to mess with). Although Blakemore was suspended for Game 2 of the series in Perth, the club had not been happy with Dunlap's handling of the situation.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The team had recruited well going into the 1996 NBL season, obtaining forwards Martin Cattalini from the championship winning Perth Wildcats, and serial slam dunking forward Leon Trimmingham from the Sydney Kings, as well as 2nd year guard John Rillie from the Brisbane Bullets, while Chris Blakemore was released to join Canberra. Despite continued good form which saw the 36ers again make the playoffs under Dunlap in 1996, the 36ers were again eliminated in the semi-finals. Following the sudden death of his father after the 1996 season, coach Dunlap return home to the United States and decided to stay there to be closer to his family. However, it was not as simple as it looked. Since joining the 36ers, Dunlap had been systematically removing the older players from the squad, but when he wanted to release captain and club legend Mark Davis, the club board stood by Davis and after his father's passing it was mutually agreed that Dunlap would not return as coach.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: During the 1996 season, 36ers guard Brett Maher was selected to play for the Australian Boomers at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Maher, Mark Davis (who had become an Australian citizen in 1992), Brett Wheeler and Chris Blakemore had all made their debut for the Boomers in March 1995 at the Clipsal Powerhouse in the first of a 5-game series with the touring Magic Johnson All-Stars.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The club hired Dunlap's assistant and former Gold Coast Rollers coach Dave Claxton as his replacement for the 1997 NBL season. This season also saw Brett Maher take over the team captaincy from Mark Davis, something he would hold until his retirement in 2009, a record total of 381 games. Adelaide finished with a 14–16 record in 1997, finishing in 7th place and missing the playoffs for the first time since 1992.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Claxton, who was only signed by the club at the last moment due to unexpectedly losing Mike Dunlap, was only signed for one season as head coach and following the 1997 season was replaced by rookie coach and former player Phil Smyth (it was incorrectly believed that Claxton had been sacked). Smyth was hired despite his only previous coaching experience being as a specialist coach at the Australian Institute of Sport during his playing days in Canberra. The club was banking on his years of NBL and international experience to translate into coaching. The gamble worked and the 36ers turned their fortunes around under Smyth and finished the regular season in 2nd place with a 19–11 record. The club head recruited 6'9" (205 cm) centre Paul Rees from North Melbourne as well as former Denver Nuggets guard, 6'5" (196 cm) Darnell Mee (who joined the team from the Canberra Cannons) and his former Nuggets teammate, 6'6" (198 cm) forward Kevin Brooks. They won through to the 1998 NBL Grand Final series by finally disposing their Finals nemesis the Perth Wildcats in just 2 games. In the Grand Final they would be up against the South East Melbourne Magic where they would win the club's first championship since 1986 defeating the Magic 2–0, winning Game 1 100–93 at home and Game 2 90–62 at Melbourne Park. Kevin Brooks was named the Grand Final MVP in what was the last ever winter season for the National Basketball League. The 36ers had not been expected to defeat the Brian Goorjian coached Magic who had a 26-4 regular season record and had easily swept the Brisbane Bullets in the Semi-finals. Amazingly, Game 1 of the Grand Final was only the second time the 36ers had defeated the Magic since the Eastside Melbourne Spectres and Southern Melbourne Saints had merged to form the Magic in 1992. The 36ers only other win against the Magic had been in 1997 at the Powerhouse.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Following the 1998 season, the NBL moved from being a winter league to playing during Australia's summer, meaning that seasons would start in October and finish in March rather than go from April to November (in preparation for the change, the 1998 season had started in January and ran to July rather than the usual April to October/November). The change in time slot didn't stop the defending NBL champion 36ers though as they finished the 1998–99 regular season with their first minor premiership since 1988 with an 18–8 record. Again winning their way into the Grand Final series, they became three time NBL champions and the first team to win back to back titles since Perth in 1990 and 1991 by defeating the Victoria Titans two games to one. Captain Brett Maher was voted the Grand Final MVP and coach Phil Smyth had his second championship in two years of coaching.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: At the conclusion of the 1999 NBL championship season, the 36ers were invited to take part in the McDonald's Championship, held at the 12,000 seat Fila Forum in Milan, Italy. The 36ers finished 5th out of 6 in the tournament with a 1–1 record. After losing their first game 90–79 to Brazilian side CR Vasco da Gama, the team won the 5–6 place playoff 91–84 over Lebanese team Hekmeh BC. The 1999 McDonald's Championship was won by NBA champions the San Antonio Spurs who defeated Vasco da Gama 103–68 in the final. To date this was the last McDonald's Championship held.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers form would continue in both the 1999–2000 and 2000–01 seasons, despite losing star import forward Kevin Brooks to the Sydney Kings for the 1999–00 season after the NBL ruled that the 36ers could not keep him and remain under the salary cap, though he would return in 2000–01. They were again minor premiers in 1999–2000 with a 22–6 record but missed out on becoming the first team to win three NBL championships in a row when they lost in the Semi-finals to the Titans. Following the 1999–00 season, Brett Maher and Martin Cattalini were selected to represent the Australian Boomers at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: After falling to 6th on the ladder at the end of 2000–01 and just scraping into the playoffs, the 36ers would again only advance as far as the Semi-finals before losing to the eventual champions, the Wollongong Hawks. Import Darnell Mee, in his fourth year with the club would win his third consecutive NBL Best Defensive Player award but would be lost to the club at the end of the season due to salary cap restraints.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 2000–01 season was also the last for longtime Adelaide favourite and former club captain Mark Davis who retired from playing after 482 NBL games, all with the Adelaide 36ers. At the time of his retirement, Mark Davis was the NBL's all-time leading rebounder having grabbed 5,200 in his career, averaging 10.7 per game. He was also the 36ers all-time leading scorer with 8,752 points (18.2 pg) and the team's leading shot blocker with 301 (0.6 pg). Davis was an integral member of the 1986, 1998 and 1998–99 championship teams.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: 2001–02 would see the Adelaide 36ers win a then record fourth NBL title and the third for coach Phil Smyth. The team would finish the regular season in 3rd place with a 17–13 record before winning their way into their sixth NBL Grand Final. Facing the West Sydney Razorbacks, Adelaide were victorious two games to one. Adelaide's 125 points in game 3 is the highest ever score in an NBL Grand Final game while they also hit a Grand Final record 19 three-pointers in the game. Adelaide captain Brett Maher became only the second player in NBL history along with Perth's Ricky Grace to win two Grand Final MVP awards. Joining the club that year was import shooting guard Willie Farley as well as local juniors Oscar Forman and Jacob Holmes.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Under Phil Smyth, Adelaide were beaten Elimination-Finalists in both 2002–03 and 2003–04. They were beaten quarter-finalists in both the 2004–05 and 2005–06 seasons. The 2006–07 NBL season saw the 36ers miss the playoffs for the first time since Smyth took over as coach, finishing a club record worst-place of 11th with an 11–13 record. They would again miss the playoffs in 2007–08 finishing in 9th place with a 14–16 record. Following his second losing season, the team decided to replace Phil Smyth as head coach with former player and Smyth assistant Scott Ninnis.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Ninnis would coach the team for two seasons of a 3-season contract, leading the team to the Elimination Finals in 2008–09. The team, which included local junior and former NBA player, 7'1" (216 cm) centre Luke Schenscher, finished the regular season in 6th place with a 15–15 record before losing their quarter final 131–101 to the New Zealand Breakers in Auckland. 2009 was also the last season for the club games record holder Brett Maher who was retiring after 526 NBL games and three championships with the 36ers. The 2009–10 season was a disaster however and the Adelaide 36ers finished on the bottom of the NBL ladder for the first time in their history with a 10–18 record. Former Michigan State Spartans NCAA Final Four championship winner and now naturalised Australian, 6'9" (205 cm) forward/centre Adam Ballinger, in his third season with the club became team captain in 2009–10 following the retirement of Maher.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Long serving club captain Brett Maher, who made his 36ers debut on the night they opened the Clipsal Powerhouse, retired from the NBL having played in 525 games for the club, captaining the club to 3 NBL championships (1998, 1998/99, 2001/02), and twice winning the NBL's Grand Final MVP award in 1998/99 and 2001/02. On the occasion of his last home game against the New Zealand Breakers in front of an overflow crowd of more than 8,000 fans, the main court at The Dome was renamed the Brett Maher Court. Maher also played over 100 games for the Australian Boomers and had the honour of captaining the Boomers at the 2001 Goodwill Games held in Brisbane, becoming the first 36ers player to captain his country.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Following the club's worst ever season, Scott Ninnis was sacked as coach and replaced by former AIS coach Marty Clarke for the 2010–11 NBL season. Clarke, a former guard who had won the NBL Grand Final with the North Melbourne Giants in 1989, had experience coaching at the AIS, though he had never before coached an NBL team nor had he any experience coaching a senior team in any competition.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Adelaide and Clarke endured a difficult season in 2010–11. They lost guard Nathan Herbert before the season with an Anterior cruciate ligament injury. Further injuries to import guards Troy DeVries and Craig Winder ultimately saw them replaced in the squad. For the first time in their history, the Adelaide 36ers failed to win at least 10 games in a season, finishing with a 9–19 record. They did avoid their second straight last place finish only because the returning Sydney Kings finished with an 8–20 record. Captain Adam Ballinger was again the club's leading player as he won his fourth straight club MVP award, finished third in the NBL's MVP voting and was selected to the NBL's All Third team.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Things didn't get any better for the 36ers or Clarke in the 2011–12 and 2012–13 seasons. The club finished with the wooden spoon in both seasons and ended each with an 8–20 record, including a club record losing streak of 8 straight games during each season. The club was also plagued by a string of failed imports, though most were lost through injury, others either under-performed or were misused by the coaching staff, with one of the only shining lights being power forward Diamon Simpson who posted 12 double-doubles in 27 games. At the end of the 2012–13 NBL season coach Clarke and his assistant coach Mark Radford were let go by the club. There were bright spots though. The emergence of 6'11" (212 cm) centre Daniel Johnson as a scoring and rebounding threat (he led the club in scoring for both seasons and led the NBL with 8 rebounds per game in 2012–13), the signing of former Gold Coast Blaze players Adam Gibson, Anthony Petrie and Jason Cadee, and the emergence of exciting young Victorian Swingman and crowd favourite Mitch Creek (who suffered a season ending Achilles tendon injury in mid-2012–13), gave fans hope for the future.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: For the 2013–14 NBL season, the Adelaide 36ers signed the 2007 NBL championship winning coach Joey Wright as their new head coach and added former 36ers championship player Kevin Brooks as his assistant. In desperate need of on-court direction, the club also signed the 2011 NBL MVP, point guard Gary Ervin. After Round 7 of the season the 36ers, led by Ervin and Johnson, were sitting in 2nd place on the NBL ladder with a 7–2 record which included a 5–0 run. This also saw the team sweep both of their games against the Breakers in Auckland, their first wins over the triple defending champions since 2009. During Rd.7 the 36ers underlined their championship credentials when they defeated the previously undefeated Perth Wildcats 91–86 in front of 6,585 fans at the Adelaide Arena, the largest 36ers home crowd since Brett Maher's last home game in 2009.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers run in 2013–14 which saw them finish the regular season in second place with an 18-10 record. They then defeated the Melbourne Tigers 2-1 in their Semi-final series before going down 2-1 in the Grand Final series to their long time nemesis Perth who won their record 6th NBL championship. Daniel Johnson won his third straight club MVP award and was also named to the All NBL First Team. Game 2 of the Grand Final series also saw the club's record home attendance of 8,127 at the Adelaide Arena with the 36ers keeping the series alive with an 89–84 win.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 2015–16 season saw the 36ers sign import point guard Jerome Randle to replace Kenyon McNeail, who sustained an injury and left after three games, while the team also acquired young guard Nathan Sobey from the Cairns Taipans. Randle led the league in scoring and earned the inaugural NBL Australia Post Fan's MVP. Despite Randle's great individual season, the 36ers failed to make the playoffs with a 14–14 record.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In the 2016 NBL off-season, the 36ers managed to retain superstar Jerome Randle as well as signing promising young prospects Anthony Drmic, the younger brother of former NBL player Frank Drmic, Sudanese born local Majok Deng and import forward/centre Eric Jacobsen. Also joining the club was NBA Draft prospect, 18-year-old high school star from Tulsa, Oklahoma named Terrance Ferguson, a 6'7" (201 cm) shooting guard who joined Adelaide rather than commit to playing college basketball.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: While most experts predicted the young and relatively inexperienced 36ers to finish last, the 2016–17 NBL season saw the 36ers emerge as the team to beat. After a slow start which saw the team with a 3-6 record by Round 7 where they took a 105–87 mauling at home by the Brisbane Bullets (who returned to the NBL for the first time since 2008), plus early season injuries to captain Mitch Creek (ankle) and Daniel Johnson (hamstring), the 36ers turned their season around from Round 8 with a 101–83 away win over Brisbane, highlighted by a monster Terrance Ferguson dunk. With Creek and Johnson back on deck as well as the MVP form of Randle and Nathan Sobey looking a strong candidate for the NBL's Most Improved Player award, the team went on a charge, winning 14 of their next 15 games and by the end of Round 16 of the 19 round season had been confirmed as minor premiers for the first time since the 1999–2000, being an incredible 5 games ahead of the chasing pack. Despite being so far in front, Adelaide lost their final four games of the regular season and still finished two games ahead of the top. Their loss of momentum proved costly in the NBL Final Series, with the 36ers bundled out in a three-game series against the Illawarra Hawks.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: With the 36ers' list proving it had what it takes to contend the championship, Joey Wright locked in all eight Australians players (Mitch Creek, Nathan Sobey, Daniel Johnson, Matthew Hodgson, Brendan Teys, Majok Deng, Anthony Drmic and Adam Doyle) from the 2016-17 roster for the 2017-18 season. One notable absence from the roster was star US import, Jerome Randle, who was replaced by experienced guard, Shannon Shorter. Philadelphian shooting guard, Ramone Moore, and athletic forward Ronald Roberts took the other two import spots to complete the list. In mid-September 2017, the 36ers travelled to Singapore in the pre-season to compete in the Merlion Cup. The team remained undefeated throughout the tournament and defeated the Shanghai Sharks in the final to be crowned the 2017 Merlion Cup Champions.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Sixers impressed on the road early, but struggled to string consistent performances together, winning half of their first 16 games. A disappointing 19-point loss against the Cairns Taipans at home on Christmas Eve was the turning point for the Sixers, who went on to win 10 of their last 12 games, including seven-in-a-row, and booking themselves second spot on the ladder at the end of the regular season.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers defeated the Perth Wildcats in a straight sweep of the Semi-Final Series, to secure their spot in the Grand Final Series against Melbourne United. The series was a hard fought battle, with both teams winning on their home court to level the series at one-all. In the deciding game in Melbourne, United were too strong for the Sixers defeating them to take the 2017-18 championship, 100-82.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers have reached the playoffs 24 times in 34 full seasons, and on top of their four championships in 1986, 1998, 1998–99 and 2001–02, they reached the Grand Final in 1985, 1994, 2013–14 and 2017-18. They have also finished as minor premier on six occasions (1986, 1987, 1988, 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2016–17), and reached the NBL semi-finals in 1987, 1988, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2014–15, 2016–17 and 2017–18.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers were previously sponsored by Pura Milk and with the naming rights of Pura Milk 36ers. Before this they were the West End 36ers (as in West End Brewery) during their first title year (1986) while also taking various names from West End products including being known for a time during the 1990s as the Eagle Super 6ers. In 2009 the team was sponsored by Hood Sweeney, an Adelaide-based consulting firm and were known as the Hood Sweeney Adelaide 36ers. Other major sponsors include Kia Motors and Sprint Auto Parts. In 2017-18 the Adelaide 36ers' major partners were Pathion, Scouts, Ananda, Goodlife and Villi's.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The first head coach of the Adelaide City Eagles in 1982 was Mike Osborne, who would coach the team (renamed the Adelaide 36ers in 1983) until the end of the 1984 season.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: As of the 2016–17 NBL season, the Adelaide 36ers have had eleven head coaches, including Ken Cole who coached the team to two NBL Grand Finals in his two seasons with the club (1985 and 1986) and led the team to their first ever championship in 1986, the first time the NBL Grand Final was a best of 3 series instead of a single championship game. Cole is also the only 36ers coach to be named as the NBL's Coach of the Year having won the award in 1986.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Former St Kilda import guard Gary Fox took over as coach in 1987 after Cole's sensational sacking from the club and led the team to the 1987 and 1988 minor premiership, but the team was defeated in the Semi-finals each season by the Perth Wildcats and Canberra Cannons respectively. Fox's last season with Adelaide was 1989 where the team finished as beaten Elimination finalists.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Fox was replaced by the club's long-time assistant coach Don Shipway who coached the team from 1990–1992. Unfortunately, Shipway will more be remembered for slapping a fan during a time-out of an away game against the Hobart Devils in 1992. The NBL suspended Shipway for 4 games (later reduced to 2 on appeal). Shipway was replaced for the 1993 season by veteran American coach Don Monson.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: American Mike Dunlap who led the team to the 1994 NBL Grand Final series against the North Melbourne Giants, and the 1995 NBL Semi-finals, went on to become head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats of the NBA for one season in 2012–13, becoming the first person to be a head coach in both the NBL and the NBA.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers longest serving coach was Adelaide born Australian basketball legend Phil Smyth. "The General" coached the team for 11 seasons from 1998 to 2007–08, leading the club to the 1998, 1998–99 and 2001–02 NBL championships. In 1998 Smyth became the first rookie coach since Brian Kerle in the league's inaugural season (1979) to win an NBL championship, thought unlike Kerle, Smyth had limited previous senior coaching experience. He had coached the South Adelaide Panthers senior women's team in the early 1980s and later was a part-time specialist coach at the Canberra based Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) during his playing days with the Canberra Cannons from 1983–1992.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: As of 2016–17, the Adelaide 36ers are coached by the 2006–07 NBL championship (Brisbane Bullets) winning coach Joey Wright, with former dual 36ers championship player Kevin Brooks as the assistant coach.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In April 2006 the 36ers, the Adelaide Lightning WNBL team and the team's home venue, the Distinctive Homes Dome (now the Adelaide Arena), went up for sale due to mishandling of debt owed to the government by the then owner BASA. On 25 July 2006, a consortium of NBL chairman Mal Hemmerling, and Eddy Groves of ABC Learning bought the Adelaide 36ers and the Distinctive Homes Dome for $3.95 million – with Hemmerling in place as owner of the 36ers and Groves as the owner of the stadium. The money for the sale went to the government to wipe out the debt owed by BASA. BASA is now defunct and replaced by Basketball SA – focused solely on all Basketball in SA and no one competition.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In June 2009, Hemmerling sold the team to a group of eight individuals led by new club chairman Mark Lewis and new club CEO Ben Fitzsimons called the Save Our Sixers Consortium.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In June 2015, a new group acquired the Adelaide 36ers' licence from the NBL which included management of Titanium Security Arena, the former Adelaide Arena.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In December 2016, Adelaide businessman, Grant Kelley, joined the Adelaide 36ers as majority shareholder, before becoming outright owner of the club in March 2017.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Between 1982 and 1991, the home court of the Eagles/36ers was the old 3,000 seated Apollo Stadium which had been built in 1969. From 1985 onward, home games were usually in front of sell-out crowds, but going into the 1990s demand for 36ers tickets was greater than what Apollo Stadium could hold. Additionally, the NBL as a whole was also experiencing a boom with the Brisbane Bullets, Perth Wildcats, and Sydney Kings all enjoying record attendances in their respective cities' new entertainment centre's, the smallest of those being Perth which held almost three times what Apollo could. During their time at Apollo, the Adelaide 36ers reached the 1985 Grand Final (played in Brisbane) and hosted two games of the successful 1986 Grand Final series win over Brisbane. The 36ers final game at their original home was a 102–99 semi-final loss to the Perth Wildcats in 1991.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: By the end of the 1991 NBL season, Adelaide was one of only 5 teams in the league (there were 14) who did not have a home venue that could hold at least 5,000 fans, and it was the only state capital based team (other than the unrepresented Darwin) not to have a home venue that could hold at least 5,200 fans.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers and the BASA built a new home arena in the western suburb of Findon, which opened in 1992. Initially it was thought that the 36ers would move into the 10,500 seat, South Australian Government owned Adelaide Entertainment Centre, which opened in 1991. The Entertainment Centre had been built as the replacement for Apollo Stadium as Adelaide's major indoor concert venue as Apollo was continually being overlooked by international music acts due to its smaller size. However, rather than just be a tenant where they would pay a fee to use the facility and be subject to possible date changes due to pre-booked events, both the Adelaide 36ers and BASA wished for their own venue of operations and play that would serve as the home of basketball in South Australia.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The then-named Clipsal Powerhouse, which has an official capacity of 8,000, was and still is the largest purpose-built basketball stadium in all of Australia. Clipsal would sponsor the venue until the end of the 2001–02 season, after which it became known as the Distinctive Homes Dome in recognition of the sponsorship from Distinctive Homes.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Dome had been without a naming rights sponsor since mid-2009. However, on 7 February of that same year, before a crowd of 7,800 fans, the main court was named the Brett Maher Court. This was due in honour of retiring long time club captain Brett Maher who had made his 36ers and NBL debut on the night the Powerhouse opened in 1992. He had played all 526 career NBL games for the club on that same court. That day, the 36ers, led by Maher, who scored 17 points in his last ever home game, defeated the New Zealand Breakers by a final score of 102–91. The venue is now (as of 2015) officially known as the Titanium Security Arena due to sponsorship from Adelaide-based company Titanium Security Australia.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: During 2012 and 2013, the Adelaide Arena was in the hands of the Commonwealth Bank after former owner Eddy Groves defaulted on his loan. After much speculation that the venue would be sold and turned into a venue for other purposes, including rumours of the building being turned it into a church (effectively leaving the 36ers without a home venue and the unwanted possibility of playing at the Entertainment Centre or even the 3,000 seat Netball SA Stadium), it was announced on 3 April 2013 that SA Church Basketball and Scouts SA had become joint owners of the Adelaide Arena, ensuring it remains the home of basketball in South Australia and for both of Adelaide's national basketball teams, the 36ers and the Adelaide Lightning (Women's National Basketball League).


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The renamed Titanium Security Arena is currently the sixth-largest venue used in the National Basketball League behind the 18,200 seat Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, the 14,856 seat Perth Arena, the 14,500 capacity Brisbane Entertainment Centre, the 10,500 seat Hisense Arena in Melbourne, and the 9,300 seat Vector Arena in Auckland. It is also the only venue in the NBL that is basketball specific (though it does host other events such as netball) with all other venues either being entertainment/convention centres, tennis stadiums or general sports venues.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers highest ever home attendance was set on 11 April 2014 during Game 2 of the 2014 NBL Grand Final series against the Perth Wildcats at the Adelaide Arena. Although Perth would go on to win the 3 game series 2–1, a 36ers and South Australian basketball record 8,127 fans saw the 36ers win Game 2 89–84.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers team mascot is Murray the Magpie. The magpie was chosen as the bird is found throughout Adelaide, while Murray's first name comes from the Murray River, one of South Australia's best known landmarks. Murray wears the team's No. 36 singlet.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers currently have four retired numbers. They are No. 4 which belonged to shooting guard "The Iceman" Darryl Pearce who played 258 games from 1982–1991 and was a starter on the 1986 championship team. No. 5 which belonged to club games record holder Brett Maher who along with his 526 games also holds the club record for points scored with 8,941 and captained the club to the 1998, 1998/99 and 2001/02 NBL Championships. No.15 which was worn by American born guard Al Green who played 164 games for the club from 1985-1990 and was the point guard of the 1986 championship team, and the No. 33 which was worn by Mark Davis throughout his 482-game NBL/36ers career. Davis, the only 36ers player to win the league's MVP award in 1987, is the club record holder for rebounds (5,200 - 2nd all-time in the NBL) and played on the 1986, 1998 and 1998/99 championship teams. The club's MVP award is named the Mark Davis Trophy in his honour as Davis won the first awarded 9 MVP awards from 1985-1993.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: Darryl Pearce, who holds the record for most points in a single game as a 36er when he scored 48 against the Newcastle Falcons in 1988, and the No. 15 of star import guard Al Green who played 164 games for the club between 1985 and 1990 hung high at The Dome in Adelaide but were removed by the team owners. Their numbers were officially retired by the Adelaide 36ers during the 2015–16 NBL season.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In November 2015, Adelaide's daily newspaper "The Advertiser" ran an online poll to find the fans favourite / best ever team. The results were as follows:


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers have hosted 8 NBL Grand Final games, 2 at the Apollo Stadium and 6 at the Clipsal Powerhouse (Titanium Security Arena). The 36ers have won 5 of those 8 games with their only home losses being Game 2 of the 1986 series against Brisbane, Game 1 of 1994 against North Melbourne, and Game 2 of 1998–99 against Victoria.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The Adelaide 36ers won their first NBL championship in 1986. The team, known as the West End 36ers after sponsorship from the South Australian Brewing Company, had a 24–2 regular season record which included becoming the first team to go through the regular season unbeaten at home with a 13–0 record at the Apollo Stadium, earning them the nickname "Invincibles" given by leading basketball journalist Boti Nagy. The 36ers defeated the Illawarra Hawks in a one-sided Semi-final before gaining revenge for the 1985 Grand Final loss to the Brisbane Bullets by defeating them in the NBL's first ever three game Grand Final series 2–1.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In 2012 the NBL announced that the 1986 Adelaide 36ers were voted as the greatest single season team in league history.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: In Game 3 of the 2001–02 NBL Grand Final series at the Clipsal Powerhouse, the 36ers broke their own NBL record for the most points scored in an NBL Grand Final game of 122 (set in Game 1 of 1986) when they scored 125 points to defeat the West Sydney Razorbacks by 18 points. This record still stands as of the 2016 NBL Grand Final.


title: Adelaide 36ers

text: The 36ers have played several preseason games in the United States against National Basketball Association (NBA) teams. The first game against a NBA team was played on 5 October 2018, when Adelaide lost to Utah Jazz.