How a veteran's return sparked Taipans

Cairns Taipans coach Adam Forde credits the return of one point guard with having a big say in their home opening win against the Adelaide 36ers, on a night where he saw things starting to come together.

It was always going to be a challenging start to NBL25 for the Snakes in the absence of first choice point guards Taran Armstrong, Kyle Adnam and Jackson Makoi.

After a competitive first half, they were blown away last Saturday by the Illawarra Hawks to lose by 27 points.

The Taipans returned home for Saturday's clash with the 36ers at Cairns Convention Centre still without Armstrong and Makoi.

However, the experienced Adnam was back, and Forde credits his presence as having a big say in the 101-97 victory.

It was no surprise that having his 218 games of NBL experience out there to run the offence helped the Taipans shoot the ball better and in the end they went 53 per cent from the field overall and made 15/29 from three-point territory.

That included new import shooting guard Rob Edwards starring for 31 points on 12/17 shooting and 6/8 from deep, while big man Sam Waardenburg had 21 points and 11 rebounds on 7/13, with Jonah Antonio going 4/6 for 13 points.

That trio benefitted from the 24 minutes that Adnam played, who was making his debut with the Taipans, and had seven points and five assists.

Forde credits Edwards' and Adnam's presence for making everything else start to click and making his teammates thrive as a result.

"Credit to Rob, because we've coached him up since Taran went down at the Blitz to play a role that he's not used to," Forde said.

"He's a scoring combo guard that likes to get on the wing so we've thrown into a different position to provide that balance, but the biggest contributor is sitting right next to me (Adnam) in a sense that it allowed that stability.

"Then there's trust from Rob to know that the ball's going to come to him and it's not terminal or sit on one side of the court.

"When it got swung and got back to Kyle, it got back to Rob and building that rapport, trust, and relationship really got fast tracked in that game. It was good to see Rob trust and believe in his teammates."

The troops are now returning for the Taipans with Adnam back from his knee injury and Makoi will be available to play next Friday night at home to the Tasmania JackJumpers in his Snakes debut.

Second-year guard Armstrong is also nearing his own return from a calf injury and what Forde learned from the struggles last season of constantly having players in and out is the importance of integrating those pieces back.

He saw the instant benefit of having Adnam back had for his teammates to allow them to play in their more preferred roles and positions, and having Makoi and Armstrong will only continue to help that further.

"The experience I have from last year when we had guys in and out is about integrating back to what we want to have as our identity with guys managing that ball handling load like Rob and P (Pedro Bradshaw) have the last couple of weeks," Forde said.

"Now we get to move them back to their natural positions and the cool thing is that we've planned for that, we've prepared for that and we've already started incorporating it when Kyle is back in.

"They can already start to the see the difference in how their game opens up so much more to play to their strengths. Obviously there'll be a learning curve to that of having those guys back in sooner or later, but the transition shouldn’t take too long I hope."