United celebrate Goulding's 450th in style

Melbourne United continue to be the NBL team you would least like to face coming off a loss as they put on an impressive all-round showing to beat the previously on-fire Adelaide 36ers 106-79.

United got better the longer the game went to win by 27 points on the back of 53 per cent field goal shooting and 26 assists to just eight turnovers to celebrate the 450th game of captain Chris Goulding (13 points).

The 36ers arrived at John Cain Arena on Sunday afternoon on the back of three straight victories including at home to the Sydney Kings on Friday night to be the form team of NBL25.

Melbourne had a whole week to stew over losing their home opener last Sunday against the Cairns Taipans having not lost consecutive games last season until the Championship Series.

It was still a high-scoring and entertaining first half with plenty of momentum swings including Adelaide finishing the opening quarter strongly to be leading 29-24.

The longer it went, the more United worked on top to be leading 58-52 by half-time and dominating the third period with 21 points to eight including an individual 8-0 run from big man Marcus Lee (13 points, five rebounds, three blocks).

Melbourne went on to score the 27-point win from there to improve to 4-2 with Ian Clark top-scoring with 18 points and three assists with Rob Loe adding 16 points and six rebounds, Jack White 15 points and seven boards, and Matthew Dellavedova 11 points and eight assists.

United coach Dean Vickerman was especially happy with the third quarter performance.

"I like eight points against, that's great, and I thought it was our whole group in that third quarter," he said.

"The starting group forced a timeout pretty quickly and then the bench group caused eight stops in-a-row and then got scored on, but had another three stops in-a-row.

"The way we locked down defensively with little adjustments from half-time and the focus was on Davis and DJ all night, and we did a solid job."

It was a tired looking Adelaide team as they shot just 37 per cent and went 3/16 from three-point range with Isaac Humphries a shining light with 16 points, six rebounds and three blocks.

Captain DJ Vasiljevic had a tough outing thanks to both Shea Ili and Dellavedova for just eight points with three turnovers on 3/12 shooting.

Montrezl Harrell did have 12 points and nine rebounds, and Kendric Davis 17 points and two assists.

Sixers coach Mike Wells knows that there will still be some growing paints as his group finds their feet.

"This group has not been together a long time and we haven’t been in a lot of road games like this yet so it's a different game when you go on the road," he said.

"You travel over here and you're trying to get organised, and trying to get your game plan set so every one of these situations for us trying to move our group forward and trying to be the best version of ourselves is important.

"The scoreboard wasn’t in our favour today, but there's a lot of lessons as this group moves forward."

Ian Clark started on fire with a couple of quick threes for Melbourne and Jack White helped himself to seven points in the 20-16 lead for the home team, but it was all the Sixers for the rest of the opening term.

The 36ers closed the frame with a 13-4 run to go into quarter-time 29-24 before stretching that lead out to seven to start the second.

Rob Loe had a hot start to the second quarter for Melbourne including draining a couple of long balls to help the home team back to the lead, with that advantage out to eight following an and-one play from milestone man Chris Goulding.

United were still leading 58-52 by the half-time interval on the back of 12 points each from Loe and Clark with 11 from White with Melbourne shooting 54 per cent while Adelaide weren’t far off with 51 per cent shooting and Isaac Humphries putting up 14 points.

Melbourne then blew the game open in the third quarter including an early 9-0 run that included a second three of the game from Goulding.

Marcus Lee was then rolling hard to the basket and made four consecutive shots at the rim for United as the lead ballooned to 21 just before three quarter-time.

Melbourne continued to do what they pleased in the pick-and-roll with Loe and Lee having a field day with United ending up cruising to the 27-point win against a clearly weary 36ers outfit.

Both teams now don't play again until next Sunday with United taking on the South East Melbourne Phoenix in a Throwdown while the 36ers will be at home to the Tasmania JackJumpers.

HUNGRY JACK'S NBL SEASON 2024/25

MELBOURNE UNITED 106 (Clark 18, Loe 16, White 15)

ADELAIDE 36ERS 79 (Davis 17, Humphries 16, Harrell 12)

BOX SCORE