Tasmania, Melbourne get tough in finals battle

Tasmania JackJumpers coach Scott Roth has compared the club’s Semi-Final series against Melbourne United to the famous Chicago Bulls v Detroit Pistons NBA battles of the 80’s and 90’s.

Michael Jordan’s Bulls and the Bad Boy Pistons formulated a bitter rivalry underpinned by tough, physical, and relentless defence.

After United defeated the JackJumpers in game one of the Semi-Finals, 74-63, Roth labelled the game as “smash-mouth” basketball.  

“It’s a battle, this is probably back when I played it’s the Detroit Pistons v Chicago Bulls kind of old-school basketball smash-mouth, bang-up kind of game,” Roth said.

Roth also praised his team for not surrendering after a tough 21-7 third quarter.

“They’ve (United) got some pitbulls in the back court that can really get after you…they got some really good athletes, it’s a hell of a team,” he said.

“We’re really proud of our guys for not just imploding and letting go of it and fighting back in this game and making it respectable.

“Not too many times you walk out of a game, and you hold your opponents to 74 points, and you think you’ve lost a game like that. We had a good fight.”

Melbourne coach Dean Vickerman echoed Roth’s thoughts, declaring the defending champions pride themselves on defence.

“Any time you put arguably the two best defensive teams in the league in a playoff series, I’m not surprised by what we saw tonight,” Vickerman said.

“The commitment of both teams to defend and to fight through screens and do everything they can to make it difficult.

“I enjoyed those battles back in the day. I was a Pistons’ fan back in the day. We’re certainly not the Bad Boys, but we get after it defensively.”

The series heads to Tasmania on Saturday night where United will look to advance to the Grand Final while the JackJumpers fight to force a decisive game three.

Tip-off for game two is 8:00pm AEST Saturday and it will be broadcast on ESPN via Foxtel and Kayo Freebies.