Injured, exhausted and still swinging: Taipans earn respect

When the Cairns Taipans had every reason to feel like it was all getting too hard with their injury list growing by the week, coach Adam Forde instead walked away proud of the grit his seven available players showed in an overtime defeat.

Cairns produced a strong second half at home on Friday against South East Melbourne, before facing a brutal turnaround with travel, recovery, scouting and almost 3,000 kilometres covered in less than 40 hours.

Waiting for them in Adelaide was a fresher team coming off a Thursday win in Hobart, fully healthy and introducing 371-game NBA veteran Troy Brown Jr for his club debut.

The Taipans were without Sam Waardenburg, Reyne Smith, Kody Stattmann, Kyle Adnam and Alex Higgins-Titsha, leaving Forde committed to a seven man rotation that included injury replacement players Mojave King and Lachlan Barker.

Imports Admiral Schofield and Andrew Andrews were unable to find rhythm, fouled out, and combined for 10 points on 3-of-16 shooting with 9 turnovers.

Despite the result, Forde loved what he saw. It was effort, commitment and real resilience from a group stretched to its limit.

However, the Snakes refused to lie down. They rallied from a 12-point deficit and Jack McVeigh delivered a monster career night with 39 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists.

Mojave King continued his career best form with 21 points, while Kyrin Galloway knocked down 3/4 from deep for 14 points. Marcus Lee played with incredible passion despite injuries to both thumbs and still finished with 15 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists.

Forde had to lean heavily on King, McVeigh, Galloway, Lee and Lachlan Barker for most of overtime. They fell just short, but the heart and fight on display against an Adelaide team that got 41 points from Bryce Cotton and used nine players for at least 15 minutes was something their coach admired.

"We've got Marcus with both his thumbs taped up, Scho is getting acupuncture and is a pin cushion at this rate with his groins, hips and calves, and I can rattle off the list of all the nagging injuries the guys have, but they've got big hearts," Forde said.

"This is where I enjoy coaching this group because it would be easy to roll up to practice and ask where the motivation is because we've just lost again and we're bottom of the ladder, but these guys care."

Forde expanded further on why he values the standards, commitment and attitude within the group:

"It would have been easy enough to roll into Adelaide and go through the motions, tick a box and get home, but they care and played hard, and gave everything they've got.

"Now we'll go fly home and train on Monday and nobody is late, everybody's on time and they all wear their uniforms, and there's no indiscretions and there's nobody upset and showing up late or not training.

"We don't have any of that so I'm real lucky in the sense that we have return to play guys busting their arse, we've got guys on the court busting their arse, and we've got injuries, but their heart's fine and they are big, and that's what we keep asking them to deliver every week."