DJ stays sharp, stays dangerous

All DJ Vasiljevic was focused on when he arrived in Adelaide was bringing NBL success back to the 36ers, and he continues to live by that mindset as he delivered another reminder of what a game breaker he can be.

The hardest thing for any star player to accept is a lesser role. For someone with the shooting ability and credentials of Vasiljevic, being asked to come off the bench could have gone one of two ways.

However, his only priority when he joined the 36ers early in NBL24 was to help return the club to success. Whatever role coach Mike Wells asks him to play in order to achieve that, he is happy to embrace.

"I'm just trying to win a championship and if that means play or don't play, come off the bench or start, I do the same thing every day," Vasiljevic said.

"I come in and do my work, I trust the process and then come in and do what I do best.

"It's just staying a professional, man, I've won two championships in five years and wouldn’t mind a third in six, and then hopefully a fourth in seven if I'm that lucky.

"I just want to be known as a winner, I want to be a winner."

Vasiljevic has lived up to those words and nowhere was that more evident than Saturday night in Melbourne, where the Sixers cemented second spot heading into the FIBA Break, with a 94 to 81 win over South East Melbourne.

Vasiljevic played fewer than four minutes in the first half and didn’t score, but Wells turned to him heavily in the third. He responded with a three-pointer and a couple of free throws.

Then he exploded in the fourth, doing what few players in the league can. Vasiljevic buried five three pointers and piled on 17 points in the term to help the Sixers secure a statement victory.

His 22 second half points and six threes were instrumental in the result, but at the end of the day he wouldn’t have cared who scored, as long as Adelaide finished on top.

"Obviously South East is a great team and it was like playoff basketball out there," Vasiljevic said.

"That's the intensity it had and that's where we had to find ways where we couldn’t go back and forth just score, score, score.

"We had to get some stops too which we did in the second half and we blew the game open halfway through the fourth and were able to sustain that, which was good."

Vasiljevic was back in his hometown on Saturday night and had some fun with the Phoenix crowd, but also with former Sydney Kings championship teammate Jordan Hunter, who has developed into a standout three-point shooting big man.

"I think that was Jordi Hunter at the bench," he said.

"Obviously Jordi and I were teammates before and he said something on the possession down, and I chirped back at him. I told him to sit down and watch."