'Potential GOAT' plays 300th back where it all started

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The Basketball Gods have spoken: The Red Army will witness three-time Wildcats championship hero Bryce Cotton’s 300th game alongside five-time championship coach Trevor Gleeson tonight.

But the script has flipped, as both club legends return in the blue of archrivals Adelaide 36ers at 9.30 pm (AEST).

Another club legend Damian Martin paid tribute to six-time MVP Cotton, 34, during Jason Cadee’s Cut to the Jase, suggesting he could already be the NBL’s GOAT.

“Bryce kind of showed day one just how good he is,” Martin said.

“It was no surprise that his first two games were two away games and he drops 20 in both of them, and we come home with two wins. He just was phenomenal.

“He showed up, he had a professional manner about himself. He was pretty quiet, but then slowly but surely, over the course of the season, he opened up.

“Before you knew it, we went from last on the ladder to being able to hold up a championship trophy at the end of it.

“Off the court, super humble, down to earth, a family man. It took a while to really develop that chemistry away from the court just because he is such a private person.

“But when you get to know him, you’ll have nothing but respect for his morals, his values, and how he sees the world. Just a wonderful human being who happens to be potentially our greatest player of all time here in the NBL.”

It’s not the first time the Basketball Gods have been invoked this week. Former NBL MVP Derek Rucker went scorched Earth on the Wildcats for their failure to secure a point guard ahead of NBL27. They have been trying to fill the void Cotton left when he departed at the end of NBL25.

"I hope the Perth Wildcats lose most of their games – or all their games – until they pay their penance to the basketball gods for coming into this season with this incomplete line-up," Rucker, 59, hammered on NBL Overtime.

"They need to pay a price. They need to get Brandon Knight ($277,000) out there.

"And what's the time frame, Damon (Lowery)? I'm giving them 11 games - a third of the season - to pay their debt to the basketball universe.”

Cotton reunited with Gleeson in Adelaide ahead of this season after Mike Wells stepped aside despite taking the 36ers to within a play of the NBL26 Championship.

“(Trevor) kind of gives us that freedom,” Cotton said after Adelaide rolled Melbourne United in Round 1.

“He’ll give us a couple of plays that we can run, but then he trusts what we see out there.

“He gives us the leniency, if we see something different, to go out there and make the adjustment.

“Our job is to make sure we don’t abuse that power he gives us.

“Whenever he calls a play, we do it to the best of our ability to execute. But it just felt so good to be out there playing against another team because pre-season has been crazy, and I forgot how crazy.”

Wildcats captain Jesse Wagstaff was already thinking about Cotton and Gleeson coming back to Perth after getting hammered by the South East Melbourne Phoenix on Saturday night. But he admitted he’d missed some of the significance.

“I didn’t know that,” Wagstaff said.

“Sorry, I knew Trev was coming to town. I didn’t know it was BC’s 300th.

“It’s huge. We share a lot of history. I saw Trev tonight in blue, and it looked a bit weird.

“It’s good to have a player of that caliber and a coach of that caliber in the league.

“At the end of the day, I’m sure they want to come in here and beat us, and we want to beat them.

“It’ll be competitive.

“It’s good to have Trev back in the league and it’s good that BC is still around, so it should be a good battle.”