When an incident such as the one that occurred last night at the Jungle occurs, it’s easy to get reactionary.

However, at such times I believe the best strategy is go back to our mission first: “We exist to inspire and entertain through excellence”.

Clearly we didn’t! And for that we as an organisation apologise unreservedly.

Put simply, we as a club are better than that.

It is very important to ensure that we don’t focus on any one person. Blame achieves nothing.

Rather, we as an entire organisation, must take responsibility, learn the valuable lesson and witness this change through our actions in the future.

The National Basketball League (NBL) has fined the Melbourne Tigers club $15,000 and suspended court announcer Wayne Peterson for inappropriate behaviour towards game officials.
The club has been fined $15,000 for McPeake’s actions in approaching the scorebench and abusing the game officials as well as making an obscene gesture and abusing the referees in the tunnel after the game.
Peterson has been sanctioned for verbally abusing the match referees whilst acting in the capacity of a scorebench official. He has been suspended for the Tigers’ next two home games and the club has been issued a $500 fine which has been suspended for the rest of the season, pending good behaviour by Peterson.
Melbourne Tigers’ centre Chris Anstey has also received a reprimand from the NBL for inappropriate language towards the referees in the tunnel after the match.
“The actions of these members of the Melbourne Tigers’ organisation quite clearly overstepped the mark and were unacceptable,” said Harmison. “We need to send a clear message that we will not tolerate abuse of officials.
“As a league we are very conscious of our obligations as a family sport and it is therefore incumbent upon our teams to display good sportsmanship at all times. We will not accept team officials, players or members of our scorebench crews using obscene language to our referees or making obscene gestures.”

Last night was a tough game to witness on the road.
Leading by 18 at half-time and losing the game is never easy.
There was a lot of thought put into our on-court team this year.
Starting with a new coach and recruiting on character first, we do have the ingredients for greatness.
I truly believe in this group of men. I am passionate about all of them as individuals, about who they are; what they can be and the journey we are on together.
Road losses like the one in NZ and last night are speed bumps on this road we travel and it is critical that we use them as a learning experience.
There are many reasons why I think we failed in the third quarter last night and I’m sure everyone who watched it will have their own opinion as to why.
Whilst I do want to apologise to our fans, sponsors and corporates for the loss, I also want to re-assure them that we are hurting as team far more than you can imagine.
We are a young group and we have a long way to go. But be assured that each and every individual in the organisation is committed to improvement on a daily basis.
Over recent days our focus across the club has been clinical discipline in our execution. It is something that has come up in our meetings as an area we need to work on. The Gold Coast game was a good example of how good we can be when we put it in action as seen in the first half and how expensive it can be when don’t as in the second.
We have a very reflective and intensive week ahead as we seek to dig deep not just to win at home this Saturday night, but learn the valuable lesson and be a better team. We hope to see all the fans fill Challenge Stadium as we consolidate our number-one spot on the NBL ladder.