Forde finally seeing Taipans vision

Adam Forde has found his ideal four and five men combination with Sam Waardenburg and Tanner Groves, and unearthed another diamond in the rough with Alex Higgins-Titsha - with all three huge in another stunning Cairns Taipans upset win.

If you take out the disappointment of Sunday's 24-point loss at home to the Adelaide 36ers, it's been a vastly improved 2025 so far for the Taipans with three wins and two tight losses in the other five games.

After Thursday's standout performance to win at home for the first time since October 4, the Taipans have now scored two of those wins against the league-leading Illawarra Hawks.

Forde called out the starting unit after the loss to Adelaide and while Taran Armstrong wasn’t able to respond because he didn't play with a back injury, Groves, Waardenburg, Rob Edwards and Pedro Bradshaw were all terrific.

All of them were well in front on the plus/minus calculation while Alex Higgins-Titsha stepped in, and the development player shone once again with 13 points and seven rebounds including three dunks.

What the absence of Armstrong did was put Edwards into the point guard role which he did a terrific job for 22 points, four rebounds and three assists.

There was plenty to like from what the Snakes did to score their sixth win of the season and third in the last six games, with the added bonus of it keeping them in the lead of the Summer Shootout.

While it's a season that hasn’t gone to plan for Forde and the Taipans with them appeared consigned to bottom spot, there have still been positives and perhaps the greatest has been the emergence of Higgins-Titsha.

He has been gradually improving his all-round game at the Inner West Bulls of the NBL1 East, but it wasn’t until his last year of eligibility for a development player spot that he earned on opportunity at the Taipans.

Higgins-Titsha has become a regular player for the Snakes, he's started on occasion including in the win over the Hawks, and Forde is delighted that the Taipans have unearthed another gem.

"Cairns, even before my time, has an incredible track record of discovering talent and finding gems, and people who might have been under looked or get an opportunity and then go on to a major market club," Forde said.

"Alex is one who has probably slipped through the cracks, he's a 24 DP and it's his last year of eligibility, and there's a real hunger to push for a contract spot. He is a guy who belongs in the NBL and someone we'll talk about for the next 10 years."

The biggest frustration out of this season for Forde is going to be what might have been, had Waardenburg and Groves been able to play together more.

Forde had a vision of how the front court would look, and now they are showing how good they can be individually and as a pairing, but out of the 25 games, they have only played 13 together.

Their impact isn’t fully told in those numbers either, but Forde couldn’t think of a better power forward/center combination.

"Tanner is perfect for us and one of the things we feel like we got right, he was right. He had a five-year history of no injuries and then he comes to us and it's unfortunate he's ruled out for two months," Forde said.

"Then he had nine games averaging four and-a-half fouls despite still being super productive. He's a tough match up as a five because he's shooting at 45 per cent from three and he did a great job keeping us in it with o-boards and drawing fouls, so he's my ideal five man.

"The pairing of him and Waardenburg is like my ideal four-five combo so it's cool we're starting to see it with Waardenburg putting the ball on the floor to get to the rim and shots the three, and Tanner is argy-bargy. They complement each other in so many ways."

It was unfortunate that Armstrong wasn’t able to play on Thursday and he won't go to Perth for Saturday night's game either.

But Forde is looking forward to seeing what he'll do in their last three games away to New Zealand and Tasmania, and home to Brisbane.

"It was kind of annoying because during the week he was fantastic. Obviously I issued the challenge to the guys a little bit and we changed up different line-ups throughout practice, and Taran won everything no matter what it was," Forde said.

"Then he flagged a bit of a back complaint, nothing major but a level of uncomfortableness, and he just wasn’t able to move naturally and maybe that's on me for going a little bit too hard because we wanted to respond in a positive way.

"It's a long flight to Perth tomorrow and we probably won't take him to give him this weekend to ease him into next week knowing we have two other long road trips to come so it's better safe than sorry."