Why a 36ers star is reposting his critics

Eight seasons and five countries into his professional career, Zylan Cheatham knows the outside chatter comes with the territory.

But that doesn’t make the criticism any easier to cop.

The Adelaide 36ers star has had a quiet start to the season by his standards, but that didn’t warrant the barrage that followed online after a loss to Melbourne last week.

Instead of ignoring it, Cheatham is reposting it, to highlight just what a professional athlete puts up with on a daily basis.

“I don’t think it really gets me fired up as much,” he told Kelsey Browne after Adelaide’s latest road win. “I think it’s more just I want to bring attention to people who think that, you know, just being a professional athlete is all [peaches] and cream.

“I want them to see sometimes that, you know, we’re human. We have bad games. We have bad moments just like you and see the things that people say about you and the things that people feel about you.”

The reposts aren’t the most vicious you’ll find online, but they show how often it comes. One fan said their grandma “shoots her shot more than you”, while another told him not to play basketball “if you are afraid of shooting the rock”.

Not even Adelaide’s own supporters held back. One declared he had “forgot how to ball this season”, another posted “Absolutely pathetic 5 games in a row now”, and a third asked “WTF is @1KingZ4 doing?” before pleading with him to “shoot the ball lad you’re good”.

The posts followed a dip in his scoring. After opening the season with 18 and 21 points, Cheatham went for 9, 11, 8 and 8, including one outing where he took just 2 shots from the field.

But for Cheatham, sharing the criticism is only half the story.

“And then I want you to see how I bounce back and, you know, do what I’m supposed to do and kind of silence the critic,” he said.

If the critics were watching, they soon got their answer.

Just days after the posts, Cheatham produced a double-double in Adelaide’s 84-78 win over the Kings in Sydney. He had 10 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists in 36 minutes, shooting 4-of-5 from the field and making both of his three-point attempts.

He backed it up on Friday night with 15 points and 11 rebounds in the 94-88 win over the ladder-leading Tasmania JackJumpers. He shot 7-of-10 from the field, added 3 assists and didn’t turn the ball over.

With head coach Trevor Gleeson absent for family reasons and Nick Rakocevic fouling out in the fourth quarter, Cheatham played all 40 minutes at MyState Bank Arena.

Bryce Cotton grabbed the headlines with 35 points, but Cheatham was the only Sixer on the floor for every second of the contest. He had 7 points and 7 rebounds by half-time as Adelaide clawed back a 10-point deficit to lead 40-39 at the break.

The back-to-back road wins lifted the 36ers to 4-4, and Cheatham said it was the result of a group that refused to listen to the noise.

“A lot of people gave up on us, wrote us off, had a lot of things to say, but I mean, we just stick together as a unit, man,” he said.

“We’ve been here before. We believe in each other. We believe in our coaches and our game plan, and we just stick with it, man. We’re resilient.”

Adelaide takes on the Phoenix next Saturday in Melbourne.