Adelaide 36ers owner compares former Perth Wildcat Bryce Cotton to Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and Wayne Gretzky

Five-time NBL MVP Bryce Cotton has been compared to international sporting icons Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and Wayne Gretzky after signing a three-year contract to play for the Adelaide 36ers. The 36ers stunned the NBL by signing Cotton just two months after he announced he was leaving the Perth Wildcats. There was a widespread expectation that the star shooter would accept a lucrative deal to move overseas but the 36ers were constantly in contact with his agent and learnt this week that he was genuinely interested in joining them. An elated Adelaide owner Grant Kelley said Cotton’s impact on the NBL ranked him as highly as some of the world’s greatest athletes. “It genuinely is a game changer,” he said. “Every now and then you get a generational player in sport. If you look at the NFL it is probably Tom Brady. It’s (Wayne) Gretzky in hockey and of course Michael Jordan in basketball. If you look at the NBL in the last 10 years, Bryce Cotton is the player who can consistently exert his influence on a team sport. “If you think about how extraordinary that is, to be one guy out of five but to have that capability of actually influencing an outcome to the degree that he has done is fantastic. To us it was an incredible 72 hours. We mobilised the entire organisation to get this done.” The Wildcats have refused to comment on Cotton’s move to Adelaide. Perth and 36ers are fierce rivals and Kelley admitted it would add another element to their games. The 36ers made the NBL Play-In tournament last season but did not advance to the semi-finals. They witnessed Cotton’s heroics up close when he scored 49 points against them in December and coach Mike Wells also worked with him when they were in the NBA together at Utah Jazz. Wells said Cotton would totally change the way his team performed. “There’s a standard of excellence,” he said. “You don’t get an opportunity to add this sort of talent to your mix very often. I can talk about re-shaping the 36ers culture and the locker room and what we want to do on the court, but instantly, when you put Bryce Cotton on your roster, it changes everything. “It changes everything the moment he walks in because of who he is and what he’s accomplished. How he goes about his business will be nothing but a positive for our organisation.”