NBL22 in review: 'A season no Kings fan will ever forget'

By Matt McQuade

At the beginning of every National Basketball League season, every competing team is full of hope.

Hope that they’ll have a successful campaign.

Hope that they’ll connect with the community and make a mark, both on and off the floor.

And ultimately, hope they will go on to win a championship.

Unfortunately for nine other teams, only one can tick all three boxes.

And fortunately, in NBL22, it was the Brydens Lawyers Sydney Kings who turned all their hopes into reality.

The newly minted NBL champions had a season to remember; one that was close to going off the rails early, yet closed with one of the most dominant last three months that the league has ever seen, one that was full of adversity yet showcased enormous resiliency, one that featured one of the most talented groups ever put out on the court in the history of this storied franchise.

They also featured their fourth head coach in the last four seasons; the youngest head coach in club history in fact, a guy with a legendary surname and a legendary father who hadn’t really proven himself as a coach despite some success in the NBA G-League.

Of course, after some early struggles, that young man – 33-year-old Chase Buford – would prove that he knows how to coach, and then some.

Sydney’s offseason recruiting drive netted a pair of guys who had played in the NBA – point guard Jaylen Adams, who played for Atlanta, Milwaukee and Portland, and swingman RJ Hunter, a former first round draft pick of the Boston Celtics. Added to incumbent stars Xavier Cooks, Jarell Martin and injury returnee Dejan Vasiljevic, not to mention other incoming talent like Next Star Makur Maker and rookie dynamo Biwali Bayles, it was already an impressive lineup on paper straight out of the gate.

Based off the squad’s talent alone, most prognosticators had the purple and gold as a strong playoff contender at the very least before the season, even though they lacked overall NBL experience and featured no less than six new faces, not to mention a coach who had never led at NBL level.

And even before the season got underway, the club took an enormous hit with big man Jordan Hunter, the man who finished second in the Most Improved Player voting for the NBL21 season and who had been expected to make a significant contribution in NBL22, going down with an injury that would see him miss the entire campaign.

It was a huge setback for a young team with a young head coach, and it would be one of many in the early going of the NBL22 season.

Indeed, injuries would play a large part in what would be a tough start for the purple and gold.

It’s easy to forget just how many guys went in and out of the lineup in the opening month, although the season began on a positive note with a win over defending champions Melbourne United in front of more than 8,000 fans at Qudos Bank Arena.

But that was somewhat of a false dawn.

Jaylen Adams suffered an ankle injury that would keep him out of the next five games; both Makur Maker and Matur Maker were dealing with long-term ailments that would see them miss significant time, and RJ Hunter would play just three of the opening seven games of the season.

Then you had Dejan Vasiljevic returning from a devastating Achilles injury he suffered in NBL21 and the uncertainty whether the talented guard would be able to come all the way back.

With a depleted line-up, Coach Buford struggled to establish any kind of continuity in the early stages of NBL22 – continuity that was vital for such a new squad – so in retrospect, it probably wasn’t a surprise that the team started as poorly as they did.

The joy of the win over Melbourne was quickly replaced by sorrow, as arch-rivals Illawarra came into Qudos the very next week and knocked off the Kings 92-84.

Losing to the Hawks was bad enough.

Worse was to come.

In Round Three, the Kings suffered one of their worst defeats in the history of the franchise, an 89-47 destruction at the hands of Melbourne United at John Cain Arena.

That game, which featured a 26-0 Melbourne run at one stage, set several unwanted club records, including the fewest points ever scored in a game by the Sydney Kings and the team’s worst-ever field goal percentage in a single game.

It was a stunning, shocking outcome, and although the team gave a preview of their ability to bounce back and deal with adversity with two home victories over South East Melbourne and Tasmania following the debacle in Melbourne, Sydney was about to go through their worst period of NBL22.

Four straight losses – beginning with another dispiriting defeat to Melbourne, this time at home – would drop the Kings to eighth place on the NBL ladder with a 3-6 record.

The second loss in those four came at the hands of Illawarra at the WIN Entertainment Centre and with a heavy price – the season-ending loss of import RJ Hunter to a patella tendon injury.

Then came back-to-back losses to New Zealand at home and Brisbane away – both of which featured collapses in the fourth quarter.

Against the Breakers, Sydney led 74-64 with just over five minutes remaining before going down 82-75 – an 18-1 closing spurt by the visitors proving the difference – and then at Nissan Arena came a further indignity, with another large lead in the fourth squandered against the Bullets in a game where Xavier Cooks was ejected.

It was a dark time for the Sydney Kings.

So, when Brisbane and Sydney met at Qudos Bank Arena just 48 hours after the downfall at Nissan Arena, it was a real fork in the road moment for the purple and gold.

A loss would drop the Kings to a miserable 3-7 on the back of five straight losses and generate potential psychological fallout; a win would arrest the slide and get the group feeling good about themselves again.

Thankfully for Kings’ fans, the latter occurred.

Sydney came out breathing fire at the Q right from tipoff and demolished the Bullets 97-73, a game built on a four-quarter defensive effort that was highlighted by Sydney’s astounding 12 blocked shots, which equaled the fourth-most rejections in a single game in franchise history.

And while that was a much-needed victory, next week was even better.

The Perth Wildcats came into the Q seeking their seventh consecutive win against the Kings, riding a six-game run that included five straight victories on Sydney’s home court. They boasted the reigning league MVP in Bryce Cotton, another outstanding import in Vic Law, and had started NBL22 with six wins in their opening eight games.

But the purple and gold weren’t interested in what had come before.

They were interested in making a statement, and that, they most certainly did.

And the game belonged to one special player on the Sydney roster.

Jaylen Adams gave Kings fans their first real taste of what would make him a superstar with a spectacular performance in leading the Kings to a brilliant 96-81 victory.

Sydney’s point guard put on a show for the 5,864 in attendance, going for a near triple-double with 30 points, nine assists, seven rebounds, two steals and two blocked shots, thoroughly dominating his Perth counterpart in a way rarely seen ever since Cotton arrived on these shores.

The win took the Kings to a 5-6 record after those two impressive displays, and although Sydney would suffer a hiccup the next game with a road loss to Tasmania, the defeat to the JackJumpers wouldn’t slow them down.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Kings lost in Hobart on 4 February, 2022.

They would not lose again for more than two months.

It would become a season-defining, history-making stretch of games; a period where the purple and gold emerged from the ranks of the also-ran to become a legitimate championship contender.

13 straight wins. The second-longest ever winning streak in a single season by a Sydney Kings team. The second-longest ever winning streak in any season by a Sydney Kings team.

It was a run that was unexpected. Yet absolutely glorious.

The streak started innocuously enough with a relatively comfortable win at home over the New Zealand Breakers, followed by their first – and definitely not the last – road win of the season at John Cain Arena over the South East Melbourne Phoenix.

But after the triumph in Melbourne – the first of what would become another historic run of victories, this time away from the friendly confines of Qudos Bank Arena – things really amped up.

On 12 February, the team announced they had filled their vacant import spot with the signing of former NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors, guard Ian Clark.

In some ways, it was a curious addition given the fact Clark hadn’t played in 18 months and the prevailing wisdom outside the club was that the team needed a big to help out Xavier Cooks and Jarell Martin.

However, it would turn into the most fortuitous signing of the season and one of the biggest and most important midseason additions in NBL history.

Then there was a remarkable finish at the Q against Brisbane.

The Bullets gave the Kings everything they could handle and led by two points with five seconds left. That set the scene for an incredible sequence of plays, beginning with a monstrous throwdown by Jaylen Adams over two Bullets players – Deng Deng and Lamar Patterson – the dunk of the year without question.

Adams was fouled on the play, but missed the free throw. However, Angus Glover tipped the offensive rebound back to Adams, who fed Jarell Martin for the game-winning bucket, and there was nothing but pandemonium in the stands.

Ian Clark played his first game in purple and gold the following week in an instant classic against the Wildcats in Sydney – a Xavier Cooks jam capping a remarkable, back and forth thriller as the Kings extended their winning run to four thanks to a 98-95 win.

That man Adams was at it again the following week in Adelaide with a go-ahead – and ultimately, game-winning - triple as the Kings saw off a tough 36er challenge, and the team eased past Cairns in Round 14 for their sixth consecutive W.

Then came the most brutal part of the team’s regular season schedule.

Seven games, all in different centres across the country. Cairns. Melbourne. Perth. Hobart. Adelaide. Bendigo. Wollongong. Four of those games against teams jockeying for playoff spots.

It was a massive challenge.

Yet the Sydney Kings would meet that challenge head on.

Amazingly, they would not lose a single game during a stretch where they travelled a total of 16,992 kilometres over a 35-day period.

The run featured a monster 102-80 victory over the Perth Wildcats at RAC Arena in a game Sydney dominated from start to finish and Jaylen Adams again outpointed reigning league MVP Bryce Cotton; reached new heights when they avenged an earlier defeat to the JackJumpers by demolishing Tasmania 103-83 at MyState Bank Arena in Hobart, and concluded with a remarkable 107-102 overtime victory over the Illawarra Hawks in Wollongong in one of the best games ever played in the history of the Freeway Series – Dejan Vasiljevic nailing a career-high 33 points in front of a hostile sell-out crowd at the WIN Entertainment Centre.

That win took Sydney’s winning streak to an incredible 13 straight, nine of those on the road. The team that had been 3-6 and was on the brink now found themselves with an 18-7 record and assured of a playoff spot.

And although they would lose two of their next three games, both at home – including the final game of the regular season in another epic to the Hawks in front of 12,632 fans, on a special night when Ben Knight was inducted into the Sydney Kings Ring of Honour – the Kings would finish third at the conclusion of the minor rounds, setting up a semi-final battle with arch-rivals Illawarra.

And what a battle it was.

Game One was played in front of the biggest crowd in Wollongong since the 2010 NBL Grand Final series, but as they had done throughout the second half of the season, the Kings went to another level despite the clear antagonism of the more than 5,500 Hawk fans in attendance.

Sydney did all the damage in a second quarter that had to be seen to be believed. Led by yet another masterclass from Jaylen Adams, the purple and gold eviscerated the home team 30-9, including an 18-0 run in five minutes, and led 52-33 at intermission.

Despite a fourth quarter surge from Illawarra that cut the margin to just three points with three minutes remaining, Adams and Ian Clark steadied the ship to ensure that the Kings grabbed homecourt advantage in the series with an 89-79 victory.

Game Two was the Hawks’ last stand, and in the first half at Qudos Bank Arena, they came out with the appropriate mindset, ahead by as much as 15 points before taking a 55-45 lead at the main break.

But the Kings responded through Jarell Martin and Xavier Cooks in a terrific second half performance that saw Sydney take a fourth quarter lead, before Illawarra stormed back and regained a four-point advantage with seven minutes to go.

In the end, the Hawks had no answers to the NBL22 Most Valuable Player Jaylen Adams, whose step-back dagger triple – the signature shot of the series – gave the Kings a 92-87 lead with a minute remaining and finally killed off Illawarra for the season, with the home team making their seventh Grand Final appearance in franchise history after a 99-87 win and a two-game sweep.

That would set the Kings up in a championship decider against their unlikely opponents the Tasmania JackJumpers, whose fairy-tale story saw them beat defending champions Melbourne United 2-1 in a brutal semi-final series.

Tasmania was at long odds to get past the team from the Hoops Capital, but those odds were shorted dramatically when Jaylen Adams hobbled off in the third quarter of Game One with an apparent hamstring injury.

Nonetheless, behind the awesome Xavier Cooks and some great plays from Ian Clark, Angus Glover and Shaun Bruce, the Kings dominated the second half to record a comfortable 95-78 victory in front of a massive crowd of 12,765 at the Q – the fourth largest crowd for the opening game of a Grand Final series in NBL history.

But all the talk afterwards was about Jaylen Adams and his hamstring. How would the Kings fare the rest of the series without the best player in the National Basketball League?

Well, it was always going to be tough.

But this was one reason that Sydney went with a guard in Ian Clark as their third import after the injury to RJ Hunter. To enable the Kings to be covered in case of moments like these.

Sydney went into Hobart for Game Two in front of a crazed JackJumper crowd and trailed for most of the game – just not when it counted.

Led by spectacular performances from Jarell Martin – who made his first eight shots – and the phenomenal Xavier Cooks, not to mention the brilliant floor leadership of Shaun Bruce, the Kings stayed close after Tasmania jumped them in the first period and took the lead late, before Dejan Vasiljevic made the biggest shot of his young career, a three-point bomb with less than ten seconds remaining in the ballgame that carried Sydney to a 90-86 victory, just one win away from their fourth NBL title.

That led to an incredible Wednesday night in Sydney, when a mind-boggling crowd of 16,149 – the biggest crowd in NBL playoff history and the third-largest NBL crowd ever – crammed into the Q hoping to see a purple and gold sweep.

Despite missing two key contributors thanks to a bout of the flu, Tasmania wasn’t interested in just laying down and again gave the Kings everything they could handle; leading at the end of the first quarter, halftime and the third period, just as they had done in Game Two.

But Sydney was not to be denied.

Ian Clark made one big shot after the other when the stakes were at their highest, Xavier Cooks elevated his play to stratospheric levels, and the Q roared like never before when their heroes pulled away to record a magnificent 97-88 victory, giving them a 3-0 series win and the fourth championship in franchise history.

Xavier Cooks was named Grand Final Series Most Valuable Player, Sydney completed a perfect 5-0 run in the playoffs, joining the 2005 champions as the second Sydney team to sweep their postseason, and Chase Buford, the youngest head coach in franchise history, became just the second Sydney coach alongside the legendary Brian Goorjian to lead the Kings to the title.

So, this season that at one stage looked like it could be a bust, a season where the team was floundering at 3-6 and seemingly going nowhere turned into the ultimate.

Championship glory.

And even if you take away Sydney’s triumph in Game Three of the Grand Final series, it was still a season to be proud of, in so many ways.

From the amazing work done by the Kings on the floor to the outstanding community engagement off the court; the leadership of the ownership group and front office and remarkable work done by a team of dedicated staff, the phenomenal volunteers and everyone responsible for the NBL’s best game night experience, not to mention Sydney’s great fans – this was a season that will live long in the memory.

NBL22 ended with the title back where it belongs – in the Hoops Capital.

And no Kings fan will ever forget it.

What a season it was.