Abdelfattah already preparing for NBL25

The Sydney Kings’ quest for a three-peat is officially over, but head coach Mahmoud Abdelfattah says he’s already started preparations for NBL25.

The Kings fell to the New Zealand Breakers by seven points in Wednesday night’s Play-In Qualifier at Qudos Bank Arena, in what was an almost exact reversal of Game 5 of last season’s Championship Series between the two sides.

The Breakers outscored the home side by seven points in the final quarter to surge home with the victory.

“We started a couple of weeks ago in all honesty, you have to be prepared. We’ve been preparing for the Playoffs since day one of the season but we’ve already started preparing for next season,” Abdelfattah said post-game.

“We have to go back and reflect and look at everything from what I was doing, the coaching staff, the players, just where we can be better in everything. It doesn’t matter whether that’s on-court, in the locker room, you don’t pick and choose.

“I think we’ve got a great group of guys in the locker room. Could you adjust? Yeah. When you lose, everything feels like you need to make some changes, but I like the group we have. At the end of the day we started the season off well but we just hit the wall and couldn’t break through. I think the guys we have in the locker room can do that, but we’ll sit back and evaluate that over the next couple of weeks.

“I thought we struggled overall ... players, coaches, we all could have been better, we were just inconsistent all year.

“It’s just the summary of our season. We missed a lot of open looks, they (the Breakers) made a few more baskets than we did and a few more plays. It’s a tough way to go out.”

When Abdelfattah was asked if he was confident he would be leading the side next season, he simply responded “yeah, 100 per cent”.

An electric first half from the Kings saw them enter the main break with a comfortable 10-point lead, but they were systematically pegged back by New Zealand over the course of the second half.

Jordan Hunter has been involved in each of the Kings’ last two titles, and says this is a season that got away from the back-to-back champions.

“Every team bar one has to feel this at some point. It’s tough. I had the utmost confidence in this group and from the jump it was a team that was capable of going all the way and it doesn’t always go that way,” he said.

“I think offensively we were pretty solid throughout the whole year. The Breakers are really good at getting you out of your stuff and being really physical, and they want to create a grindy situation where the other team ends up trying to go one out and we did a good job sometimes and other times we played into it and that’s the nature of it.

“It’s a product of how they play defence first and foremost, we had the guys who are capable of scoring, for sure.”

The Breakers will play Illawarra in the Play-In Game on Monday night.