Cooks Crucial to King's Development

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Wednesday night won’t just be potentially the last time Australian basketball fans get to watch Xavier Cooks strut his stuff in the NBL

Wednesday night won’t just be potentially the last time Australian basketball fans get to watch Xavier Cooks strut his stuff in the NBL, but it could also be the last time he takes to the floor with any of his current Sydney Kings teammates.

Cooks is heading straight to the United States at the culmination of this season’s Championship Series, regardless of the result. He’s signed a two-year deal with the Washington Wizards and will fulfil his lifelong dream of playing in the NBA.

Kings development player Isaac Gattorna has found court-time hard to come by this season being behind Cooks and former Cairns star and match-winner Kouat Noi in the Kings’ rotation, but says the NBA-bound league MVP has been huge for his own development.

“This whole experience for me has been amazing,” Gattorna told SEN. “Getting to play alongside guys like Xavier Cooks has been awesome – just learning from him in my position has been massive for my own development and confidence in my own game.

“I’ve spent a lot of time off the court hanging out with Xav and picking his brain on things and learning and enjoying the whole experience.

“Xavier has definitely stood up for us – he’s that guy we listen to before the game and gets us hyped up and says, ‘this is why we’re here, this is what we’ve come to do – let’s go do our job’.”

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Gattorna has been a part of a Sydney bench rotation that has drawn plaudits for its output all season.

Between Noi and Shaun Bruce hitting game-winning shots during the season, to Angus Glover’s emergence as a potential smokey to take home the Larry Sengstock Trophy, a large part of Sydney’s strength comes from its incredible depth on the bench.

The development players says a team-first mentality has been crucial in building such a strong depth core.

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Sydney Development Player Isaac Gattorna has made 12 appearances across the Kings' NBL23 campaign.

“There haven’t been any complaints this season about who’s ‘the guy’ on the team,” he said.

“It’s been shared amongst everybody so everyone has that knowledge and says ‘it’s our role to play this amount of minutes because we’ve got this guy who we can completely trust behind us or in front of us doing the exact same thing’.”