Pinder inspires 'Cats after heart-to-heart

It was going to take something special for the Perth Wildcats to beat the Sydney Kings without Bryce Cotton, and Keanu Pinder focused all week on rediscovering his best form.

With the Wildcats missing their starting back court of four-time MVP Cotton, along with Tai Webster, what it was going to take to beat the Kings at RAC Arena on Friday night was a tremendous team performance, and somebody to step up.

The first part was clearly a success with the 'Cats outworking the Kings to finish with 27 offensive rebounds for 26 second chance points, while out-rebounding Sydney 56 to 35 and taking 31 free throws to just 18.

Even so, it was always going take a special individual performance, and that's exactly what Pinder provided.

His coach, John Rillie, had a feeling something special was brewing after they started the week with a heart-to-heart conversation, and then Pinder delivered an equal career-high 34 points with 4 rebounds and 4 steals.

"When KP brings that level of energy you can see how it naturally creates plays for himself and his teammates, and you can see how it energises RAC," Rillie said.

"Even the plays that he didn’t complete, there were some pretty athletic plays out there tonight. He was terrific and he started that at the beginning of the week.

"He hasn’t been happy with the way that he's performed and we had a great chat about what we can do to get him going. He took great responsibility with that himself so moving forward, we'll go through the same routine next week and we'll go again.

"But it's really good when a player takes responsibility and wants to sit down and talk to you about how we can get this right. That was terrific to see, unbelievable."

Pinder opened NBL25 with a spectacular HoopsFest performance with 29 points on 4/8 three-point shooting against the South East Melbourne Phoenix, but it had been tough going for him since.

That included missing the win in Cairns through concussion two weeks ago, but he felt good about the week's preparation.

"I'd say it's up there and this one meant a lot to me, because I hadn’t been playing so well," Pinder said.

"It always means more when you haven’t been playing well and the things that we worked on in practice really made me more confident.

"Props to JR (Rillie) for getting me going in practice and getting the team involved, and seeing the options that we have which we worked on.

"It showed tonight the things that we worked on in practice and I'm really proud of the guys for fighting, getting the offensive rebounds and sticking with it the whole game. We fed off each other's energy and we played amazing. It was great."

The Wildcats face the Illawarra Hawks at home on Friday night, with another chance to get their season back on track.