Sydney Preparing for "Toughest Game of the Season"

The Sydney Kings have already put Friday night’s Game 3 victory behind them according to coach Chase Buford.

With the decisive Game 3 hanging in the balance at half time – the Kings trailled by three points courtesy of a pair of late triples from Barry Brown Jr – Sydney came out and restricted the Breakers to the lowest score in any Championship Series half in NBL history.

According to Buford, the next contest looms as the Kings’ toughest of the season.

“Spirits are high but we know the next game is always the hardest,” he said post-game. “We found that out last year.

“They’re going to be playing with everything they’ve got like there’s no tomorrow and we’re going to have to meet them with that same intensity.

“As good as tonight was we’re going to have to move on and get ready for the toughest game of the season on Sunday.”

DJ Vasiljevic was one of six Kings players to score in double-digits, as the side was led by Derrick Walton Jr’s all-around performance of 12 points, six rebounds and nine assists.

The local shooting guard echoed the sentiments of his head coach.

“It’s always hard to close out – especially when you’re up,” he said.

“We struggled last year to close out against Tassie in Game 3 in that first half, and we were able to find it after half time.

“We’ve got to come in from start to finish on Sunday and try to close this out.”

After struggling to find momentum over patches of the first half, and allowing the likes of Will McDowell-White and Barry Brown Jr to find easy scores, the Kings’ defence tightened up immensely in the second half.

Foul trouble restricted the level of impact Brown Jr or Jarrell Brantley could have on the game, but the Breakers went almost 12 minutes without registering a made field goal.

After scoring just nine points in the third quarter they scored just 12 in the final term to slump to a 23-point loss.

“We didn’t execute our coverages the way we wanted to in the first half, but really we just fell asleep in the last couple of minutes,” Buford said.

“We had 12 turnovers in the first half which really hurt us. We cleaned that up in the second half. I just thought the second half the ball moved much better than it has in a long time for us and we got back to looking like a team we recognised from earlier in the year.

“We fed off our defence, played off stops, played fast, slowed it down when we needed to, and executed. The message was pretty simple – keep doing what you’re doing but just tighten up.”

An NBL-record 18,049 fans packed into Qudos Bank Arena to watch the Kings emerge with the win, over 500 fans more than the previous record.

DJ Vasiljevic says he couldn’t believe the level of noise and energy created by the fans in the arena.

“Today was the loudest [game] I’ve ever been a part of, and I’ve played in some pretty big gyms,” he said.

“That overrides everything. That was the energy we needed. We hit a couple of shots, started to get the crowd into it and we ended up playing really well in the second half.”

The Kings travel to New Zealand to take on the Breakers in Game 4 of the Championship Series on Sunday, March 12 at 4pm AEDT.

New Zealand needs to emerge with a home victory to keep the series alive and send it to Game 5. If Sydney win they will lift their second straight NBL title.

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